Oracle

The pay was excellent, and nearly all of the people I worked with were far above average. There was enough flexibility inside OCI to sidestep the most annoying parts of the larger Oracle culture.

The usual "unlimited" vacation "scam", but also going from "people take about 8 weeks a year" during the interview process to "it will seriously impact your ratings if you take more than 4 weeks, and I'll be counting the days" during work.

Lots of talk about their corporate values, but little follow-through, especially on going back to fix things later. Frequent changes of direction made it very frustrating. They are really catering to some rather unsavoury customers, which made me feel like I needed to take a shower after work. Far too much worshipping at the altar of Enterprise Scrum.

Moving to WFH was great, except then there was a large, unstated expectation that people were available for work at all hours, 24/365.

A lot of information was passed by word-of-mouth; no consistent practices across teams. And when tools were developed to solve common problems, they were very often a forced "this-fits-all". "Here is the operational model, and now you need to force your product into this mold."

Value your workers.