Oracle reviews

* Hurd/Safra are not technologists; they are financial engineers. No vision. * Too many disparate product teams, sales teams, etc... Most products are sold as "best of breed" without integration. * Best of breed is dated. Most of the applications driving the company from the $8b to $40b transformation (2005-2010) are no longer relevant. * Hurd has brought the HP/NCR culture of Doubling everyone's quota/shrinking everyone's quota = margin expansion. * Hurd has brought out the cost cutting around R&D too. * Most of the top talent leave within a few years after their company is acquired. * Siebel folks went to Salesforce, Peoplesoft folks went to Workday, Oracle Tech folks went to MongoDB, Retek folks went to Infor, Hyperion folks went to Annaplan. * No camaraderie; literally 3 companies all the way up to Larry (GBUs, ERP and Technology). * No culture anymore. Company has lost both it's vision and it's ability to execute.

In the hiring process, Oracle managers will dangle a carrot of a good compensation package. However, this will never materialize: when a sales rep leaves, the best accounts from that territory are re-assigned to long tenured sales representatives. So there are two classes of sales reps--those who have been around ten years or more and consistently benefit from this re-shuffling of accounts and the rest of the reps who are themselves re-shuffled every couple of years. If you are currently in the hiring process, be aware that you will be assigned the worst accounts that this particular VP has in his account set. These are historically bad accounts that haven't purchased from Oracle in years. Oracle has structured territories and product portfolios to encourage the maximum competition between reps. There are overlapping territories and overlapping product sets between sales reps from different departments. What this means is that you'll have to constantly fight off other reps who would steal your deals from under you. Always watch your back. There is a high level of management overhead. You'll have to report progress on deals to a half a dozen different managers from different LOBs. Humiliation is a common tactic for motivation--reps are thrown under the bus constantly, and always in front of as big an audience as possible. Managers encourage rivalries among the reps, and duplicitousness internally and with clients. You'll spend days (literally) writing requests for discounts for every deal. Oracle also relies on the CRM that they sell. It's slow and really difficult to use. Not a great endorsement for any reps trying to sell it. There are no stones to overturn for prospecting with Oracle. Oracle is so well known that IT departments are already well educated on all Oracle products.