Post with 80 upvotes on quora

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I can only speak for Oracle engineering. I was a developer in the fusion middleware area working first on the on-premise tools and then on the Oracle cloud.

My experience at Oracle was absolutely horrible. I suspect that a lot of that is because I am female, honest and an extremely competent developer.

These qualities are not appreciated in Oracle development. Let’s take each of them in turn.

Female — There were no female managers or architects in the area I was in. The management is dominated by Indian males, who are part of a culture where women are supposed to be subservient to men, and it shows. I worked for multiple managers who all did the same tricks. They sabotaged demos that I did…. giving me wrong connection phone numbers, setting me up to demo on a computer with the wrong network settings so that the screen was slow to update, telling me to prepare slides for a 2 hour session and then telling me I only had an hour and acting surprised that I had done slides, when I had been told to do them, setting me up to demo with the thug of another manager who went first, then declared that I was demoing something other than what I was told I was demoing, so that I would look unprepared.

I was sabotaged in other ways, being restricted in what I could work on, being excluded from status meetings, having information withheld, given incorrect information, etc. Everything that could possibly be thought of.

While this was not being done by everyone, it was being done by enough men that I was unable to function well and was constantly on the defensive. While there were a couple of senior managers above me who were supporting me, my immediate managers did not and they had the ability to sabotage me so that I appeared to have problems that I did not.

There were a few women I came in contact with. Some, like me, honestly trying to do work. But, one woman in marketing saw it in her best interest to sabotage me with the guys and another woman, who was very “involved” with one manager, who also set me up at one point. So, you can’t even trust the other women at the company.

I had been a very successful developer at other companies before Oracle, receiving awards for my abilities. Oracle, has serious problems, and if you are female and a developer, you should get out of the company. There is life on the outside.

Honest - The managers are largely incompetent. They are intensely insecure and the slightest hint of you doing anything they do not directly tell you to do is a horrible offense. As far as I can tell, this is true of all the managers I came in contact with. They are paranoid, weird and truly messed up dysfunctional people living inside a truly paranoid and dysfunctional world. They band together with other managers temporarily to sabotage and attack other managers or employees they want to “get”. It appears to me that they enjoy doing this and their entire world is nothing more than coming up with schemes to take someone out or make them look bad.

By the end, I came to feel that I was working inside of some organized crime ring. The sabotage is endless. One manager cultivated thugs who would do whatever he wanted them to do to whoever. I unfortunately was given to this truly evil man to do whatever he liked to me. Oracle moves developers around like they are pieces of meat, and you will have no choice who you will work with. This manager made se-ual comments to me and was demeaning. He would not assign work to me and isolated me from other people in his group. He is truly sick and perverted man.

He later then worked a scam with another manager and a woman tied to the other manager to isolate me and get me to write a new application for them, which they intended to take credit for.

There is no place for “honest” at Oracle. If you aspire to be a “thug” and you like the idea of being part of the mafia, then Oracle is a great place for you. Honest will not get you anywhere at Oracle.

Extremely Competent Developer - If you are good at development and you want to do real work and build great products that customers will use, then Oracle is not the place for you. I was a very good developer. There have been times in the past where my ability to do the job has been doubted because I am female and I was always able to work past that and gain the trust of the men around me in terms of my competence.

But competence is not appreciated at Oracle. The managers I worked with only appreciated loyalty and in general the most loyal people to the managers are not able to do good work. They suck-up to the manager to protect their jobs. They harass and attack other developers and help the manager run scams on other people in the company.

I was promoted once while there, but I believe that was through the intervention of a senior manager above me. While I was supported there, the manager directly above me was sabotaging me at every step.

I would have left earlier, but I had reasons not to, so I simply tried to show what I could do, in the same way I had done at earlier companies. But none of that worked. The management was intent on harassing me regardless of my skills.

I have seen other competent developers, not women, harassed in many of the same ways. It appears to me that the management is afraid of competent developers. They are incompetent themselves and are intensely insecure and afraid of real conversations about products and code.

One thing to realize, is that none of this was obvious at the beginning, as the managers are quite good at covering up what they are doing until you are paying close attention. They make up excuses for things that sound plausible at the time, and you want to be a good employee and get along, so you accept them, and you just go on.

For quite a while I had an application that I worked on mostly by myself, and that passed a lot of the time.

Also, my competence allowed me to endure for a long time. My first manager would give me tough things to do, and I would do them. At first I thought he was doing that because he had confidence in me, but later I realized that he was giving me more and more difficult things to try to make me fail. Then, I believe he wanted to point to the incompetent woman and say, “See, she couldn’t do this work”. But that never happened, because I did everything I was assigned.

It’s a sick place. If you hate women, will do anything your manager says, including sabotaging other people, and particularly if you really enjoy attacking other people and playing dirty tricks on them…. Oracle is the place for you.

If you want to actually do real engineering work, any other place on earth is the place for you.

Get out, get out, get out. Don't help the rats, let them go down with the ship.

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Old, oooooooold out-of-date post. Oracle's current AI driven development is completely different now. Vibe coding requires few if any developers at all.

Bump

Absolute truth abt ORCL

I have this post saved on my phone to remember no mater how good or big oracle gets. It’s run by terrible human beings.

Yeah. Cesspool definitely fits here. So does “trust no one”. Liars everywhere. People plying dirty tricks on other people. What a sad place to be.

