Where They Are Today

What attracted you to Oracle?
Three main benefits attracted me to Oracle:

• Diversity in the nature of work: With more than 500 groups, there is so much room to learn.
• Flexibility in work life: As long as one does the targeted work, it is immaterial from where and when you do the work (i.e., it is not an 8—5 job).
• Mentorship in a company that is pioneering cutting-edge technologies and best practices in the enterprise software industry.

Describe your best Oracle memories.
I am never short of good memories of my time at Oracle. One such memory is of our group's weekend trip to Lake Nacimiento, where all the employees in our development group, including those working from remote locations as well as the head office, had a chance to get together and relax at the invitation of our VP. This was in celebration of our first product release, and did we celebrate! If not jet skiing one moment, it was surf-riding the other. Whether the VP, senior directors, directors, or managers, it was hard to distinguish one from the other that weekend. At night fall, we all played board games and enjoyed storytelling. Some of the members took off and camped out while the rest stayed in cabins.

What is it about the Oracle environment that has maintained your interest?
If there is a key advantage that has kept me motivated to stay at Oracle, it is the unlimited career opportunities provided for employees. With Oracle's large size, opportunities are tremendous both in terms of the number and diversity. After one spends a couple of years in the company, the opportunities are there to be identified. I personally have played several roles at Oracle in the past 6 years. I started off in a software developer role and moved on to do product management before taking up a business operations position. In my current position as a business strategy manager, I have an opportunity to strategically impact the way the Oracle Applications division is run. So it is helpful to identify what interests you the most and steadily pursue those interests within the firm. In a company with nearly 70,000 employees worldwide, there has got to be a challenge for everyone at any one time.

Describe your first job at Oracle.
When I first joined Oracle, I was unsure of where my first experiences would take me down the road in my career path. I did not know whether I would get the right mentorship, have a good peer community for uninhibitedly exchanging creative ideas, or be aggressively encouraged by my management to progress in my career. Six years have gone by since that day, and I have to admit that I cannot be a more satisfied employee along those lines. Though I have worked for 4 different groups in that time, I have built lasting relationships with several of my colleagues and to this day keep in touch with all of them.

Describe your current position at Oracle.
My current position involves strategic business planning for the Applications division. My group provides key business insights/analysis about our Applications division to upper management. The role is similar to that of internal consulting at other companies. The work provides me with an opportunity to learn about the business without necessarily going into the details of any particular domain or product. With several acquisitions taking place at Oracle and Oracle's growth plan, my team's work plays a very important role in the overall success of the Applications division. To be able to contribute in a way that will have such a positive impact on an organization gives me tremendous satisfaction and motivation.

Any other words of advice?
If you are interested in plotting a career path that will catapult you to the "who's who" in enterprise software engineering, Oracle is a great place to be mentored. Plenty of college recruits have gone on to take up leading positions both within the company as well as the industry in general.

What attracted you to Oracle?
People tend to think Oracle is merely a database company. Wrong—Oracle has any CS / IT / software-related technologies or products and is always leading or in the forefront of the latest technology trends... I admit that I held the same misconception when I started to find an industry job. My long-time fascination is in the wireless and mobile field. I believe mobility is not just a buzzword, like others that keep popping up but go nowhere or simple burst. This is something that will touch and change every human being's daily life. I had conducted extensive, mobile-related research projects while at MIT and planned to find a job in this field. To my surprise, Oracle is heavily mobilized and even has a dedicated division, called OracleMobile, which is like a spin-off but still funded by Oracle. I got both the startup-like, fast-paced chemistry that I enjoy and the stability of a tech behemoth that I need.

I joined Oracle Mobile without hesitation, and oops, I stayed in this division for more than 5 years and still love what I am doing.

Describe your best Oracle memories.
Oracle provides an arena for bright people to stand out, shine, and get acknowledged. Here is one of my best memories: I had been working in a high-profile project and was the key contributor. Our VP loves the product and appreciates what I have contributed. In a Christmas party held at his home, he introduced me to his wife, "he is one leg of the team." I felt greatly flattered.

Another memory is of needing to prepare a quick proof-of-concept prototype for a big project. The idea was for some code to run in a mobile device and intercept SMS sent to the device; if the SMS contained certain information, the program would launch a network connection, fetch new e-mails from a server, and then emit beeps to notify the device owner. This is a simple concept and easy to do today, but not 4 years ago! I spent 3 good days and came up with the prototype, including some pieces of C++ code running in the device and some pieces of Java code running in the server. This prototype justified the big project and led to our team's delivery of an Oracle product.

What is it about the Oracle environment that has maintained your interest?
You'll never get bored. Because of the challenging work and fast pace, you won't even have time to lament boredom.

Describe your current position at Oracle.
Right now, I am a Project Lead in the Beehive department, Oracle's next-generation enterprise collaboration platform. I am responsible for building a cutting-edge mobile platform and related applications that run on small handheld devices. It is an awesome experience to see people as influential as corporate executives using the product built by me for their daily business needs.

Any other words of advice?
In general, there are two kinds of companies: the young start-up/small company that is dynamic and full of opportunities but might run into financial bumps—or the big, well-established company that offers job stability but seems dull. Oracle combines the goodies of both types!

