First, the facts.
* I could clear Oracle interviews and get an offer. I applied for a RDBMS development position in Oracle ST.
* I could also clear Apple interviews and get an offer. Apple interviews were easier than Oracle ST's.
* I could clear interviews in several startups and other small companies too.
* I could not clear interviews in Google. I did not get an offer.
* I did not apply to Microsoft, Facebook or Amazon.
Now, the reasons.
* Oracle ST (RDBMS) provided me an opportunity to work in system development in C and ASM language down to the level of Linux syscalls and memory management (think custom memory allocators, designing locking semantics, distributed file systems).
* I was almost ready to join Apple because the offered work was quite similar to Oracle's and the offered salary was about 5% more than Oracle's but Apple's stringent security policies turned me off. I learnt that Apple would dictate what I can and cannot discuss with my wife. I learnt that I cannot discuss with a friend within the same company what I was working on. All of this may be reasonable from Apple's perspective but I wanted to work for some place with more open culture.
* Most startups and small companies I could get offer from required me to work on web services in Java, Python, Node.js, etc. This kind of work does not interest me.
* I could not solve all the algorithm problems asked by Google but I found Oracle ST's interview a little bit easier. I could solve most of Oracle ST's interview problems and got an offer.
* The openings available in Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon did not interest me. Moreover, I felt I was under-prepared for Facebook's interviews. I felt I was well-prepared for Amazon's interviews. I have many friends in Amazon and I don't find them happy due to long working hours. I learnt that they require developers to provide on-call support at add hours. These things scared me a little bit. Due to these reasons I did not apply to these companies.
So considering the offers I could manage to get and my love for system programming, I had a strong reason to choose Oracle over the other offers.
Why is it so hard to believe that everyone working in Oracle would similarly have their own reasons to choose Oracle?