Why are places like Microsoft and Oracle considered bad places to work?
Microsoft has an entire OS and full fledged office suite, not to mention an entire development ecosystem in .net. Oracle, similarly, is the developer of an industrial scale rdms as well as the most popular modern programming language. Surely it takes higher calibre software engineers to create those systems than it does Snapchat and Airbnb? Someone enlighten me.
Haters gon' hate?
MS has good and bad teams/products. Given the size of the company, that should be expected.
Toxic culture, politics..,..
All about free food man
I think it’s because they’re both seen as bloated, old (both started in the 70s), slow growth rates, and don’t innovate anymore.
They aren’t bad places to work but the total compensation seems to be lower in these companies than companies like amazon and Facebook. Also they are not pre-ipo. If by some reason, Microsoft shares start growing 30 % per year. People will flock to it.l regardless of politics or the notion that it does not innovates.
Microsoft is ok, oracle is a horrible company with shitty salaries, culture and technologies
Does that include BMC?
I haven't worked at Microsoft so I'll just talk about Oracle. You are absolutely right that it takes great ability to design and develop industrial strength enterprise databases. Oracle's database has a very rich code base filled with an amazing set of features. Working on augmenting that functionality with new features using state-of-the-art techniques is challenging and also very satisfying. Unfortunately, the CS world is trending away from such large scale enterprise systems. This means new grads are more skilled in website design, machine learning algorithms, etc. than in Operating System concepts like scalable synchronization, distributed systems principles like consensus algorithms, vector clocks, etc. Additionally, enterprise companies do not have 'successful' consumer-facing products - so it is harder for people to acknowledge the elegance of the work that goes into making those products. And in the modern world, 'coolness' is a huge factor in deciding where to work. You see Amazon Alexa in action, you take a Uber, you search on Google, you use Facebook everyday and hence, you consider them cool. Technically, Microsoft and Oracle are also present in all of your activities - but they are fairly hidden. Another aspect is the fact that the people who made the cool Oracle products have become older now. As a thumb rule, they like the old way of thinking and designing stuff. Young developers don't like that as they want an agile and vibrant work environment. For example, in my team, gathering interest for post-work fun activities is very hard. Most people have kids to take care of, and their work hours are very different that what I would want. Naturally, young people feel like they need a company which is young, and that plays a hand in the "The future is now, old man" style of thinking. The final reason is that the general practices of Oracle leave a lot to be desired. There are many people who are concerned about their own standing than working towards making a better product. This occasionally leads to a hugely selfish work environment which is not the most fun. The bureaucracy involved in getting promotions, taking vacations, picking up new projects is sometimes way too much. Having said that, if you get a good team, which has a meaningful agenda, you can do a lot of good work. Certainly, I have been okay here :)
to be fair, distributed systems knowledge is fairly relevant for backend web developers building cloud native apps
Quality answer. Thanks for writing
I have worked in both places. Don't even compare Oracle with Microsoft! Oracle is the worstttt shit
If you want a easy in, join msit as the bar is really low. You can move around after that.
internal transfers require interviews and the bar doesn’t get lower for employees