Pros
* Great technology (even if they discourage employee dogfooding) * IF you are being hired by Oracle, the starting pay is well-above-average AND you can even negotiate your IC level as part of the hiring process * OCI makes some attempts at Internet culture (free snacks including limited fresh fruit) * The education benefit is above-average though it won't pay for your entire degree. If you are on a greenfield project then you will have time to pursue this.
Cons
* IF you are acquired by Oracle (or will be): ** Your out of pocket insurance costs will go way up ** You will be put on-call without additional compensation. ** You will spend years watching your pay scale fall behind the industry... New positions will have a "pay range" and you will be underwater. ** You will be given false promises that your project won't be cancelled. They don't mean to lie. ** Technical debt will grow EXPONENTIALLY. Expect a brain drain, additional processes so that all tasks take longer to do. Then "unfunded mandates" (like: "migrate everything from GH to BB") will cause all the Chef and Ansible to break... and your short term workarounds will become permanent extra work. ** Any work you want to do to improve supporting the produce will need approval. If you get paged at 4AM twice a month, but there's no customer impact, then you are not allowed to fix the issue... even if you promised to put in extra hours to do so. That will just be viewed you're not putting in enough time for the prescribed tasks. If you are on a legacy project, you will be promised you won't be fired BUT NOT in writing. They will not find a place for you (see the Solaris folks for example). You will be allowed to re-apply for any open job however since your skill set atrophied you won't likely qualify and you will feel out of time applying somewhere else. Basically you want to leave Oracle BEFORE change of control. That way if you decide to come back, you don't need to wait the full 2 years that other employees must wait. Oh, if you're not acquired, I'd recommend a 24-month tour.