Oracle Reviews in Australia

Pros

There are plenty of highly experienced people.
Possible to move from one job or position to another.
Always loads of new things to learn.

Cons

Working cross LOBs is frustrating
An employee is one amongst thousands
Middle management has little decision power
Driven by revenue generation and margin

Pros

great people who are excellent at what they do
great benefits relating to healthcare especially
flexible work arrangements
not micromanaged

Cons

very procedural
siloed
difficult to know where to get answers
inflexible regarding customers and how they are treated
not good at handling acquisitions

Advice to Senior Management

Better communication with your staff
360 degree reviews needed
less favouritism
less boys club mentality
need to let staff make more decisions with more flexibility

Pros

Few intelligent and hard working consultants and managers are keeping the Melbourne Practice afloat.

Cons

There are too many politicians and goofers in Oracle who have been there for long and only god knows how they are managing to hold on to their jobs when the deserving and billable consultants are being laid off by jerk Practice Directors.

Sr. Management in Sydney and Singapore are aloof of what the hell is happening on ground in Melbourne. All they care about is their freaking Gross Margin. NO Work Life balance, Mon-Fri, Sat, Sun are the same. No respect for time as you would get calls at odd hours with unrealisitc deadlines and expectations. They expect you to have no spouse or kids and devote all your time to Larry's empire in contributing to their gross margin.

No salary hikes in 2-3 years due to the (ha ha ha ...G F..ing C; Global Financial Crisis) yet Oracle has managed to post increasing profits in past 2-3 years.

Advice to Senior Management

Wake up and smell the coffee. The good consultants and Project Managers in Melbourne were laid off by an incompetent Practice Director. I don't need to be telling you this but he brought no new business to the company and instead demoralized the team to such an extent that many good people left and many more were fired to show low operating costs by this jerk P.D.

Melbourne consulting practice is dead.

Pros

Can-Do Attitude, Wealth of information, Anything is possible, Life is not boring with all the acquisitions, Some flexibitily

Cons

Management is not empowered, Still in it's infancy when it comes to Business Consulting and Enterprise Architecture

Advice to Senior Management

Look after your people. Action speaks louder than long-term promises

Pros

Oracle is a really good company to work for...because you really have a lot of rope to go out and achieve what you have been hired to achieve

Cons

Senior Management, especially in the APAC office, is pathetic. Most wouldnt know how to manage themselves, let alone the large teams they have to.
The worst Management comes from India and China.

Advice to Senior Management

Let Management go back to people who know how to manage...not upstart managers from India and China.

Pros

There is nothing quite like being on the inside. Access to uncensored bug and Service Request information, development sites and product development personnel, opportunities to participate in beta tests. Growth through acquisition means there are new potential areas to explore all the time, and what's best is that they come to you, and naturally are best of breed.

Some of the brightest and hardest working people that I've ever come across work at Oracle.

Cons

It's a behemoth. There's a desk manual but each global centre tends to do things its own way. Everything is driven by statistics and we all know about lies, lies, and more statistics. Immediate management tend to be drawn from the workers themselves, and as such often don't get the respect that management deserves; they are also stuck between a rock and a hard place - the people they manage were once peers and friends, but now they have to do The Management Thing and that's not easy if it means reprimanding a buddy. And guess what ... the buddies know it.

Oracle is also a place where the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Make some noise, get some attention. Don't expect to get recognised for your brilliance alone.

Some of the thickest and laziest people that I've ever come across work at Oracle.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a look at how each centre operates. Are the "low cost" centres really all that valuable? Sure the people are cheap, but does employing an army of foot soldiers equate to a few highly skilled commandos??

Pros

Orace has great opportunities for carrer advancement.

The ability to work anywhere in the world is another advantage when working for a global organisation.

Oracle invests a lot of time and effort in training its employees, both from internal resources as well as externally, through sales training methodologies to management training.

Oracle do take their involvement with Corporate Social Responsibility fairly seriously and encourages staff to be involved as much as possible, this affords you the opportunity to help out in the community.

Cons

The inability of management to provide the tools required by the staff to to their jobs is a major hinderence when working at Oracle.

Due to the differring reporting lines and varying agendas of each business unit, it's very difficult to get a holistic pictur eof what Oracle are ever doing with respect to a specific client at any one point in time.

Advice to Senior Management

Find out what we need to do our jobs, then provide us with the best possible tools to do them

Pros

Easy money, good place to hide until retirement!

Cons

Too big, too slow, truly awful internal systems and software. For instance I worked abroad and had to submit all timesheets and expenses twice. Once for my home country and once for the 'billing' country. Everything outsourced to India, I accidentally submitted a timesheet twice, to get it reversed I had to get 7 approvals and supply the guy in india with the row_ids of the timesheets to delete directly on the database.

Advice to Senior Management

Shake some life into this cash rich dinosaur.

Pros

Some good technology acquisitions, although its not easy to see if or how they will be integrated.

Cons

Very focused on the Database. Culturally finds it difficult to accept that the sales process is very different form Database and addons, to most of what they have acquired in the middleware or application tiers.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to be more focused on your people instead of quarterly results. Need to understand the clients' business needs instead of trying to maximise license revenue, or using the "license police".