Left the company but my review is getting a lot of likes..
Pros
Money, work life balance, great "part-time" job, benefits.
Cons
Cons
Thanks for taking the time to read my review. I have been with Oracle for over a decade. I write this to give potential candidates a real look into the company. Someone who has been with the company 12-24 months may not have a very wide view since you are required to stay in a position for a year and people rarely leave their area. I have worked in several different areas in my time at the company. I came on as part of an acquisition. You will see folks who give good ratings and approve of the CEO, but it’s really good to check to see how long they’ve been there as Oracle will not show all their cards up front. That typically doesn’t happen until you’re in there a few years. Good Luck!
Training & Development – In my almost 20 years here, I have never witnessed any dedicated employee development. Part of management's job is to develop their employees, but that is completely non-existent. In the Global Business Units (GBU's) it's even worse. Oracle's latest “employee development” program literally has employees filling out word docs about their goals and such. Basically what people did in 1999. As for actual training, for the courses someone might need to improve in their jobs or become more skills, Oracle will charge you thousands of dollars to take them. In my years here, I had one training course that my unit paid for. With the advent of the cloud, you are able to get access to subscription learning. These are setup as videos for the most part, so you're just watching powerpoint slides go by and once you're done, there's no real reinforcement. In my time here I have not watched one person be developed from a hire to employee to management. Usually in a decade you would have one or two examples of progression.
Salaries & Raises – I know of a person who was recently asked to transfer teams, but they originally thought it was a promotion and then told it was not. The person transferred teams and then was asked to apply for the position. The departments are basically doing anything underhanded they can to save money and they do not care if people leave. People are leaving my unit in droves. There is a ton of managers who are just flat out leading people on. And as many have mentioned here, the lowest in the industry. If you are considering this company as a place of employment, negotiate as high as you can. In our unit of thousands of people, there have been people who have not even gotten a cost of living raise in 5-10 years. Managers, as well as directors, are pretty spineless and won’t stick up for anyone. I have watched people get lied to about money, I have watched colleagues be sold one job and think they were getting their “level” raise only for the manager to remove the job and create another job that was a lateral move. You are around some really scummy low down people. This is not like the big and successful tech companies. This is basically the lowest end of tech. With that being said, you need to do something remarkable to get any type of raise. You need to really beat everyone on your team and basically be perfect for 12 months. And even then, quite the stretch. And they’ll tell you, “that’s all we could get from management. Be happy you got anything at all.” I have heard directly from someone who was protected that when they contacted HR about the “promotion” that actually had them making less money, the HR person said, “you should just be happy you got a promotion.” Management that are friends with other managers will also have an impact on those things. I have gotten raises in my time here, but with salaries being so low, it's not a lot. As mentioned before, if you get in via an acquisition, you could get a nice bump from what you were making, but that's up for negotiation between Oracle and the old company.
Work-Life Balance – The single reason I have heard anyone stays here is because they can work from home and get their work done in 4-5 hours a day. That's really the biggest benefit of the company and don't think anyone would argue.
Management – Lead with talent and qualifications and not who your buddy was at a partner/acquisition/high school/pre school. There are many thick and useless layers of management. Many of them with very little technology and or real IT experience. When Oracle acquires smaller companies, if they are under the GBU framework, the company can basically say, a janitor is now a Senior Director and no questions are asked. I have watched scores of people come in that way and just leapfrog over people who have been in the unit for decades. It's even more embarrassing when the people who have been there basically know 10 times more about everything and the new member of management just sits around being social and not really contributing. I've also never seen the same members of management sit in the same exact positions for decades. These managers stay in office longer than presidents. Their attitudes are smug and many are downright hated by their team members. The thing is, you work in a tech company and you should know the buzz words or at least know what they mean. I have been in meetings where a director actually said to someone two levels below them that, “that's not their job to know how to do this or that...that's on you to know...” At Oracle, as opposed to many other companies I have worked at, to be in management, you do not need to have been good at any one particular job or the jobs of your team. It is truly amazing. My thought is they stay because no companies really want them.
The Cloud – applications on the cloud were deployed with very little strategy or education to the employees. They will never catch the other tech companies that are staffed with better talent and management. Management wants to tout the cloud as being a success, but it's basically because customers are basically strong-armed into going to it and they are flat out lied to when speaking about the overall performance of the cloud. There is also a mentality among management and long time employees that Oracle is better than Amazon. Anyone who knows the tech sector right now, knows that's laughable. At Oracle, they can't even speak about their competition because they're getting beaten so bad. What's worse is that there are smaller companies that are now coming up that have better products, better platforms, cheaper price and less problems.
Advice to Management
- Start being moral and ethical. It's 2021 and social media is huge. There are forums that are filled with anonymous reviews of Oracle and even people by name who work there. Remember your legacy are your people.
- - Turnover all levels of management. Managers should not be in the same positions for decades as it gives a perception of stagnation. If they can't do the job of the people they manage, they don't deserve to be manager.
- - Educate sales people on what they're actually selling prior to letting them sell. Make sales aware of what other groups are doing.
- - Develop and promote the people who strive to learn and grow instead of people who come in the back door who haven't proven themselves to anyone.
- - Going to have to increase salaries to keep top talent to compete with the real winners in tech space.
- - Things need to change!!