Thoughts on yearly self review. Is it pointless? We have been told no raises again, so is it to continue to weed employees out. Not new to Oracle 13 years some great, some awful. Just trying to pay my bills while looking for something new.. Peace and love.
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@10z Don't forget to add that you are leveraging AI in your job role .... to your "achievements".
However, don't expect a pay raise.
@dy My experience at O and other employers is that those not getting raises are not even given the courtesy of being told so. You get your review/focal and unless it is stellar nothing happens (and sometimes not even then). Not only no raise, but they don't even bother to tell you that you aren't getting one. No excuses are offered.
At least Oracle introduced AI that can BS better than anything I could come up with. And if there was ever a reason to give yourself an outstanding rating this is it. Someone at Oracle other than yourself thought you were better than everyone who was laid off.
To the 30–40 Age Group: You Are Still in the Game
If you are in the 30 to 40 age bracket, you are still very much in the game. The broader tech market still views you as a highly valuable asset with peak earning potential ahead of you. Do not waste this critical decade.
The Illusion of Growth at Oracle
At this company, you will never see rapid promotions, massive base salaries, or life-changing RSU grants. Those are standard at other top-tier tech companies, but they do not exist here. Because you are kept away from the futuristic technologies that will define the next 15 years, you are slowly turning yourself into a sitting duck.
Your upward mobility is completely blocked unless a 25-to-30-year veteran finally decides to retire, and your technical learning curve flatlined a long time ago. The company keeps you trapped in meaningless work by dangling false hope. Let’s be real: that hope will never materialize. You are not going to become the next Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella by climbing a broken, stagnant ladder.
The Massive Opportunity Cost
Your 30s are your prime years to generate massive wealth. To put this in perspective: I had a friend who left for Nvidia in 2017. Because of the RSU packages and actual market growth, he now owns two homes and sits on a multi-million dollar net worth.
By choosing to stay here, you are sacrificing your personal wealth and career trajectory for a company that fundamentally does not innovate.
Stop Waiting for the Light
Do not stay in the dark zone thinking you will eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Oracle's future is Larry Ellison's problem, not yours. Leave now, reclaim your market value, and go shine somewhere that actually rewards your talent
Danger Zone for Engineers Over 40
If you are 40 or older at this company, you are sitting in the ultimate risk zone. Because your technical knowledge has been allowed to stagnate, your resume will likely be ignored by modern tech companies. If you doubt this, just look at how difficult it is to get a simple internal transfer to OCI—that alone is proof of how heavily depreciated your legacy skill set has become.
The Trap of Legacy Knowledge
Deep expertise in legacy Oracle Applications, outdated ERP systems, or old database coding patterns has practically zero market value outside of the Oracle bubble. If you are impacted by a layoff, your only viable exit strategy will be pivoting into consulting firms like Deloitte or PwC, because they are the only places left that still service this aging ecosystem.
The "AI" Illusion
Do not fool yourself into thinking you are safe just because you use Codex or internal coding assistants. Using an AI wrapper does not mean you have "AI skills." The brutal reality is that your current legacy project will be shut down, and you will be laid off, long before any actual, meaningful AI development work ever reaches your team.
Wake Up and Prepare
Buckle up, start upskilling immediately, and prepare your exit strategy. Leave on your own terms before the choice is made for you
Pointless. I was rated a 5 last year, so I expected some type of raise, but after reorg, my new manager told me performance reviews were not meaningful as no consistency across managers. The only thing that matters is TRB and stack ranking based on current manager, so many people get sc--wed after re-orgs and nothing you can do.
Hoarding Impact and Stifling Growth
Group Directors here are generally laid back, yet they stubbornly hoard the most meaningful, high-impact work for themselves. As a result, Senior ICs and junior engineers are completely shut out of the architectural design process. This robs them of the opportunity to learn critical decision-making skills and prevents them from developing into the company's future leaders.
A Culture of Embarrassing Sycophancy
The political maneuvering is painful to watch. You regularly see certain cliques of managers and ICs spending an absurd amount of time shadowing their VPs just to build their own internal brand and climb the ladder. It is genuinely a pathetic sight—a VP constantly escorted by an entourage of three or four senior members who follow them everywhere, literally even to the company gym.
Coasting Into Retirement
Deep down, these VPs and Directors know they are at massive risk once the company finally shuts down the legacy products they manage. Instead of innovating, they are just running out the clock and coasting into retirement by clinging to the top of the hierarchy.
This culture of survival and sycophancy over actual engineering is exactly why this company hasn't organically built a successful piece of software in 26 years. It just acquires competitors, rebrands them, and lets the technology slowly die
Illusion of Security and the Reality of Working Here
"If you are not moving, they will move you."
All that verbal praise and those "thank you" emails from your manager regarding your business knowledge and technical capabilities? They are ultimately meaningless. They do not reflect the actual time and effort you poured into those solutions, and they certainly will not protect your job during a restructure.
Weak Leadership and Sub-Market Pay
The management layer here completely lacks the backbone to fight for your salary raises. The fact that compensation is consistently 40% below the broader tech market rate tells you exactly how little the company actually values its engineering talent.
A Culture of Subservience and Stagnant Tech
Job security here is reserved for "yes-men"—subordinates who blindly do exactly what they are told. Anyone with independent thought is viewed as a risk. Even worse, engineers with 15 years of experience are relegated to working on ancient legacy technology, doing menial testing, and chasing follow-up tasks.
Comical Micromanagement
The leadership structure is completely broken. You have Group Directors stepping down to do basic technical designs, and Vice Presidents literally getting involved in trivial bug fixes like changing database column names. Yet, these are the people who are protected and allowed to stay at the company forever.
The Generational Divide
I worked at Meta at one point. There, engineering managers are sharp, active, and typically in their mid-30s to early 40s. Here, the management layer is entirely dominated by people in their late 50s who are just coasting and surviving on corporate politics
Pointless no salary increase for 5 years
Absolutely pointless.
Each year you'll be told, thank you for your service, our people are key to our success and .... tough economic conditions means there's no pay raise, bonus or paid promotions.
Maybe you'll get some RSU'S but will you still be employed when they finally vest ?
Stop clinging to a company that acts as dead weight on your career. By staying, you are actively wasting your potential and severely jeopardizing your future in this industry. Every extra year you spend here just makes tomorrow's job search infinitely harder.
You already know exactly how management operates. They treat engineers like disposable labor, pay you peanuts compared to market rate, and deliberately let your technical skills stagnate. Their business model is to trap you in maintenance mode until your tech stack is completely obsolete, and then eventually dump you into a hyper-competitive job market to fend for yourself.
Wake up. Do yourself a favor, hold your head high, and start interviewing outside. Your future self will thank you for getting out.
Dream on. Oracle isn’t going to give anyone a raise or promotion. The only way to increase your salary as an Oracle employee is to leave and go elsewhere.
@ah congrats to your friend!!
A co-worker just left for a 60k/raise. They were under paid compared to their peers and Oracle refused to adjust their compensation. Oracle’s loss.
So glad I was RIF. Everyone I that has talked to HR about returning is only offered their previous sh---y base salary. However if they hire someone for the same role with no Oracle history they are offered market rate which will be more. F*ck that place.