I know at least a dozen people from the BEA acquisition who want to leave because Oracle have ballsed up the product roadmap for various products. They're just waiting for some redundancies to come so they can take a redundancy payment before they leave.

The people I know are all in Professional Services. If Oracle aren't careful they will end up with a severe knowledge gap in some key niche service offerings.

... that some companies have decided not to spend £1k a day for recently graduated consultants then.

They'll just be replaced by a few Global Rightshoring Cheapskin resources armed with the product manuals and a masterful command of Google. The customers will suffer, the onshore project/client managers will feel their anger. Larry and the fat cats will keep coining it in at a faster rate than ever before.

One thing is sure - they won't give a second thought to the people who think they are too valuable for the company to lose. Not one wink of sleep is lost at night worrying about that really smart and experienced developer or other services professional. This is because they aren't actually recognised by the top brass, who have actually convinced themselves that having an MBA and stock options makes them clever and hard to replace, whereas other people are not.

Bitter? Me? Well yes, cos this is exactly what is happening everywhere else, including IBM. Smarter Planet my arse.