Company: Oracle
Date: 2008-06-27
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Not a good place to work
Pros: Diverse culture, variety of product lines to learn and build experience on. The company has a good brand name in the outside world, and offers a very good gym facility for employees at redwood shores facility. The casual dress code helps too. They have many offices worldwide, so if you ever wanted to temporarily relocate to some place it would be easy to transfer to that place from Oracle without having to quit and find another job. Some groups get to do cool projects and I was lucky to be part of that project, you can get good recognition in that case.
Cons: Poor management, especially middle to senior level managers upto VP level. There isn't much opportunities to grow within the company. The promotion criteria is very biased, secretive, and judgmental. You have to  be good friends with your manager to get anything. Else, you will not get anywhere. They are mostly hiring in India, so not much opportunities for folks working in Redwood City, CA headquarters office. Most of the hiring past several years has been happening in India. Product Managers are the worst that I have seen of any company. Most of them wouldn't get hired elsewhere. Many development managers, group managers, directors, senior directors and VPs are sticking around because they will have hard time finding job elsewhere. Most are fatally incompetent.