Oracle reviews

The downsides of working at Oracle are many, and their extremely high turnover rates reflect this. While upper level management seems to be aware that they have a serious problem maintaining a stable workforce, their inability to react quickly or effectively has resulted in little improvement to combat this issue. These issues may differ across departments, but I can speak to the problems of Oracle Direct, their inside sales organization. -Career development is extremely limited and structured, with the expectation that those in OD will either go into OD management or the Field. There are requirements on how long you need to stay in a specific role, regardless of achievement or potential, and they are longer for Class Ofs. Additionally, raises associated with promotions are severely limited, particularly if you joined Oracle through the Class Of program (most promotions are capped at $3000 for Class Ofs, and Class Ofs will be paid significantly less than their coworkers who came from outside the company no matter what role they move into). Limits on salary potential ultimately make staying at Oracle detrimental to your long term earnings, and will set you back compared to your colleagues who leave the company. If Oracle thinks the experience employees gain at the company is beneficial and important, the company needs to start paying loyal employees in a way that reflects the value of that experience. -OD Management is not an appealing next step for most employees, as it pays poorly and is more administrative than an opportunity to manage or motivate. It seems like those who continue to rise through the ranks of OD management are there not due to their ability, but because there was no one else. All the capable and talented managers I met took the position to bide their time until a specific Field position opened up or to leverage it to move into a management role at another company. -Uneven territory distribution further contributes to this problem, as reps with more field reps and better territories will do well regardless of effort or talent. This leads to reps getting promoted to management positions, even though they have never actually ran deal. It also heavily favors reps with heavy install territories- those who are mostly versed in up-sell and additional license opportunities, but who have little to no experience or understanding of how to work and compete in a net new territory. Oracle needs to promote more reps who might not have the strongest numbers, but have more experience actually running their own deals and working in a net new territory. Current management has little credibility and does a poor job motivating reps in the territories where Oracle stands to grow its business the most. -Ongoing training in OD is sparse and often not very helpful. There is a heavy emphasis on sales skills and methods (which all seem to revolve around cold calling, even as it proves to be ineffective and everyone else in the industry is moving away from it), while failing to provide adequate product training. I brought this up to management on multiple occasions, and received this exact response at least 3 times, "You don't need to know how the product works to sell it." This may have been true when OD was just meant to be up-selling modules and additional licenses into Oracle's install bases. It is not effective now that the company is moving into new market segments with their Cloud solution and is facing serious competition from other vendors. Reps should be able to have a real conversation about the benefits of Oracle's solution, as they lose credibility when they can only have high-level, 'fluff' conversation with prospects. -Finally, company culture is dismal. There is persistent frustration among employees stemming from the feeling that they are not valued by their employer. There is a serious lack of team building and management consistently uses a 'one size fits all' approach to handling their employees. Real dialogue about the issues that are causing Oracle's high turnover rate are rare if they happen at all.

- Your success is mostly out of your control and almost entirely dependent on your accounts/sales territory/manager: Reps who are working on deals and closing them "found" their deals because customers reached out to them saying they were interested in buying. Or because their field rep handed over the deal to them so the field doesn't have to do all the paperwork and approvals. Or because one or several of their accounts are adding a subsidiary and need to buy more licenses to stay compliant. Or because their territory has a lot of renewals and opportunities to do uplift or add more products to customers who just wanna buy more. Or because your manager has strong relationships at the field level and can get you included in deals and helps you with internal negotiations. You're effectively "rolling the dice" in this role every fiscal year. - Competition with field reps: if your field rep finds an opportunity in an account you share, he/she may leave you out of working that account altogether. The only way for you to work the account is if the field agrees to let you own the entire forecast of the deal, which likely they won't if a lot of money is on the line. If your deal is "too big", field management may take it away even if you found it. Why? Because they have the power of going onsite and leveraging the relationships they already have in those accounts (field reps don't get rotated every year as inside sales reps do). Most of the inside sales reps who do work with the field are simply pushing the paperwork for them. If you want to learn to actually sell, this role may not be for you. - Internal cannibalization: you may sell products that other reps at Oracle can also sell, which can get confusing/annoying for the customer. You may also sell a product that another pillar at Oracle also sells in another marketed version, so you'll be competing internally to see who gets to sell it to the customer. You also have a lot of reps from different pillars calling your same customer about different products, which creates a big mess. Imagine having business development, inside sales, and field reps from multiple lines of business at Oracle calling the same IT department in a company. - No work from home flexibility and average PTO plan: we brought this upon ourselves for having a relaxed culture, but work from home is almost nonexistent. The work from homes that do exist are "awarded" to reps during sales contests and are seldom. I don't personally see this as a con because having reps on the floor can be very useful when you have a question, but if you are used to having this flexibility than this job is not for you. Moreover, PTO is 14 days, and it is frowned upon to take it all at once. You may have to book them well in advance and spread them. - Hard to break away from established procedures or bureaucracy: obvious one for a big company, but still need to discuss this. Oracle has a lot of rules and procedures in place for you to even get a discount approved, or anything you need to help you win a deal versus a competitor or just to get the deal across the line. A lot of internal negotiations will delay or derail your deal. You will spend most of your day writing approvals to get a discount or some other requirement approved instead of prospecting or talking to customers. Then there is a lot of waiting. In addition, the rules for getting promoted are clearly laid out, but they can be unrealistic if your success is entirely dependent on things out of your control (see Con #1).