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I work for Oracle. I had my reasons to choose Oracle.

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?

Then that totally misses the point I was trying to make. I was making the point that Oracle actively patches security vulnerabilities in Oracle Linux as well as other distributions for their customers when the upstream takes too long to patch them. Therefore, I was making the point that one who would like to work on security, open source and development at the same time could work for Oracle. Of course, one can just work for RHEL and Canonical too. But one can work for Oracle too. It's one more option available to developers and many developers seem to exercise this option.

Sure! There are employees who indeed work for Oracle remotely and get paid. The point is not that one may want to work on Oracle Linux. The point is that one can work on a variety of things in Oracle (including other Linux distributions, not just Oracle Linux) and system programming, and get paid to do this. Therefore despite the several chronic problems that exist in Oracle, it is not as absurd to be working for Oracle in 2017 as aswanson was claiming it to be.

I am a fierce critic of Oracle ( see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432376 ). But I know many people who in their right mind would want to work for Oracle.

* People who love RDBMS technology. Oracle's Database division is big and has a lot of veteran and very skilled software developers and architects who work with the Database kernel code. New employees can also work on this code. I am sure a lot of people would like to work on the database kernel with skilled and intelligent teams. RDBMS as a domain can be fascinating for developers. It involves everything from compiler design (SQL) to system programming (memory management, locking semantics, concurrency, etc.)

* People who love to work on open source and get paid well. Since Oracle ships its own Linux and since the database is also certified to work on many Linux environments (not just Oracle Linux), Oracle takes the responsibility of patching security problems in the supported open source environments if the upstream does not patch in time. A lot of people like this kind of work where they can work on open source, security and development at the same time and get paid while doing so.

* System programmers. Many developers working on the Oracle Database are involved in system programming.

Disclaimer: I work for Oracle.

If you walk the floors of Oracle office in California, you are not going to feel like you are working in the US. It almost feels like an Indian enclave. In my opinion, this is a bad thing.

In the Database division, the division that also makes most of the money for Oracle, most people including Directors, VPs, SVPS, etc. are Indians. Many are Chinese too. They have been in this company for the last 10 to 20 years. They understand all the politics of the company inside out and use it to their advantage to rule (exploit?) their subordinates. It is almost as if they have setup their kingdom in this company. You might be wondering how all of this relates to salary and hiring discrimination.

* Most of these Indians at the top of the ladder, seem to be hiring only Indians.

* These Indian SVPs and VPs hire Indians for cheap. A unique cultural thing about Indians is that they are obsessed about saving money, e.g. lowball prospective candidates; sometimes the negotiation can last for 2-12 months before an offer is made!

* It helps these VPs if there are Indian engineers or managers under these VPs. Indians don't counterquestion their superiors much. So when these VPs find insane ways of saving money, e.g. not spending the budget for team outings, project parties, etc., the Indian engineers seem to oblige. One team activity or team outing only once in 2 years is not unheard of in Oracle while our neighbourhood goes for such outings every quarter. Indian VPs rejecting employee's request for stationery is also not unheard of. It is necessary to hire Indians so that they don't question when VPs reject reasonable requests.

* Another thing unique about Indian culture is utter lack of respect for schedules. The SVPs define schedules for a product release in a random fashion without ever consulting the managers or the engineers. Guess what? The schedule is not met. The company remains in a never ending loop of reschedule, miss schedule, repeat. The same goes for meetings. Meetings start late. They end late. Nobody cares that there might be another meeting that people may have to go to. A few Americans might look upset but who cares about the minority! They can get away with this kind of disrespectful scheduling when the majority are Indians.

If someone claims that they hire Indians because they are more skilled than Americans, then I call bullsh*t. It is true that there are more Indian engineers than Americans but it is also true that for the number of people Oracle needs there are enough skilled Americans as there are Indians. So if the hiring was fair, one should see an equal number of Americans and Indians.

Disclaimer: I work for Oracle. I am Chinese. I love Indians. I have many Indian friends.