

	Ask HN: Why does no one talk about working or interviewing for Oracle? - sdizdar

I find it interesting that people here talk about the interview process and working at companies such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook, but I never hear about Oracle.<p>Why is this? Is it the because databases and web servers are not cool anymore? Or maybe just because Oracle does not sell consumer products?
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hasenj
Oracle strikes me as exactly the kind of company where I never ever want to
work in.

They're enterprisey. They do boring stuff. They're evil.

What's there to like? Why would I want to work for them?

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sdizdar
I would like to understand the following:

Why do you think Oracle does boring stuff? For example, both Oracle and Google
work hard to make very scalable and highly available systems - but somehow
Oracle is boring while Google is exciting.

You mention "they're evil". Why do you think Oracle is evil? Why do you think
Oracle is more evil than Facebook, Apple, or Google?

~~~
hasenj
B2B space is boring. Enterprisey stuff is boring. You end up with a convoluted
system that's designed to please a 1000 different costumers. Most of the
problems you'd deal with are customer-specific, nothing interesting.

System level stuff _is_ interesting, what's boring is the enterprise.

Why are they evil? Android law suit.

Also maybe the fact they just rebrand RHEL and try to sell it. Granted, it
_is_ legal (due to the GPL), but it's still evil. They view open-source as an
opportunity to leech technology for free and resell it after they rebrand it
(and possible add proprietry extensions to it). Their CEO is quoted saying "if
an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. [...] So the
great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is
free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for
support, and that's what we'll do."

~~~
runjake
What's so evil about using the GPL for exactly what it was intended for?

And perhaps the reason Oracle lacks similar popularity with Google, is because
Oracle is soul-crushing. Although some people might say the same about Google
these days.

~~~
hasenj
RedHat does wonderful things for linux and open source, what Oracle is doing
to RHEL is like bullying.

Who'd want to work for such a company? Seriously.

I don't care if Oracle's so called distro does any damage to RedHat or not,
it's the fact that Oracle is pulling dirty moves like this; that's what makes
me perceive the company as evil.

~~~
mmaha
Oracle contributions to Linux:
<http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/026042.htm>

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iwr
Once you JOIN Oracle, you have to abide by their referential constraints,
otherwise the general employee database will TRIGGER a DELETE on your records.

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CyberFonic
Ditto SAP, BEA, EMC, IBM, HP, CISCO, AVAYA, etc

Maybe it's coz they don't hire hackers!

~~~
sdizdar
True (btw, BEA is ORCL now).

What is definition of hacker in this context? Web 2.0 / javascript developer?
Or self-learned developer?

~~~
CyberFonic
A hacker is like an artist. Someone who gets satisfaction out of creating
something. Anyone who enjoys learning new stuff.

When it's just a J.O.B. and there's no passion, then it is not hacking. Many
people programming in large corporations are not interested in challenging
themselves with new stuff. Their biggest challenge is getting through another
dreary day and not going postal on the pointy headed boss.

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javery
Shame.

