Company: Oracle
Date: 2020-02-29
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Old reviews and ratings are outdated ........Company has deteriorated drastically
Pros: - Good for women ( in the select teams though)  who want to work FROM home (like attending meetings), while also working FOR home (say, cooking/washing utensils in the background while attending the meetings)

- Also good for men (in the select team), who have a working spouse and one of them need to reach home early to pick -up kids from the school bus

-- Also good for anyone who needs a brand name for future jobs prospects (as long as you don't commit a career-suicide by staying more than 2-3 years in Oracle)

- Multiple resources for free learning if you have time. Also options  to nominate yourself for soft-skills training

- Process-oriented company, so you learn the development methodologies by actually using them against just theoretical knowledge.

- The quality of the recruitments are good. So most people are pleasant to work with.
Cons: (1) Unfortunately,  the rating here average both the recent and very old reviews, so the fact that the company has deteriorated in the last 5-7 years is not apparent

(2) There is NO CONCEPT OF HIKES once you join. Your first hike may itself get delayed by as much as 2.5-3.5 years or even beyond. Here are the reason:
(i ) An employee not considered for the first hike after joining
(ii) Hikes, in general, come one in 2 to 2.5 years (or more in troubled times)
(iii) Not everyone gets a hike. The ratio is 70:30 or 60: 40 (So in a team of 10 employees, only about 6-7 get hike, 3-4 dont). Generally, new employees are targeted to deprive them of hikes, since they are still to prove themselves, but it also depends on the manager's favoritism. Remember if you miss an increment cycle then the next one comes only after 2-2.5+ years. So how much do you lag behind the market now?
(iv) Even if you get a hike it is mostly a single digit (sometimes as low as 3-5%). But the company has manipulated everyone psychologically. For example, those getting a (minuscule) hike are so happy being considered for the hike that they forget that their peers in other companies getting much HIGHER increments EVERY year.
(v) The company fires a number of employees just before the hikes, so even those employees that don't get hikes (some times for 5-7 years at a stretch) are happy to save their job. Working in Oracle for more than 3 years has already made you misfit for the world outside

(3 The same above logic for Bonus and Shares. Mostly managers favorites ( mostly decided by the nationality/regional/language commonality) make it to the list..Other are filtered out from Bonus and Shares,

(4) There are frequent job-losses, but they are managed smartly so it does not make it to the media. Only those figures where a country's government mandatorily requires retrenchment figures land in the press. (For example, say the companies have employees across 250  floors of office space globally with a seating capacity of 500 employees on each floor, and 50  people are retrenched  DAILY from random floors. Would anyone notice?  But what is the lay-off  figure for a month ? Especially since no communications are made to other employees, as most think that the employee is working from home.

(5) While the old reviews may talk otherwise, but because of job-loss panic, there is no  work-life balance. In fact because of the  recent mass-scale job losses people volunteer to stretch themselves.

(6) You are a misfit for the industry once you work here for more than 3 years. So you can take a clerical salary for the rest of your work-life and pray that you are not a victim of retrenchment in between...... It works this way- Despite aggressive press claims, the company lags behind in technology by 5-7 years from the industry. However, you cannot upgrade yourself by self-initiative either, since there is a heavy workload every day due to the panic over probable job-losses.  So each future year you are behind the industry further, leading to a VICIOUS Cycle.. It is like joining an underworld gang : you can only join but you cannot leave.

(7) Though outwardly the company has pleasant culture, but no tricks from passive-aggression remain untouched inside.