Oracle

Learned so much and met great people!

Oracle is a large company with many different business units and opportunities to excel in. If you need a change, just apply for another job within Oracle internally, and voilà, you have a new team and a new project to work on, which is easier than searching for a new job outside the company.

The company is involved in databases, Linux, middleware, cloud, etc., so there is a lot to learn and soak up while you're there as well.

Oracle is ruthless in looking to outsource resources outside the U.S. for cheaper labor.

I have seen globalization's ugly side at Oracle as more work goes overseas and leaves the U.S. It's unfortunate, but it leaves us in the U.S. to fight to stay competitive for our price.

The June "Hunger Games" are real! Let me explain: around June is the end of the fiscal year, and then projects and team efforts are assessed.

If your team is not performing up to par, or you personally, you may want to update your resume just in case you go to the chopping block. Just make sure you're getting good performance reviews :)

Oracle is a large company, and as expected, your work becomes more partitioned into islands or "silos." So, for example, the networking team does the load balancing and network design, the ops team deploys the servers and manages them, then the dev team creates the automation, etc. So if you like startups and how you can change hats from system admin to dev to network guy, you will miss having that option open at Oracle.

Thank you for the mentorship and great learning opportunities that I have had at Oracle!

Please keep training budgets up and encourage employees to take time to go to Oracle University or other training classes to reset their minds and update their skills while they are at it. Too many times I have wanted to go to training, and there was just no way to allocate time to do so with my job responsibilities and limited manager support.