> everyone who worked there has a black mark on their CV. Yet they persist, continue leeching off companies too scared to make the jump elsewhere.
This is just your opinion. Most people I know who work there feel just fine if not very happy. Pay/benefits are good. Work is about same everywhere. In fact depending on group there maybe good, challenging technical work there.
As far as CV is concerned working there is mostly positive or at best neutral in term of job change.
> Nobody buys Oracle because they like them or their good reputation.
Oracle is quite expensive but they have reputation of solid database for enterprise workloads.
Also their cloud business is doing fine and growing and not irrelevant. One can see that from their quarterly results.
> Work is about same everywhere
Well, no. When a customer at my job makes a mistake, we don't send lawyers chasing after them because we're assholes. And when someone proposes something that will hurt those customers, people speak up and voice their disagreement.
In large companies people don't keep up with what all other departments are up to. And further even if they know they can also see nuance that lawyers are involved because current situation can harm their employer.
> When a customer at my job makes a mistake, we don't send lawyers chasing ...
Maybe you own the company or are in its executive ranks and can take decision on such scenarios. But in large companies most rank and file employees do not particularly feel good or bad about their employers.
I wonder if the senior engineering talent OCI poached from AWS (including the guy who introduced formal methods to AWS) is still there?
For sure they'd have. I have heard they hired tons of people in Seattle area, presumably from Amazon. Also Amazon hired lots of people from Oracle. Starting from many deeply technical Java/JVM experts to tons of B-grade solution architects types.
To me this assumption that rank and file employees would find their employer evil but keep working there nonetheless is unrealistic.