Oracle

The pay is good, the office is cool, and it's right next to a lot of great lunch spots.

First off, this job has made me question whether I even want to be a software engineer anymore.

This WAS a fantastic place to work when I started. Since then, it has just gone steadily downhill. When I started, the team I worked with was great: smart, motivated people who would band together to solve very exciting and complex engineering problems.

When I started, I got the feeling that this was not the typical lean management type shop and that managers really wanted to grow a strong team. They were focused on developer experience, work-life balance, and created an exciting environment with lots of good work to go around.

Today, as I write this review, I am counting down the days until my next round of vesting so I can get out of this place like a bat out of hell.

An engineer on my team recently expressed concerns about the ops burden and an almost complete inability to work on anything other than ops and putting out fires. The response from management was, in not so many words, "tough sh!t." The people who have been hired recently have been producing work of a quality so low that I honestly am embarrassed to call them my co-workers. The new projects coming down the pipe are depressing, and even those are getting put on hold because we constantly have to put out fires. My manager has been relegated to nothing more than a bearer of bad news, and that is a shame because he is honestly one of the best people I've ever worked with and someone I have grown to consider a good friend. The code review process that used to be thorough, helpful, and very effective is consistently being circumvented by cliques of low-quality developers who work completely within their own circles. The result is code quality so low that I'm consistently struggling to resist the urge to toss my computer out the window. I recently saw a conversation with one of our veteran engineers who was trying to wrap his mind around a seemingly poor design decision, to which his only response was to simply leave the chat group. I can only assume this was because he would have otherwise been unable to keep it professional. And our good engineers are so burnt out that they just don't have the energy to try and correct these problems.

And not least of all, the people who seem to be getting promoted are the people who focus on getting promoted and not on doing a good job (with a few exceptions). These are the people who are more focused on contributing to their own success rather than contributing to the success of the organization. And that is a shame.

And also, COVID-19 problems negate any of the pros related to the office and its location.

All in all, my recommendation is: don't get sucked in. They may try to sell you on some of the good qualities and core values that we used to have, but in reality, OCI has turned into another mediocre big development shop. If you're a good engineer looking to solve challenging problems, this is not the place for you. If you want to make money and climb the corporate ladder, then by all means, apply.

You can't build a team based on numbers. It isn't always about efficiency, and you have to build a team based on people. The focus on efficiency and the obvious lack of regard for the engineers (which I honestly don't think you realize is so obvious, and is laughable) is opening the floodgates. I expect that any good engineer is planning on getting out as soon as they've collected their next round of shares. And I know of many engineers who I have spoken with personally that are planning on leaving as soon as their next round of vesting. I spoke to one engineer who is mere months away from collecting his next round of shares, but doesn't even know if he'll be able to hold out.

I'm pretty sure it's too late. I think you've already screwed the pooch. But, if you haven't, I suggest dramatically changing the way things are run and seriously listening to people's concerns rather than sending the suggestion box directly to the shredder. But like I said, with the code quality dropping so low so fast, I'm pretty sure there is no hope.