I knew horrible people who abused and used their own kids. Rats like this don't care about their children either. They are the type of parents who think about how they can "use" their children for their own purposes. They have no ability to put themselves in anyone else's place, even their own children. They have no ability to see what effect they have on their children either.

I knew a manager a while back who was a total scumbag, married a woman who couldn't care less about their kids. They treated their children horribly, like they weren't there unless they could think of some way to use one of them. One of their kids committed su----e when he got older. That's the kind of family these people have. They are completely dysfunctional.

When you know someone at work who is a total as----e, understand that when they are home they are always much worse. More happens in private, when no one can see what they are doing. They usually care about appearances. What can be hidden is usually a thousand times worse.

Agreed. I have seen many good and talented people come through these doors only to be treated like the OP. I’ve watched and listened to people who have been through countless therapists and also gone as far as checking in with psych issues over this place. I am no longer there but I can honestly say I witnessed some of the worst in human beings. I also have witnessed them same people being put in their place. It’s a very sad and depressing place to work. I can tell the impacts of everything have dropped Oracle to basically out of the ranks of being important. It’s strange though. Many times the worst offenders were people who had children. I never understood that cause I couldn’t see how they could treat people the way they did and have children. It was a thirst for power. When Marc Hurd died, I thought people would change. When Peyton ki---d himself, I figured people would change…what I see is employees are changing and just leaving for better places. Oracle is a terrible place run by terrible people with bottom of the barrel human waste for HR. Move on. I did.

What mgmt and HR do to people here boarders on the physical abuse people wield on principals. These folks have no idea the seed they are planting in people. It’s dangerous to be such a terrible human being to people. And I’ve to conclusion they will hire anyone in HR as long as you can read a few words of what a rat tells you to do.

Get a job in an IT shop where Oracle products are used. Then steer them clear of Oracle. Let them know why there products are cr-p.

I worked with a group that sabotaged their own code just so they could tell someone that the stupid code was my idea. It’s seriously unbelievable what is done in dev to Oracle products.

Tell as many customers as you can.

My experience is that HR is there to protect the manager with the biggest title.

HR are comprised of enemy spies and double agents, and not just at Oracle, either. While they might be one of the most flagrant, but they are not alone. Treat them accordingly in all dealings.

Sadly, I can relate to a lot this as a female developer (also working on Fusion middleware). I have been sabotaged plenty of times by male managers, but also, on occasion, by female coworkers (no female managers all the way up my management chain). Was given a project that they hope you fail on, just to prove that you are not competent. Also, the opposite: excluded from important projects so you can't grow your career. Even projects that I expressed interest in went to male coworkers. I have since directed my energy into preparing for code interviews, no more late nights. It has been quite liberating, honestly. A competent female developer who is not apologetic about it and does not kiss a-s is not something that is easily handled by Oracle management.

I am really surprised what HR is doing against these managers and directors ?

they are the biggest holes.

My experience is that HR is there to protect the manager with the biggest title. They do not care about the employees, they are not paid to care by the company, and they do not care personally what employees, as fellow human beings, are put through.

Never go to HR with a problem. They will not help, they will simply turn on you and support whatever lie the management is telling about you.

I am really surprised what HR is doing against these managers and directors ?
they are the biggest holes.

Treatment like this from companies like ORCL is one of the top reasons for the current phenomenon referred to as The Great Resignation. Nothing like a once in a 100 year pandemic to get people to understand how short life really is and what is truly important.

I am not surprised in the least. I have seen every last thing in this post with my own eyes, with one exception. I was in GIT for a time and a good percentage of the managers and execs were women, but it was just as bad. If you are good - very good - you are, in fact, a threat. You are a threat because they are scared witless that you can expose those frauds and posers for what they are and they can't have that. Just BEING means you are a threat and all threats must be marginalized or eliminated by any means necessary. And the women, I hate to say this, are the worst. It never happened to me, but I have seen female managers go on some of the most vile search and destroy missions to take out any perceived threats. Honestly if they spend that much effort in their own positions, they would have had no need to go on those despicable search and destroy missions. And for the record, I saw plenty of male managers do the same thing just not as viciously. Ironically, some of the managers that were the most "crusty" and "abrasive", I got along with and had an excellent relationship, mostly because I got them results and never shifted blame. The "nice" ones who patted me on the back were always the ones who held the kn--e. Ironically those "crusty" managers are long gone, probably because they were considered a bigger threat than I ever could be. I, too, was caught up in a purge. at first I was pretty p**sed off, Why me, a producer and not the fakers? Then a realized that the fakers are the ones who survive. I worked for a few more years and then retired. Now I am more busy than I was when I was actually working.

If you have a mind, avoid the place. If you are there, find something else to do, there are tons of jobs out there. If you need shore up your skills, you can find on-line training all over the place, some courses for as little as $20 a pop, most with a path to some kind of certification, like AWS. If you are inside 18 months to retirement, hang in there, make the time go as quickly as possible and then get out. Life is good with a fully funded IRA/401(k).

I just want to say that I’m so proud of you for that post. I know it must’ve taken a toll on you. I’m sorry that it went down like that, but I’m not surprised. I’m not in dev but I can see the sabotage at every level. This post will get a lot of upvotes….you know why? Because it’s 100% true and everyone knows it.

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