Great people and compensation, but outdated management culture - Principal Software Engineer Oracle Employee Review

1.0
Jan 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fully remote work (from Madrid, Spain). Competitive salary and solid benefits. Strong engineering team: smart, collaborative, and supportive colleagues. Good technical talent across the organization.

Cons

Very outdated management style with heavy micromanagement. Strong blame culture when things go wrong, instead of focusing on solutions. Unrealistic deadlines leading to extreme workloads: people doing 200+ overtime hours per month for several consecutive months. In an all-hands meeting, the VP of Software — fully aware of the excessive overtime — asked employees to “stop walking their dogs” during work hours and announced the creation of mandatory virtual rooms where teams had to stay connected while someone monitored that they were actually working. Constantly changing scope and very poor requirements definition. On-call system was poorly handled: overtime was not paid, only “time off in lieu” when convenient for the company. No corporate phone was provided; employees were expected to give their personal phone numbers to receive alerts.

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5.0
May 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great WLB and team culture

Cons

Lots of layoffs which hurts employee morale

4.0
Oct 21, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Every group/division can be different in how they treat their employees, but I'd say overall there is very good atmosphere of trust and fairness. There is a strong focus on education, and they reimburse for outside classes taken (Up to 5k/year I think). Benefits are good, and I'd say quite competitive in the market. Good 401K matching (they'll contribute a max of 3% of your 6% or greater). Free drinks in the breakroom. Flexibility to work from home at times. (If you live 50+ miles away from an office you can work full-time from home...policy).

Cons

They don't try to make the workplace anything special (maybe a pool table and arcade game are cliche or gimmicky?). In the 10 years I've worked there, they've given 2 measly %1 cost of living raises (this is the same with most everyone I've spoken to, some don't get any raises). You will not get a substantial raise ever, unless you leave then get rehired on (they will not match offers, better to leave). New employees that you train will make 10 - 20K more than you several years after you hire on (not just me, they do this to all tenured employees). They will give these untrained, less experienced people higher titles (again this is done to everyone not just me). You learn pretty quickly that you're dispensable. The company has billions in cash and they don't re-invest in their employees, just in acquiring new companies and hiring new people that know nothing that you get to train.

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