On Oracle

I was on a call early this morning when Mike dropped by my office. Being on the phone, he wrote a message on my white board:

 

You'll recall that I bonded with Sun's GC because we both blog. He clarified later that some of the info revealed to us was bloggable, but some not. I'll stick to the bloggable...

The buzz here has been pretty positive - my own feelings, based purely on branding, is that Oracle is pretty cool. During the first of several meetings this morning, someone asked if Mike could tell us about Oracle's corporate culture. He didn't go into details, but he did say that when a company with 80K employees acquires a company with 30K employees, what results is a new culture.

My googling seems to reveal quite a bit of compatibility. We live in the same hood, for one, and Silicon Valley has a culture. Perhaps most tellingly, when I searched the Oracle network on Facebook, the first page of results gave me several people who were also part of another company's network because they were former employees: Sun Microsystems.

An Open Door Policy

Being one of those people who are usually cold, I learned to keep my office door closed to trap in the heat emitted by my immense monitor. It worked; my office was toasty. I observed carefully and found that about 50% of people kept their doors closed, probably for the noise. (I also play Pandora all day at work on external speakers, and worried about the sound getting out.)

I kept my door closed, even though it did feel a bit isolating. Then I got a few comments from people - calling it my cave, my sauna, etc., so I decided to open up. It's more distracting because you hear people in the hall and you see them walking by. People do drop in more often, but that's important when you're new at a workplace. An open door is a worthwhile distraction - yesterday Mike popped his head in to praise some work I did.