Pros
PRE-IPO (the pros were all very typical of a startup) - Great mission - Incredibly talented, interesting, and motivated coworkers - Amazing work and exciting technologies - Great communication and energy across all levels of the company - Great culture - Decent perks POST-IPO (a serious attempt to be a grown-up, profitable company) - Atmosphere built around vanquishing competitors and maintaining leadership in the market - Recognition that processes need to be improved - More focus on products that drive revenue - More focus on maintainability of systems and further maturation of technologies - Company culture still fairly positive - Company-wide pay calibration makes compensation more competitive POST-ACQUISITION - Stock prices stabilize - No significant changes to management structures or product road maps AFTER LEGAL ENTITY COMBINATION (demise) - All of the things that are good about Oracle
Cons
PRE-IPO - Low salaries - Dogmatic views on Agile (vs. agile) development POST-IPO (the woes of being a profit-driven organization beholden to shareholders) - Acceleration of SOA- and microservice-based development causes institutional headaches - Continued institutionalization of "Agile" practices without regard to pragmatism - Mission slowly changes to align with the realities of being a public company - More focus on profitable positions, leading to less tehnical innovation and experimentation - Those whose options have fully vested start to leave - Those looking for more excitement (and startup environment) leave - Layoffs and reorgs - Stock prices tumble - Idealistic and/or naive people who don't understand (or care) that public companies need to make money and can't survive on culture or mission alone POST-ACQUISITION - Acquisition causes many to realize that Opower had been declining (and/or maturing/becoming boring) - even before the acquisition - with the acquisition causing them to re-evaluate their careers - Acquisition causes some to leave outright because they don't want to work for Oracle - Amazing coworkers leaving, regardless of reason - Ridiculous, whiny coworkers who blame Oracle for everything wrong with their jobs/lives/Opower's decline - People who don't realize that a culture needs to be maintained, not just inherited AFTER LEGAL ENTITY COMBINATION (demise) - All of the things that are bad about Oracle - Many of the people who should leave are staying - Many of the people who should be stay are leaving
