Company: Oracle
Date: 2012-10-10
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

OK Place to Work, but Odd Office Culture
Pros: When you need a day off, or need to work from home for whatever reason, there usually isn't a problem, but depending on the project you're working on, you may be asked to work longer hours. That's entirely dependent on the team you're on, however. Some teams seem fairly relaxed. 

Benefits are pretty good as well, with Oracle kicking in a portion of the amount that employees would normally have to pay. 

Also, do you like to work with two monitors? Three? No problem. You'll get what you need to do your job here.
Cons: Salary increases at the Bala Cynwyd location seem random at best, and there can be many months (20+ is not uncommon.) between increases... and when an increase does come, it is seemingly unrelated to your personal achievements or the business unit's performance as a whole... so the entire process is pretty random, making you wonder what's driving it.  

Simply put, you can't bank on salary increases with this business unit, even though it's an enormous company with extensive resources. Also, some people get bonuses, while others aren't even aware that people sitting across the floor received bonuses while they're left with nothing. 

Office culture at the Bala Cynwyd location - specifically, on the development team - is a little strange. For instance, when HAVE TO collaborate with people, you find that they are friendly enough and they know their one area of specialty quite well, but the next day, the same people will put their heads down and scurry by you in the hallway, not even greeting you.  The general impression I get is that people are desperate to get their work done with ridiculous haste so that they can RUN out of the place as early as possible. People voluntarily come in at the crack of dawn, and by 4:30, the place is a ghost town. Maybe only 20% of the employees are still there at 5:15, which sounds great, until you learn that office norms mean you'll raise eyebrows if you come in later than 7:30 a.m.

A few other things:
-There seems to be a boys' club at the top of the Bala org., and it is abundantly clear who's favored. 
-Sometimes, when you reach out for help from another team, said team will be completely unresponsive, leaving you on your own to solve a problem that requires their input. 
-Other Oracle locations/BUs allow for flexible work arrangements, meaning people can work from home for part of the week. For some reason, development management seems to think that people can't possibly collaborate if they're not in the office, so working from home is used on an as-needed basis here.  This line of thinking is fairly archaic, even by traditional Oracle standards.