Oracle Reviews in Ireland

Pros

Innovative, creative place of work, fast paced, serious about hiring Talent AND developing Talent.

Cons

Process driven - this can be frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate downwards better

Pros

Overall good name and reputation, excellent benefits system compared to standards in Ireland, excellent salary, big product portfolio, excellent sales training, especially Sandler's methodology, excellent canteen, good location in Dublin 3, very centrally located and easy to reach. free bus service provided, free help regarding house-hunting for new employees who re-located to Ireland by an excellent local Agent.
Also, excellent re-location package to Ireland, 2 flights home every year in the first two years, plus re-location cost for shipment of household goods.

Cons

apart from Oracle, the department Oracle Direct has a lot of issues, like unclear and mostly unfair process of how new hires pass on-boarding training exams, unprofessional management, sometimesunfortunately even with alcohol and drug problems, bureaucratic internal processes, rather quick outsoucing and re-location of inside sales jobs from Dublin to the south of Spain only due to funding from the spanish government. There is also a high turnover rate of employees at Oracle Direct.

Advice to Senior Management

I would have wished that Oracle Direct management would have been able to decide more by themselves and to respect employees more. I would also be good if Oracle Direct Management would undergo training on how to lead and respect employees. Clear professional development options from Oracle Direct Ireland or Spain to Oracle into other countries.

Pros

This is the place where tomorrow's technology gets made - especially now that Oracle owns Java via Sun Microsystems aquisition. The possibilities are infinite; ample opportunity for growth. There is a high degree of freedom in what you can do. I am currently a technical consultant; if I wanted to move to sales / pre-sales OR to product engineering, management would support the move. Great place to work for self motivated people.

Cons

Sometimes work pressure can be high implacting work-life balance. The salary that you join at is often the salary at which you quit 4 years later - after being annoyed that you did not get a slary raise in 4 years. So, if an Oracle recruiter tells you that you can get a good raise the next year, take it with a pinch of salt. If you quiz the management about the salary and bonus, the standard answer is "it is not in our hands". Apparently all salary/bonus decisions rest with the absoute top management sitting in Oracle HQ (Redwood Shores, CA, USA) - which means it is quite frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider a pay increase for consultants in Europe. Quite a few good consultants have left already, more will leave unless the pay situation is not fixed soon. It is not good when a consuntant has gotten 2 promotions in 4 years causing the responsibilities and complexity of work delivered to be doubled, but with no increase in pay.

Pros

-Build a network (you will have to stay a while in order to do so)
-Get a well-known logo for your CV

Cons

-You will not be paid market rate. Ever.
-A significant number of managers are not exceedingly competent or trustworthy.
-Business processes and IT systems will have you tear your hair out.
-The job description you were shown when signing your contract may not correspond to what you will be required to do.
-The atmosphere is highly political, your promotion, your well-being and your territory next year will be determined by how keen you are to suck-up and play the game.
-The company almost exclusively offers paper-based promotions.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your hires fairly. Demand more (experience, education, effort) from managers, rather than from your hires (nobody needs an MBA to be a successful BDC). Simplify and streamline processes, de-clutter, buy decent end-user hardware. Be fair and up-front with job descriptions during the hiring process. Include merit, effort and potential in reviews instead of box-ticking and political aspects. Offer real promotions. By this I mean more €s as opposed to a job title including "...level II"

Pros

Benefits Package.
Self-Service company, where you are given 99% of the responsibility, which is great for self-motivators.
Products are great, they actually help customers and that gives satisfaction when selling.
Colleagues are very helpful and friendly. I've made a few good friends here...

