Oracle

Smart people all around, if you actively look for them. Opportunity to move sideways into different teams and gain new expertise. Chance to grow and complete your education with some real-world skills and experience before going out to do something real on your own.

There is a hiring freeze, followed by spending cuts, followed by a hiring freeze followed by spending cuts. The hands of lower management are tied in their ability to select their own team. They are forced to work with what they have because they cannot replace employees who underperform. As a result, there are a lot of slackers all around who just coast on the fact that it is better for the manager to have some half-done work out of them than to have nobody to replace them.

Getting the tools required to do your job can be quite hard, and you have to know the right people. The procurement system is difficult. Getting a monitor above 17" or a non-refurbished computer is just hard to do. Replacing a 5-year-old computer with a 3-year-old refurbished one is not savings, but an insane waste of resources.

All this results in so much wasted time and inefficiency that Oracle could probably do the same job with half the people if they actually motivated them and gave them the right tools.

Give managers more leeway in replacing employees.

Approve specific headcount instead of each individual hire.

You pay for employee time orders of magnitude more than for tools of trade.