When I left the company a little over a year ago it was really bad. I've been reading the posts here this morning and it doesn't seem like much has changed since then. Am I wrong?
I'm mostly asking because I hope that people I used to work with are in a better position then when I left. Some of the best folks I met work at Oracle and all of them deserve much better than they are (or were) getting.
Ever since Oracle acquired Sun, the IT management has been poor. I think this is part of the Oracle culture since I'm seeing so many posts from other orgs decrying their ineffective management. IT management kept promoting cronies indiscriminately, and now they're faced with 30 upper managers in a group of 130 people. They need to cut the dead weight directors, senior managers and managers before they lay off the ICs who actually do the work. But that just isn't Oracle's style.
@5rwl+15EtsNh6: "asking on a layoff board how people feel about morale isn't going to give you an accurate picture."
It actually does.
asking on a layoff board how people feel about morale isn't going to give you an accurate picture.
Love working at Oracle because I don't care about Oracle at all. Right now the work / life balance is great. I work to live, gave up living to work years ago. Its all a state of mind.
The layoffs will continue. Nothing has changed. Anyone who has been told there will be no more layoffs is being lied to. No company can guarantee anything like that.
Oracle is a dump. Get out any way you can.
Oracle culture, morale = narcissism
My days at Oracle were pretty miserable. I stayed after my employer was acquired, mostly because I believed in the product and my team was tight and effective. I didn’t believe all the hype about Oracle’s poor reputation for customer support, employee satisfaction. I was naive. It was all 100% true. Should have known that when the Sr tech resources and Engineering left either before the acq or within a year after.
I know I should be grateful that I have a job and reading some comments above have changed my mindset just right now. Morale is very low in my GBU. The layer of mgmt in my GBU is utterly fat and useless. Many should be let go. No career progression or development for anyone. Even if you’re the best at your job. I’ve been here 13 years and never been happy and maybe that’s more on me, who knows. I put on the happy face but I’ve never heard anyone in my GBU say they like what they do or they like where they work. Like some have said, it’s a job and I guess if I can change my mindset I can accept that my life won’t be remembered by what I did at oracle.
It's not all that wonderful in engineering. It's harder to get IT issues fixed as a large part of the IT staff has been eliminated since the cloud doesn't require any management (yeah, right). Hardware (vaporware, aka cloud) resources are unavailable, and legacy systems that break aren't fixed or replaced. Compensation has gone drastically down hill over the past decade: raises are pathetic or non-existent, stock grants are focused more and more on fewer and fewer people, bonuses (what's that?) are pretty much gone. (Unless of course you happen to be SC, who cashed in a QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS IN OPTIONS the week there were significant layoffs.)
A LOT better since MH departed.
I envy those that love what they do for a living. In most cases you spend more time on the job then with family. After the recent layoffs we’ve been told there will not be a second wave of layoffs. If you made through this one your here to stay. Oracle will be here, no matter what. The people you work with/for really make the difference. I’m lucky enough to have really good immediate management. We all need to remember that there is more to life than just work. At the end, the headstone will not read “Here lies a great Oracle employee”.
Oracle is a good place to work at, yes we all know that its frustrated to work sometimes with old and boring techs which not promote your career (can also take you back), but most of us having a good work life balance which I think its extremely important and make your personal life much better.
We all work from home... morale is great! What more could you ask for?
To be honest, I was miserable a couple of months ago. Now I’m happy as can be. It’s about a mindset... learned to accept the ambiguity of job security and stay humble. I may not LOVE my job, but I’m still getting paid and that’s more than most.