Design at Oracle
Are you a designer being recruited by Oracle? Before jumping at an inflated title and showy TC, consider a few things first. 1. At least three of the new hires brought in by Jenny and Hillel have already quit. A couple without another job lined up. Word is more are considering it. 2. Hillel fired many people, but kept the better talent. About 20 of those he kept have since quit anyway rather than put up with him. I’m thinking about it but haven’t started interviewing yet. 3. You’ll probably just work on basic components. Massive Sketch files with every imaginable type and size of button and dropdown. 4. Nobody ever ships anything. 5. You might make a drinking game out of Jenny Lam saying premium and empathy and emotionally resonant and move the needle. 6. If you question anything, you’ll be marginalized almost immediately. Leaders repeatedly say they prefer mediocre talent with a good attitude to amazing talent with a bad attitude. Bad attitude means pushing back. 7. The office is usually half empty. Checking the slack channel every morning for people’s excuses for why they won’t be in is a good source of entertainment.
I have zero empathy for your emotionally resonant post and I would pay a premium to move the needle into a voodoo doll of all toxic people like you. #VagPowr
Hey buddy, if you don’t want to be part of our sinking ship, just leave! You knew well ahead that we are all here to rest-and-vest.
I’ve gotten a lot out of my time at Oracle but there’s a non-trivial amount of weird and frustrating stuff here. Room to do interesting work if you like enterprise type complexity, but the politics can be deflating.
This doesn’t even account for things that have happened on the cloud/OCI side of the design org. Bunch of other silliness there that’s been maddening for more than a few.
OP is pretty accurate!
For as frustrated as I’ve been, at times, during my tenure at Oracle, I do believe design leadership has tried to do it right in a company that’s hardly had a serious design culture. Some decisions along the way were wrong, certainly. And that could be extremely upsetting. My experience on the OCI side was...up and down. There’s still tons of opportunity though overall at Oracle, and plenty of fascinating work to be done. In the long run I think it’ll be a good place for many.
Are they hiring designers in Austin yet? I’ve seen generic sourcing reqs for it. Seems like an interesting opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something new there. Or not?
What are the specific reasons people have left?
How are things with Design at Oracle? Have they shipped anything or still working on it?!
Some internal releases but no massive external roll out whatsoever…
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Wouldn’t expect much chatter on this just want to give anyone thinking about it a fair heads up
Respect, @gavinB. Looking out for fellow designers.