Company: Oracle
Date: 2016-11-22
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Great Breadth of Capabilities, Nasty Culture
Pros: Oracle is a force to be reckoned with in the industry.  It has an incredible breadth of product capabilities, a strong installed base and is highly acquisitive - the major source of innovation at the company these days.

The benefits package is good.
Cons: The sales model is fundamentally broken.  A key differentiator is effectively removed by splintering sales coverage down to a salesperson for each individual product area where much of the value is in the combined proposition.  Sales rarely have value-led conversations because they are purely motivated to sell single product areas.

The harsh, macho and aggressive culture means that the wrong people succeed and commercial exploitation of existing contracts prevails which has a knock on effect of losing customers' trust.

Many of the management "fell up the stairs" during the boom years of database expansion and have a unique level of arrogance and misplaced view of their own capabilities.  IQ level is not high in sales but aggression is.

Pay rises are absolutely exceptional once you are in role, so negotiate hard if you are planning to join.