Leaving The Emerald Towers Of Oracle

After nearly 7 years in Oracle, today is my last day of work here. It has been a great ride. This is my first job out of grad school. So obviously I have learnt a lot here -- a lot about American corporate environment and a lot about writing large scale business applications. My time at Oracle spanned across Oracle Exchange, iProcurement, Purchasing and Receivables teams and it has indeed been an incredibly rewarding experience. Working in PO and AR has given me invaluable exposure to both the buy and the sell sides of business.

I have also learnt a lot how big software development companies are run effectively. Oracle Apps seem to be run in a very lean and mean way. Resources are mostly utilized to their fullest. There is minimal wasteful expenditure, at least in the engineering and development organizations. Can't speak of sales and marketing though. Ha! I have heard rumors that Oracle sales guys sometimes have very lavish parties. Never seen it actually. Never in dev orgs.

Larry Ellison: So Near Yet So Far

My lament is that I could never meet our celebrity CEO Larry. He is never seen in the RWS campus, like you know, strolling around or something. But tales abound about people running into him and his bodyguards in the 500 building elevators. The closest I have come to Larry was once during his Open World keynotes in the Moscone Center when I got the first row seat. He is shorter than I had imagined.

I once wrote an email to him when I completed 6 years here. I requested a 1-on-1 with him. You know, regular business. Never got a reply. Hmph.

HQ Campus Cafes

The cafes are great. I really like 300 and 400. The 300 cafe has an Italian section for pasta, pizza and lasagna, a grill section for fresh fish like salmon, mahi mahi, etc. and also a salad counter. I liked the spinach salad "with everything". And it has a cafe which is open late afternoons. So 300 is a popular hang out for coffee drinkers during the 3:00pm hours. The 400 cafe has a grill with burgers and quesadillas, a self-serve section for salads and sandwiches and another section which serves exotic delicacies like pot pies served with cheese and macaroni on the side. Yum.

The Gymnasium

The gym is a sprawling facility. It has an indoor basketball court, an outdoor beach volleyball court, a full size lap pool, lots of treadmills and other strength and cardio equipments. Also a couple of ping-pong tables. The gym hosts a lot of activities year round. It hosts summer and winter leagues for volleyball, ping-pong, basketball, badminton, etc. And miscellaneous events like the Health Fair. And it runs classes for yoga and aerobics and such like. And there is massage facility too. Never utilized.

I have been part of the winning team once for the indoor volleyball recreational league. It was a memorable win. And once we were runners up in beach volleyball. Again recreational league. Just to be clear, there are 3 levels -- recreational, intermediate and competitive. So you know where recreational stands. And I have been a runner up in the competitive ping-pong league once. Doubles with Ben Ao. It was a great win when we beat the favorites in the semi-finals.

Lake Larry

The main lagoon in front of the HQ buildings is fondly known as Lake Larry. It is customary to take a walk around it after finishing up the lunch. The path has recently been widened which makes it easy to avoid bumping into the very many pregnant ladies that love to finish their quota of the prescribed daily dose of walk around Lake Larry. So much better now.

Anyways Dude, What's Next?

So I wanted to learn more about how the products that I develop in Financials and Procurement, are actually being used by our customers. How is life on the other side of the table? What are the issues in real business scenarios? And so on. I got this opportunity to be part of a big lovable company and work in their Corporate IT team, where they use Oracle Apps. I like the new role and the new company and decided it was time to explore new frontiers. So here I am at a very important point of time in my life. My last day at Oracle is today.

I am going to Yahoo! tomorrow.