Cons

Internal systems are not optimal, e.g. too many different programs and they are slow (employee software).
Direct Management completely useless.
Promotions based on how much you can "brown-nose" and not actual talent.
No real recognition on a job well done - frequent comments to doing a good job are "what other deals you got coming in?"
The amount of forecasting is useless and time consuming. End of quarters, managers panic and don't care about why you are not closing deals. They don't listen, they only care about saving their own backside towards their management.
If you are good at selling yourself to the company, they offer a fair/good salary. However, you will have to look far to see a pay raise, even as you advance in your career.
The company has too many policies and processes. Everything takes forever, and if you are not a patient individual, you will struggle.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to listen. You might just learn something...
Don't say anything until you know for sure...

Pros

You do not have to work very hard if you would prefer not to.

Cons

effort is not rewarded justly

Pros

Lots of freedom once they see you can handle it; great collaboration with collegues worldwide; very good career opportunities within different disciplines and locations worldwide

Cons

High pressure on getting to ()sometimes unatainable) targets. long working hours and always the risk that, due to cutoiffs, your field runs with the deal !!

Advice to Senior Management

Keep targets attainable and in reach. try top keep the ood performers by being able to adjust their pay package during the year.

Pros

- opportunities to build a network and learn to know a lot of companies
- decent salary package and benefits
- global player

Cons

- global player also means a lot of administrative hassle
- fast turnover of staff
- cost of living in Dublin

Advice to Senior Management

better salary progression will keep talented people
too much silo-based: HW/Apps/Tech rather combine these and divide in teams by country
introduce a single point of contact for clients

Pros

Good Basic
If you join the company at the right level you can have the possibility to make a lot of money.
Good benefits package

Cons

Lack of transparency in the decisions to promote made by management which were clearly made on your ability to be liked by the management team and not performance in current role.

Some managers not even allowed the freedom to make their own hiring decisions which led to a bad environment

The title of manager given too freely many of the managers I personally worked with were really team leaders with the title of manager, this is also true of Directors really being managers.

Total lack of ability on the managers part to be transparent about targets. leave it ambiguous and it is easy to mislead the reps and promote the people they like without question.

People with no people skills being promoted to management despite being a destructive influence.

There seemed to be an agenda in the company that if they could not fire you for a really good reason, they would promote you to management and move you around leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.

HR never seemed to want to deal with the hard cases unless it they had no other choice and their were completely clear grounds for disciplinary action like exposing yourself in the office. This is true of management also PLUS this had the unfortunate consequence of having a detrimental effect on the good members of staff that were left to deal with others ineptitude.

All in all this is about Oracle Dublin I have no knowledge that this happens anywhere else.

It was always clear in the month previous that someone was going to be promoted as they would win a prize for just doing the basics of their job and this would be made a big deal of by awarding prizes etc
At that point everyone else knew that the prizewinner was getting promoted despite having spent the 6 months previous not coming close to their targets.

This company is all about who you know, not how good you are at your job or how hard you work, I saw this on numerous occasions during my three years where Fantastic staff were lost at all levels from sales reps to management as they saw soooo many unfair practices and were overlooked for promotion in favor of someone else clearly less capable.

Its all about self promotion so if you are doing what you were employed to do you should be telling everyone that will listen that you are doing it and e-mailing the management team.

But remember anything can be ignored if your face does not fit.

I was told by one manager that sometimes people can be too good at their current job to be promoted..
And that was the best advice I had received in my time with the company.

Be careful choose a manager that is liked and make them look good no matter what and don't be afraid to suck up and back slap.

Advice to Senior Management

They clearly think they are taking the company in the right direction by hiring people who talk a good game and turn up at the right social events.

Too many people in the company not doing an awful lot of work. Look around and push the employees.

People are constantly piggybacking on other peoples success.

I do feel if the management / directors could find managers that were interested in doing their job and not just in work to get promoted themselves, that they could get better results from the people in the organization.

Pros

Oportunity to work in very interesting bleeding edge technology. Great learning potential from other employees. Very nice and respectful way of treating employees.

Cons

Pay could be better. Human resources information isn't as available as it should be. Employees aren't treated the same way across the globe.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership has a clear sense of direction which is great for team motivation. More information should be passed down though.