Just about every company I have worked for has been acquired. This is usually a result of a dedicated team of people who work really hard to grow the business, which makes it attractive to a new owner. The announcement is made one morning, surprising everyone, but it comes with promises of synergies and great things to come. The new owner always emphasizes how these great employees were the main reason they acquired the company and how they look forward to working closely together and blending cultures. Then they fire almost everyone, cut wages for the rest, roll back benefits, and screw up the product line.
The announcement came out yesterday, I'll be interested to see if this time is different or if the pattern repeats.
NOHOME
MegaDork
6/25/19 8:45 a.m.
In reply to pinchvalve :
Been on both sides of this coin.
It is inevitable.
In my personal experience, I once sat through a meeting that included the phrase, "we really love the culture that you have here and we don't want to change it."
Since I had previously worked for the acquiring company, I knew just how different the cultures were. I also knew that the acquiring company really had no idea what our culture was, other than it was different. As I predicted, things were steered to the acquiring companies culture almost immediately.
Good luck.
Ian F
MegaDork
6/25/19 9:09 a.m.
Sometimes I think it depends on what the acquiring company does. Are they a competitor offering a similar product line? If so, then I could definitely see your fears playing out.
A few years ago, my company was bought by a investment firm who apparently have a history of being fairly hands-off and letting the existing management continue to do what they do. So far, our culture hasn't changed a great deal, other than a trend towards more "corporate" HR requirements, which is somewhat of a side effect of how much bigger we are now. I am curious what will happen when the growth pattern we've been in for the past few years begins to slow.
I only have experience with my current gig.
Oracle's purchase of us was "official" January 1, 2017 (I started in Dec of 2016). We are one of the "star products," so we don't really get messed with as far as our products are concerned.
The only things that changed were less vacation (NetSuite was unlimited, we are now 13 days for 1-3 years, 18 days for 3+ years). And there is a dramatically smaller budget for things like office events and holiday parties. Apparently, NetSuite would would rent out an entire fancy restaurant, door gifts like airline tickets and iPad's, etc.
Now if we want to do something like that, it's on us to have an office potluck. Which I'm fine with, I don't care about spending more time outside of work hours with coworkers.
Culture is the same, but like I said, our GBU is pretty much treated as a standalone entity.
John Welsh said:
"we really love the culture that you have here and we don't want to change it."
We were acquired by a bigger fish last summer and funny to say I heard this.
Aaaaaand we are changing - interestingly as a few upper guys leave their replacements just happen to be from the big fish company side of things.
I thought this was going to be news of a new Kia Rondo.
The company I work for went through a period of acquiring other companies, mostly before I started here. The comments I’ve heard from employees who were added as part of the acquisition is they like it much better here than their previous company - though that could also partly be that any unhappy post-merger employees left a long time ago.
Having been on the receiving side myself a few times, it’s always gone to E36 M3 rather quickly from my experiences.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Klayfish said:
Resistance is futile
I used to work for The Borg Collective. AKA "CGI", most well known for their flagship web site: The original Obammacare. They came in to the company I worked for and took over the whole IT section. It was just like The Borg coming onto the Enterprise. Resistance is Futile. Their business model was to ID vulnerable mid size corporations, take over the IT, suck the knowledge ot of the employees brains, fire them all at the 6 month point and ship all the work to India, while trying to upcharge for everything to multiples of what they told the vulnerable company they were going to be charged.. I later found out from my boss, who was fired, that I was on the 6 month fire list. I lasted longer than CGI did.
If you are being acquired by equity partners, it’s only a matter of time.
