Sorry if my last email was kind of dense. Really, it took me a few weeks to understand what telephony was and what we were going to do. Like any other specialized software sector it takes a while to learn it's idioms and terms and get familiar with it. You seem to have gotten what I was trying to tell you so that's a good job on your part.

Unfortunately, you are correct in that I'm not familiar with ERP so I'm not going to be much help there. But I will give you my warped view of what the ERP group does. As I said before, ERP is the back-end of a business. All the unsexy things that most people don't really think about. Contrast CRM which is sexier but still rather dull unless you're really into that stuff. CRM is all the front end that anybody who works with a customer uses to enable their job.

But looking at it in a more computer science perspective, ERP is batch processing, CRM is transaction processing. You enter data into ERP applications (or they get it from CRM applications) and generate reports once a day or once a week or once a month. Everything is geared towards making those reports run as fast as possible. Throughput is what's important.

CRM is more concerned with being user responsive. Make the application fast enough to keep up with the user. This is not generally conducive to making the application throughput all that great. Our applications are designed for burstiness. Get a bit of data and display it quickly. Another bit, another display. It's quite inefficient in communication throughput and database access is very fragmented, but that's not important as long as the application is responsive.

Now, realize that our CRM is built on top of ERP. They built their database tables and have them tuned and all their APIs done and they have years of refinement on us. We use a lot of their tables and their code and their development processes. Unfortunately, not very well. The ERP Division looks down on us and with good reason, we're just not as smooth-running and "adult" as they are.

If you have more specific questions I'll be happy to answer them. I've been working at Oracle for four years and I've picked up so much information that I don't even realize until someone asks me.

The second thing I wanted to write about is what we do with new people. My team just got two new people, one an internal transfer from another group and one a new graduate. By new graduate I mean a Bachelor of Science degree. There aren't that many people with Master's Degrees at Oracle. Well, there aren't that many people with Master's Degrees period. And I don't think I've met anyone here with a PhD. Maybe in the Server Division since they're on the technical edge of their computer science field.

We don't expect new people to know anything. Let me rephrase that. We don't expect new people to know any useful skills. A university education is not supposed to teach you how to use a CVS system or how to manage an Oracle database or even how to use Microsoft Word. These are all skills you can learn on the job. A university is supposed to teach you all the basic knowledge that you will need later. We can't teach you theory if you don't know it. We can teach you how to check in your code and create a patch that a customer can install.

So when you get to a new job, don't worry if it takes you six months to really get up to speed. We expect that. Every business has a different set of tools and it takes a while to learn those tools and learn the development process and learn all those little things that are not in any manual. We expect you to ask questions constantly. Don't worry about asking too many questions. Don't worry about making mistakes, maybe even big mistakes. That's how you learn. We expect you to be inquisitive and have the drive to learn on your own, to ask for help if you need it, and to try to find ways to help your teammates. We want enthusiasm and initiative, along with smarts and knowledge.

Looking back at college, I never had to ask any questions. I went to lectures, to discussion, read the textbook, did my homework and that was enough. If my two jobs are any indication, that's not the real world. There is no big manual with all the answers when you start a job. There are lots of manuals, and lots more things without manuals. It takes a long time to get to the point where you're really useful.

That's one reason why we look at you're previous job stints. Personally, when I look at a resume one thing I want to know is how much job hopping you do. One of the bad things about the recent tech boom is that people jumped from job to job quickly. Six months or a year at a job and then they're gone. As I've said, it takes you six months before you're useful. Why am I going to hire someone who is at best only going to give me six months of useful work? But job interviews are a future topic if you want to hear about it.