Company: Oracle
Date: 2014-04-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Comfortable, but no opportunity for salary increase
Pros: Good work/life balance, freedom to work in office or telecommute as it suits you, stability of a large company.
Cons: Poor compensation.  

Pathetic vacation policy (13 days PTO for first three years, then 18 days PTO.  8 Holidays.  I have yet to find a company whose *starting* vacation+holiday levels do not exceed Oracle's official max holidays.  I say "official" because Oracle managers recognize how low this amount of vacation is and, in some cases, will make special arrangements for increased flexibility if your work merits it.)

In regards to compensation, what is particularly frustrating is that there is often no opportunity for change to compensation, even if you are getting great feedback on your work and your business unit is doing great.  Oracle as a whole has a philosophy that they don't need to give raises because people will stay anyway.  Year after year, top level execs give local directors very small or even non-existent raise and bonus pools, so local managers cannot give their employees raises, even if they want to.  They tend to use stock options, but not salary, as a means of roping top performers into staying with the company.  

This lack of salary mobility is very depressing, not only for its affect on your wallet, but because it makes it very difficult to remain motivated when you know that, no matter how good a job you do, you will not be financially rewarded for it.  

Senior management looks at employees as drones.  They truly do not care one iota about employee happiness.