Compensation. This is the one biggest downside, and it has incredible impact. Let me describe it in bullet points:
- Whole corporation gets salary reviews and promotions once a year at the same time. There is no other way, no exceptions.
- The common average increase is 4%, regardless of the country (if you country has 10% inflation - too bad).
- Increase with promotion is 10% on average with 14% being the largest increase I heard of.
- The only way to get someone more money is to take them from someone else - performance of your team, organization or business unit does not matter, everyone gets salary increase budget of around 4%.
- Even if an employee shows outstanding performance, there is no way to compensate it. The only thing they can do is to get an offer from another company and try to negotiate wit hOracle a 80% matching offer (I kid you not, Oracle never does 100% match, it doesn't matter if you bring offer with 1000 USD over your current salary or 100, Oracle will match up to 80%)
- The salary reviews can be randomly cancelled for the year.
This year Oracle showed growth over what was planned showing the best results in its history, our business unit was above average corp-wide, our org was well above average in the business unit, and we still didn't get salary reviews and promotions. And there is no one you can address this to, because "the decision is made on the very top". But you will hear on every all hands meeting how great we are performing, what a wonderful talent we have and how valued the people are.
The best way to get a good salary is to quit and be hired again in 6 months or a year.
