I wouldnt be able to say why anyone would want to be working at oracle these days. What compelling reason does oracle even have to attract talent? (Im not being snide, seeious questions)
According to rumor--lots and lots of cash.
Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
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Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number 6 on the Forbes list of software companies, with a market cap of 176 billion. Their main product is very heavily used by a heck of a lot of companies. It's just a bit messy and configuration-intensive, so it doesn't get a lot of respect among the techerati. A software engineer looking for work could do a lot worse.
None of that means they make great products. Have you ever dealt with their support or engineers? Ugh.
Not all of us are in a position to work only on great products.
My impression of Oracle products is that they are frustrating to work with, feature-rich rather than elegant. They can work well, but take a lot of configuring and tuning.
The ex-Oracle folks I've worked with have been a mixed bag. Their reports about working for Oracle have also been mixed, skewing toward the bad. I suspect the company is basically run by sales, not engineering, certainly not customer support.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#43Who is actually spending money on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Is it just organisations who are too deep into the Oracle ecosystem to go anywhere else?
high paying multi million dollar companies https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/iaas/customers
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#44I wouldnt be able to say why anyone would want to be working at oracle these days. What compelling reason does oracle even have to attract talent? (Im not being snide, seeious questions)
I currently work for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; ex AWS for Commerce Platform and Identity organizations. Let me tell you, OCI has a group of brilliant, industry mature developers and people. I've been working here for 2 years, and I've never been happier before. This org is nothing like Oracle Corp; started by ex-AWS/MSFT people, the environment feels just like those companies + a well funded start-up hype.
And the best thing, no assholes and backstabbing like in AWS. :)
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#45A close family member of mine worked for Oracle as a mechanical engineer for 6 years. He had survived many rounds of layoffs at Sun before it was acquired by Oracle and at StorageTek before it was acquired by Sun.
He described a depressing corporate culture at Oracle with a seemingly infinite number of middle managers. One of his co-workers spent most of his time in the office managing his real estate business. Larry Ellison is universally hated by the employees. The company is full of academically talented but practically useless people because Oracle will only give interviews to people with a degree from their small list of Ivy-tier universities.
Not long ago he retired and left Oracle. As a result of his experience there I'm now of the opinion that these older tech companies frankly can't die fast enough.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new cloud infrastructure group is kind of hidden gem. Its very different than the rest of Oracle. It started in Seattle about 4 years ago and is like 40% ex Amazon and 40% ex Microsoft. They also pay very well, because Oracle doesn't have a great reputation. The work is good, with a TON of room for growth and leadership. The goal is ambitious (take on the big players) and well funded. The people are good. Worklif…
Why do you think Oracle has a chance at cloud? Honest question. Their competition at the low end is Google, which doesn’t bode great on quality, and with AWS and Azure they’re fighting on quality and against strong enterprise groups. Not sure who would predict that would go well, but it’s a big market and I suppose they have to try. I’ve seen Oracle cloud jobs and admittedly balked, no bone to pick with them but don’…
> Why do you think Oracle has a chance at cloud? Honest question.
Because Oracle still has an extremely large customer base, and an exceptionally good and extensive sales organisation that's really good at selling stuff to people.
The enterprise market is still not that well tapped by existing cloud providers. Look at the kinds of sales figures enterprise serving companies pull in, and consider that only a smaller fraction of them have moved to the cloud.
Anecdote: When OCI was announced ("Oracle Bare Metal Cloud") about 2 1/2 years ago, the staff who were there launching it at the Oracle conference had CIOs and the like coming up to them, even then, saying "So what really is this 'cloud' thing"
> I’ve seen Oracle cloud jobs and admittedly balked, no bone to pick with them but don’t see a bright future.
Succeed or fail, it's still interesting work. It pays well. Flexible on hours. Good co-workers, good sense of direction. Lots of interesting problems to solve. None of the bullshit "work everyone to the bone" that I kept seeing in AWS. Good opportunities to make a difference.
In all honesty, I was burned out at AWS and thought "Well.. I've put up with absolute hell in prior tech jobs, and have built up a reasonable resume. I can always move on if it turns out to be hell". My expectations were pretty low. I knew the director I was going to be working for, having worked with him in AWS, and knew he actually gave a damn about operations. It turns out to have been one of the better career decisions I've made. Which is definitely not anything I would have associated with a job working for Oracle.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#47I was one of the people being let go in this round. I moved to Seattle and joined OCI as a Senior Engineer at the end of Jan 2019.
Yesterday when I came to the office and was doing my work at 9:00 AM, the whole team about 20 people were called by VP to have a meeting at 10:00 AM. He said the whole team got terminated. We had to turn in the computer by 12:00 PM and leave the office by 3:00 PM. There was no buffer time at all.
Me: "Do I have to pay back sign on bonus and relocation? I've been here for less than 2 months."
VP: "You were supposed to, but I pushed it back to the management. Now you are forgiven. That's a very good question."
Me: ......................&^#^(%#&)@!
Today mark as my first out-of-employment day. I am on H-1B, which is an even worse situation. I'll need to find a new job ASAP :(
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#48I worked (mercifully briefly) as a sales engineer for the cloud platform. I left because it seemed my job was primarily built around lying to customers about what the product could do and most of what we were selling was half baked and frankly broken. Like "massive java monolith with buried buried buried menus to get anything done, and then it still breaks" broken. If you're still using Oracle products in 2019 you're probably either corrupt, incompetent, or probably both.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#49Here's a useless anecdote: I was fired from Oracle a couple years back, and it was done as pleasantly as one could expect. It completely depends on who's running your department. I was in storage testing. My direct manager had mediocre people skills, but the director is a superb manager in all respects, and she was the one who pulled the trigger in a face-to-face meeting with me. She made it as clean and honest as it…
> I'm not a huge fan of the company, but I wouldn't hesitate to work for her again.
This. I always find myself loyal not to the company but to my (extended) team.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#50I was one of the people being let go in this round. I moved to Seattle and joined OCI as a Senior Engineer at the end of Jan 2019. Yesterday when I came to the office and was doing my work at 9:00 AM, the whole team about 20 people were called by VP to have a meeting at 10:00 AM. He said the whole team got terminated. We had to turn in the computer by 12:00 PM and leave the office by 3:00 PM. There was no buffer time…
The VP also mentioned they were thinking about the plan in Jan.
So why the hell did you hire me then? I joined at the end of Jan.