Company: Oracle
Date: 2015-09-17
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Please read before applying or accepting an offer from Oracle
Pros: Work life balance, you can work from home, and you have a job.
Cons: This is my assessment of Oracle after being with the company for almost 10 years. All I am trying to do is make people aware of the issues they will face if they work for Oracle.

Salary - negotiate the highest salary you can as raises come every 3-5 years and they are in no way based on the performance of the company, your unit, your performance, or anything relative. They are the lowest paying company in this sector, so most offers you hear from Oracle are going to be below what other companies (small, med, large) will offer you for the same job. And the managers will do whatever they can to minimize your successes and achievements so they do not have to pay you while they reward perception. 

Training - the worst in the industry. They send most of their people out there with little to no training. When you ask your manager for training, he will most likely give you some reason you cannot take it as the cost is not "in the budget". Their old offerings on Oracle U are old, outdated, and are just slides. They do not invest in their people. If you are looking to "learn" your job at Oracle, forget it. If you looking to learn another job while at Oracle, forget it. They do not offer any adequate training to their people. Everything is self-serve, so you're on your own. Even the training classes that are available are at cost to the employee. Imagine that? An employee wants to better their in-job skills and the company makes you pay for it. 

Management - pretty much the worst around. In any industry. Management folks here don't even need to know the jobs of the people they are managing. Many times in Oracle there are managers who manage no one or 1-2 people. You REALLY need to keep an eye on everything your manager says. I have watched new people or people transferring get lied to about jobs, money, and new opportunities. They are a lawsuit waiting to happen. I have watched two managers get "sent away' to other units for treating people horribly, lying, and creating a horrible work atmosphere. 

Career Opportunities - I have personally submitted over 50 applications for candidates that were more than qualified. Never heard a word. There is no such thing in Oracle as career-pathing. HR has created some muddled roadmap of how you can become this and that. The thing is, it is chocked full of courses (at cost) that they suggest you take. By the time you are done all the courses, they suggest a myriad of certifications (Oracle) that they suggest you take that you will will have to pay for. After that, you have a talk with your manager. He will suggest only in-department jobs you can ASPIRE to go for. Their roadmap will basically take you a good 10-20 years. Most companies move their good people, promote from within, and show appreciation to. Oracle does none of this. They try to silence their good people and give reasons why they cannot be moved on to better positions. Your career will die at Oracle. 

Public Perception - if you look on LinkedIn or social media job sites, you will think that Oracle is doing great and the employees are happy. As judged by those misleading and messy LinkedIn "Why I love Oracle" posts. You will see that many of those people are jobs that take little thought (sales, HR, recruiting) or the person has been at the company for 6-24 months. You don't really have any clue til you're here for a few years. This is just a ruse to get the public's love of Oracle. It is not the feeling of any true Oracle employees. Things are bad and folks who are honest will admit that. Our HR department might as well live on Mars as they have no perception of the industry, careers, or even common human goals. The "Cloud" has been a failure and internally it has been a complete mess. Finally numbers are coming out that we are missing revenue. This is because they force products not ready for market down customer's throats. It has been bad business for decades. There are also a myriad of bad business practices as in the case with the state of Oregon vs Oracle (Google it). 

This is just my honest opinion. I wish I had more positive things to say, but I don't. I just don't want someone making the same mistake I made and staying too long and hoping for the best. Your best bet is to get with a company that promotes hard work and determination. Oracle promotes and hires perception.