Vantaggi
Smart, interesting colleagues. Opportunity to learn about excellent but very complex products. Great resume entry. Good insurance and stock buys options. Oracle used to have the philosophy, “Find all your smartest friends and get them to come work here.”, but I haven’t heard anyone say that in more than a decade.
Svantaggi
In the 15+ years I was there, most of the time we had headcount and salary freezes. I started as a trainee, but despite more than qualifying was never given promised non-trainee status and $25k raise because of constant freezes. Getting re-hired for an open position took eight months because of freezes. To get a promotion I had to leave the company for a few years. The team I came back to never saw raises, not even COLA, and our team was paid noticeably under professional averages. I had some great managers, very admirable, who also weren’t getting raises. Constant posturing and direction changes for Wall Street but not much substance support. Frequent layoffs so no one felt secure. Toward the end of my tenure they removed support for a large percentage of paying customers who didn’t want to move to the Cloud (often for very good reasons). Oracle will take all of your time if you let it - it’s up to you to draw life boundaries and hope your manager will support you. It used to be a much more diverse place, but once the post-1990’s layoffs started it’s become whiter and more male.