Company: Oracle
Date: 2008-11-03
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Solid company in tough climate, but political and slow.
Pros: Lot's of technology available.  As an applications person I can go shopping for what I need.  At the same time I'm not forced to use only Oracle technology, although, there are some expectations to use it.  The company is solid and is not going to disappear during tough times.  From time to time you find pockets of excellence of people that are actually innovating, but that is not the rule, rather the exception.  Some people have spent 20 years at Oracle, inconceivable to me, but true.  Good place for those with families as is not as go-go-as a startup...that can be bad too.  At the same time, ST Ventures is a great program to get innovative projects kicked off; this should be practiced and promoted throughout Oracle.
Cons: Politics!!!!!!!!!!!  A lot of the politics are created by management's deliberate funding of competing projects.  This leads to people tripping each other up and scheming to take over "innovative" areas to serve their own purposes.  There are snakes in every company, but I've never seen anything like this.  Hiring can be a nightmare in the product organizations unless you are applying for Server Tech; in some cases I know of some people waiting for 4-5 months to get in...so what kind of people wait for a company for 4-5 months...probably not very good ones.  It kind of speaks to the caliber of the people at the company, doesn't it?