Company: Oracle
Date: 2014-03-03
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Technology Sales
Pros: -Pays well
-Good resume builder
-Great product set
-Work remote
Cons: -You are working for the machine, company is too big to get anything done.  For example, it may take over a week to generate an ordering document.  
-Literally 25-30 reps calling into one account.  Each product group is highly pillarized by design.  You are encouraged to call at the top, but so is everyone else.  If you end up building the deal, as you're supposed to, you then have to work with many other pillar Oracle reps, all of whom are vying for the same dollars you are.  Many of the other reps I've seen are un-ethical and will not share real information in the interest of growing their deal while diminishing yours. 
-Internal systems are a disaster.  Reps use a homegrown CRM system called Fusion that is a huge joke.  So much so that my group uses that as well as another internal portal to track deals. 
-Software reps are also required to sell Oracle's Engineered Systems (HW & SW).  You now have a HW "Gate" that you must hit in order to even qualify for accelerators.  So, you could sell 100+% of your quota but not hit accelerators if the Engineered Systems Gate isn't met. 
-Between quarter end and engineered systems gates, it makes software reps do unnatural things such as deep discounting at end of quarters, trying to cram engineered systems in where they don't fit. 
-Too many cooks in the kitchen, and rumor is, more reps are to be hired.  Mark Hurd keeps throwing reps at the marketplace and encouraging the sales teams to fight over company budget dollars like sharks in a tank. 
-Culture of Fear.  Everyone I know at Oracle, from managers on down, are constantly covering their behinds as they are afraid of getting canned.  Fear is the management tactic. 
-Organization is HUGE.  Finding correct people to help on deals is daunting.  Plus, because everyone is covering their backside all the time, they don't want to volunteer to help on a deal until it's 90% complete.  

All in all, I would not recommend Oracle as a sales rep.  If you like fighting more against your "colleagues" in sales, working in a very shady and dishonest organization, and dealing with crushing pressure every quarter, you may like this job.