Good people are leaving or have left Oracle dev. Some of these leave voluntarily because they see the writing on the wall and want to work at a good company on good products.
Some of us, though, were actually attacked and driven out of the company. In my case I had written a very complicated web app that only I could do, since I had the experience and the skill set to write it. I was sabotaged and attacked by a group that wanted control of that application, so I left.
Since that time, the application has died completely. The group lacked the skills to continue with the work and the manager and his thugs were too unbelievably stupid to even know they would not be able to continue, as I made it look so easy. I had offered to train people in the group and I would have had no problem continuing to work with them, so long as I was given the credit due to me and was not actively being sabotaged at every turn.
Oracle has lost in this area, as that application is now completely dead and it will never see the light of day. The group that took it and has now failed to be able to continue the work, is now saying that maybe they just don't need one of those applications after all, since they can't honestly admit how unbelievably inept they are. I assume also that they blame me for leaving to the management above, even though they know that they deliberately drove me out.
I know of another man who was attacked and sabotaged in a similar way. He was brilliant. The people around him were jealous and unbelievably stupid.
So, it's not just that good people are seeing the light and leaving. There are groups that actively target and attack exceptional developers to get control of areas in development. Unfortunately, the thugs that are left are then incapable of doing any real work.
HR is complicit in supporting the people who plan and instigate attacks like this. People who do attacks like this take that into consideration when they sabotage the good developer under attack, doing things like actively working to get the developer upset and then recording comments they make out of context to provide to HR.
Oracle development is like a junior-high school gone wrong. The idiotic and psychotic thugs are in charge. The brightest kids are under attack, beaten up and tied up in the basement, while the thugs make up stories about how awful they are, to tell the teachers and administration, who are completely clueless about what's going on at the lower levels of development.
So long as the thugs have control and are inventive enough in their stories, none of the administration ever look in the basement.
There is no hope for Oracle. Oracle development has been overrun and there is nothing left except to find a way out. There are good companies on the outside. Leave the thugs behind to live in their Country Club where they force other people to do their work for them. There is no reason to be at Oracle.