Oracle India: bare bonuses, hikes
By Onlooker

Oracle is the second largest software products company in the world.  Oracle India is an integral pillar of the company with more than $2.5 billion invested in Indian operations since 2001. Oracle first teamed up with TCS in 1987, but by 1993, Oracle India had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp, USA. Its Indian operations employ about 23,000 professionals.

Today, Oracle India is involved in developing every key product and its Global Support Centres assist clients in most countries.  Oracle India provides many specialists to the Global Consulting Division. In India, the Oracle Education Centers are located in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. According to Oracle India, it has 6000 technology and over 600 applications customers in India.

In March, 2010, Oracle announced that the companies as a whole saw revenue increase by 17 % to $6.4 Billion, but profits were down due to its acquisition of Sun. It reported a third quarter earnings of $1.2 Billion which was 10 percent less compared to the same period in the previous year.  New software license revenues increased by 13 % to $1.7 Billion.

Even as Indian techies contributed a substantial share to the increased revenue, the ground reality is that Oracle India has frozen most salary hikes and promotions for 3 years.  According to insiders, it has been more than three years since Oracle gave any hike or increment to many of its employees.  A large chunk of the lower management is still working on salaries they were drawing in 2007. But Oracle HR could easily walk away from any such claim saying their promotion and bonus policy is performance based.

The company has shied away from sharing the profits and bonuses with many employees based on their policy which says that all the employees will get hikes and bonus based on the performance. Even after receiving a rating of 5 or 6 out of 10, employees are denied any hikes and promotions.  In theory, such employees should be getting a 2-3 percent of hike.

Even some of the best performers in India received only one third of bonuses last year as compared to what they were given in 2008.

Zero percent of hike is clear indication that either the company has been retaining non-performing employees for more than three years (as many of them are still part of the organization) or Oracle is really smart at evaluating the performance. Employees believe that all the decision making power are vested in the hands of management sitting in US.  Many oracle India employees are fearful that proper salary increases and bonuses will be on hold for another year or so.
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