Company: Oracle
Date: 2015-10-22
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Culture better than expected but bureaucracy is crushing and company is way behind in the cloud transition
Pros: A lot of good, smart, friendly people, supportive culture and decent pay.  Acceptable work/life balance.  Good flexibility in achieving your plan, i.e. willingness to make adjustments due to changing business conditions.  Acceptable autonomy in doing your job with help if you need it.
Cons: Unreal bureaucracy, more time spent filling out spreadsheets, reports, and PowerPoints than in actually doing your job.  Feels unnecessarily hard to get anything done, also that too much energy is going into simply justifying your function's existence.  PTO plan is way behind the times, particularly for a tech company.  No merit increases.  Seems every year they take something away - 2014 it was car allowances, 2015 it was forced PTO at end of year, announced after 3/4 of the year had passed when many already took the year's PTO and now owe it back (or get it deducted next year - are you kidding?).  For a company with considerable resources, not enough attention and focus put on programs to transition to SaaS-based business model.  Senior management and HR seem way out of touch with the way people expect to be managed today and what's actually required to run a successful tech business in the cloud.