What attracted you to Oracle?
I had a strong engineering education and was looking for a leading company in the software industry. This would allow me to learn from the experience of management and get a good understanding of how successful companies run. I also really wanted to move to Northern California! Furthermore, I was very impressed by the quality of campus life at Oracle. For example, one can eat at a number of campus-located cafeterias that prepare a variety of ethnic cuisines. There is also an excellent gym on campus where I can go work out and enjoy basketball courts or the swimming pool. Finally, the environment is very relaxed and scenic. It feels pleasant to walk around the Oracle campus almost any time of the year.

Describe your best Oracle memories.
... Working on critical projects where it just had to work. There was no gray area where you could hide any shortcomings in your work. Although this is challenging at times, it is extremely gratifying when a customer problem has been fixed or when you have created a feature that works flawlessly and helps improve your team's product.

What is it about the Oracle environment that has maintained your interest?
I could have pursued software development opportunities outside Oracle at any time. But few companies allow one to use existing knowledge and strengths to work on projects outside one's current area of expertise—the way Oracle does. Although I enjoyed being a software engineer, I wanted to explore new challenges and get different insight into the software industry. I was able to pursue openings in product management, consulting, and also non-development positions within Oracle very easily and knew that I would find a good match eventually.

Describe your first job at Oracle.
My first job here at Oracle was a lot of fun. The Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB) group was new and was hiring a lot of bright college recruits that year. It was a motivated team with the goal of making a difference by providing a robust, innovative software product to the Healthcare market. The Healthcare industry was in dire need of eliminating manual recording of patients' data and improving its efficiency in handling day-to-day operations, so we saw a great need for our product.

Describe your current position at Oracle.
I am currently Director of Global Partner Pricing and work with teams in development, business practices, and alliances to properly strategize and execute our partner pricing models. Oracle Partners are an important source of revenue to Oracle, especially outside North America, so this position is important and visible. I am able to meet and interact with senior management in various organizations, which is an extremely good educational experience. I feel that my strong development background is an advantage to me even in such a non-development role. I believe that knowing the finer technical details I learned as a software engineer and also understanding the big picture of Oracle's business will help position me in the future to make more significant contributions at Oracle.

Any other words of advice?
Oracle has so many opportunities that it can sometimes be overwhelming for recent graduates. Its organized yet relaxed atmosphere, exposure to industry-leading technologies, and access to talented, dedicated software development team members makes Oracle a great place to start one's career. Note that in time, you may want to try something different but will likely find switching to different teams and/or different career paths very feasible at Oracle. Oracle has a reputation of hiring the brightest students from the top schools; we invite you to be part of this and help build upon our reputation.

What is it about the Oracle environment that has maintained your interest?
1. Dynamic environment; very demanding, yet fulfilling.
2. Very bright people.
3. Provides opportunities to meet individual goals while achieving team objectives.
4. See the evolution of building a product and how it continues to expand the solution that we provide.
5. Be part of/help architect such a product.

Opportunities to be involved in all parts of the software development cycle/process throughout my years at Oracle—engineer, product analyst, product manager, development manager, group manager.

Please describe your current position at Oracle
Director of the Oracle Projects development team. I do have a great, AWESOME job. I've been through the ranks of application engineer, product analyst, product manager, and development manager, so have seen the different aspects of the cycle of creating and rolling out a product, specifically Oracle Projects.

In my current position, I can take those experiences and help drive the product toward the vision that we have set out... and right now, it's just a matter of execution. We have great market support; clients are just waiting for us to continue to deliver more of the solutions that they seek.

What attracted you to Oracle?
The PEOPLE, definitely! Before joining Oracle, I was aware of Oracle as a worldwide, cutting-edge company. After joining, I was impressed by the vision and determination people had to build new products. You have to be determined, since getting product out the door, at times, can feel like an impossible task! To this day, I really enjoy working with fun, smart, talented people who will still find the time to help you out if they can.

Describe your best Oracle memories.
We were working on a Newsroom of the Future prototype for the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB) in Las Vegas. The project was a partnership with Sony; Oracle provided the software, and Sony provided the hardware. Since everything was still in development, all the pieces didn't quite fit well together. A week before the convention, we never left the hotel, working at a pretty furious rate. We got it all working the day before Larry Ellison saw it. The first night after the convention opened, we celebrated with the most fantastic dinner in Vegas for the whole team. The best part was no one on the team ever doubted that we wouldn't be ready when the doors opened!

Describe your first job at Oracle.
My first job was building video applications for the Oracle booth in the Innoventions Pavilion at Epcot Center, Florida. We had a hard deadline when the exhibit was supposed to open, so we were battling new software and new hardware while building the booth according to specs. These were exciting yet crazy times. Since Epcot was open to the public, we could only work in the booth after the park was closed. I remember walking around Epcot at 3am, flood lights on, piped in music in 70 degrees weather, thinking this was quite surreal.

Describe your current position at Oracle.
I am Senior Development Director in the Beehive organization. I manage a team of talented software engineers and work with other development teams, QA, Product Management, and Documentation—putting all our efforts together to ship product. It is very challenging work yet extremely satisfying watching Beehive demos during Open World. What motivates me the most are not the demos—although it makes my mom proud!—but the commitment and dedication of my teammates. In turn, I strive to give it my all. And when we collectively hit a major milestone together as a team, all those late, hard, frustrating days are blissfully forgotten.

Any other words of advice?
You will be challenged! Shipping product requires overcoming numerous obstacles—some technical, many others not. Bring your sense of humor, your enthusiasm, and your energy. To be successful, you'll learn what teamwork really means.