Skip to contentSkip to footer
employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Opower

Now known as Oracle

Is this your company?

Opower reviews

3.7

67% would recommend to a friend

(169 total reviews)
avatar

Daniel Yates

74% approve of CEO

51% positive business outlook

Ratings by category

3.9

Culture & values

3.7

Work/Life balance

3.6

Career opportunities

3.5

Senior management

3.4

Compensation and benefits

Opower has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 169 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Opower employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

169 reviews
2.0
Dec 23, 2015

Uncertain Future

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company culture was great. I loved my team, and they offered employees a lot of perks like a fully stocked pantry/an espresso machine, catered lunches every Friday, a dog-friendly workplace, a commuter and medical benefit (if you didn't use their healthcare), top-of-the-line technology and office equipment, etc. There were bike racks in the office if you wanted to bike to work and store your bike there. They had standing desks and treadmill desks throughout the office. The office had an open layout, and there were tons of couches and comfy chairs where you could work. One day, they had a street artist come and decorate a blank wall with some pretty awesome art. Dress code was extremely casual; most people wore jeans and t-shirts to work. Opower spared no expense on the holiday party, and they paid for their employees to attend a private screening of the new Star Wars movie for free. My team had a clearly defined professional advancement track, regular performance reviews, and a budget for professional development (attending conferences, additional training, etc.). They hire top talent, many of which come from Ivy League schools like Yale or Harvard.

Cons

I was hired in mid November 2015 and immediately loved the company and my team. Things seemed to be going great, and I was performing well. A month later, I had just finished onboarding, completed my first assignment, and gotten a lot of positive feedback from my manager. Then one day, about a week before Christmas, I was called into HR and told that there had been a "reorganization"/company-wide lay-off, and my position had been eliminated. The decision was not based on my performance. Apparently, my position had been open for about a year because my team had been very picky about selecting candidates and would only hire the perfect candidate. When they finally hired me, they did not confirm that they still had the funding available to support my position, which in my opinion, was very unprofessional. Who hires somebody without first confirming the budget with upper management? I was hired at the end of the year when all of the planning for Q1 was being completed. According to their public financial statements, they recently lost $8 million in the last quarter and are now in the red. They looked at their budget projections for the next few years and got scared, which instigated this round of layoffs and caused them to make some unprofessional decisions. While Opower certainly knows how to have fun, they came across as very disorganized to me. They're hiring people at an astronomical rate yet obviously can't afford to support all of these positions. Signs indicate that the company is in trouble and things aren't as stable as they initially let on. If I were still employed at Opower or thinking of joining, I would be concerned about the stability of this company.

avatar
Opower Response
10y
Thank you for the feedback. As a public company, we're bound by SEC regulations not to comment publicly on our financial outlook, however, our investor center is a great resource for those who'd like to learn more: http://investor.opower.com/company/investors/overview/default.aspx. We also encourage anyone interested in Opower to ask about the Company's current activities and our past growth. We'd love to show off what we are doing and what makes us excited to come to work!
1.0
Aug 9, 2016

RUN ... don't walk ... AWAY from Opower / Oracle!!!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

BEFORE ACQUISITION (January 2016): Opower was thriving (or so we were led to believe). We had great products in place, new ideas on the horizon, and talented, motivated, and passionate individuals who truly believed in the environmental and social mission of Opower. My colleagues and peers were some of the smartest individuals I have ever worked with. And you felt like you were working towards something - saving energy, changing human behavior, etc. The culture and environment created by the Oployees was contagious and it was a happy place to be. And of course the perks (NOT to be confused with culture): dogs in the office, free snacks, catered Friday lunches, massages, unlimited PTO, commuter + gym benefits.

Cons

I can sum it up shortly with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Mean Girls, when Regina George tells Gretchen Weiners: "Stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen." Dan, Oracle is never going to "happen" for the talented, dedicated, and passionate team your people built. JANUARY - MARCH 2016 Our stock price takes a nose dive, the earnings call is horrendous. And things start to change. Maybe in hindsight I should've seen the sale coming, but the passion and enthusiasm from the CEO never waned and so like cattle, we got in line and believed the BS coming out of his mouth. APRIL 2016 Layoffs happen at the beginning of April. We dump over $1million in salaries/benefits/etc. Still, we are told not to panic. It needed to happen. Delivery teams were overstaffed, engineering projects had come to close and it was time to deliver. Everything was still supposedly great. Our CEO even actively went out of his way to assure certain teams there jobs were safe. The heart, soul, and culture of the company were hanging on by a thread. MAY 2016 - AUGUST 2016 Oracle buys Opower. Everything Opower stands for is crushed by a behemoth of a company that has no plans to continue our environmental mission. Google Oracle. See how many multi-million and billion dollar lawsuits they are a part of. CEO STILL convinced things will operate as usual, despite a complete change in culture, benefits, structure (550 employees to 130,000). Heart, soul, culture = destroyed. Morale is worse than in the toilet. There is none. People either come into work late and leave early, don't come in at all, or spend their days looking for new jobs and interviewing. People aren't even secretive about their desire to leave the company. Individuals on the G&A team are told they won't have jobs. But, over and over again, like a broken record, by both the CEO and CFO tell us our short term contracts will a) match our current salaries and b) have lucrative retention bonuses to "make it worth our while to stay." It's promised to some. Both of these things ended up being a complete and utter lie. And so now most of the G&A staff is stuck in non-incentivized contracts at a longer term than originally guaranteed. PRESENT: If you join "Opower" aka Oracle these are things you will NOT get: clarity. A+ level colleagues (think B-). Top of the line / current technology and systems (goodbye fast and nimble systems we would constantly invest in, hello systems from 2000). Bureaucracy. Oh my Bureaucracy. People are leaving in droves - all the smart, talented, passionate people I previously described are gone or on their way out. If you are smart, passionate, and looking for a fun, mission-oriented company, this is no longer the place for you.

2.0
Apr 10, 2015

Good PR. Duplicitous business practices

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Good PR EE story -Office shuts down last week of the year -Decent benefits -That's about it

Cons

-The utility industry is too slow to adopt anything -Enshrines duplicitous business practices to employees and its customers -Oversells snake oil and advocates trickery or cloudy language to win a major deal -Has been selling the same products for the last four years without much innovation -Death by a million slides in every internal and external meeting -Engineering bares brunt of suffering the delivery consequences -Excessive title inflation--everyone is a Manager, Director, VP -Inexperienced management team ran by a good old B-school boys club -Poor leadership with lack of long term vision and execution plan -A promotion in job title is insufficient for career development -No 401K matching and even worse equity -Run for your life unless you like office politics -Too many managerial Type-A talkers and not enough doers

Viewing 4 - 6 of 169 Reviews
Related searches: Opower jobs | Opower salaries | Opower benefits | Opower interviews
ReviewsOpower reviews

Glassdoor has 180 Opower reviews submitted anonymously by Opower employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Opower is right for you.