In the seven years I’ve worked at this company we’ve had one crystal-clear goal in mind, one goal that is mentioned at almost every team meeting, one goal that is helped by each acquisition of another company, the destruction of arch-rival company B!
Today I just received notice that the company B is buying us.
I was RIFed last November, then brought back at a higher grade and put on a new project, looking forward to riding the new product and getting kudos and promotions out of how well this all is going.
Now I’m looking for work.
No freakin’ way will B keep us around, at least once they get a foothold in Big Blue and Emc.
Gosh darnit all to heck! Greedy bloodsuckers (I’m talking about our exec’s now). Dadburned sellouts! Finally getting the company turned around again and this.
After the layoff, I got a job at a good little company in Boulder, it was IT and on call, but it was a good place. I left them because, get this, they were looking at getting bought by a competitor. “Go back to M” I thought to myself, “They’ll pay more and they are acquiring rather than being acquired”.
Turns out they were bought by a large investment firm and it’s business as usual.
Although this garnered almost no attention, I have an update for all my fans - this deal is due to be completed the end of this month. I’ve not been idle and have a couple options potentially open to me, but today I learned that our hated arch rival wishes to keep me (and most of my cohorts), so I have a job next month. I think this is an indication of the quality of the people I work with, and I’m lucky to be associated with them.
Big frakkin’ relief to get the letter today. Now if Big Blue comes through and hires me I’ll be golden, but if they don’t I still have a job and don’t have to pursue a life of crime.
Hmmmm, that sucks. Several of my jobs in the last 6 years have been related to “company buying another company and needing to realign procedures all over the place” (I don’t like to say restructuring because that’s more accurate but has been overly misused as an euphemism for “firing folks”, which is not what I do, I tend to generate new jobs). But in none of those cases was one of the companies hated by the people from the other one… they had different ways of doing things, but everybody’s goals were similar enough.
In 05 a rival company bought the company I was at - was being the key word. I was let go in Feb 06. But I got a new job at about 23% more money so all is well. And my old company keeps calling me for consulting work, even better.
Something similar happened to me last job – although our company was actively trying to be purchased, to become part of a larger and more financiaslly set company. The company that purchased us agreed to keep everyone on and the physical plant where it was.
That lasted a year. Then they ditched everyone except for one person, packed all the equipment they wanted back to their headquarters, and left a shell of a building behind.
I myself am a mercenary - I don’t particularly care who’s writing the check, as long as someone is. Heck, I’d work for Haliburton if the pay was right.
CalMeacham, that’s what I fear. “Welcome Bobo, you have a job… for now. Mwa ha ha ha!”
Can you say who the companies are? Just curious, as IBM seems to be good at acquiring companies and their products, then not doing anything with them, leaving them to languish and die slowly. Rather like Microsoft, except MS tends to buy and bury.
I once worked for a marvelous big-little company called Olivetti-USA. The Italian typewriter turned computer company. The US “advanced development lab” employees were treated better than at any other company. Then AT&T bought it and essentially closed it down as competing with their other products. The party was over.
I worked at one of the leading school library software companies. It was privately owned by one person. He sold it to another company. Things wer fine for teh 1syt year (a few people let go immediately). A year later they decided to buy the next product rather then develop in house. 16 U.S. programmers went down to 6. (I was let go). A year later, the other shoe dropped (many US offices closed).
I was at the companies for 9 years. In all that time we were #1 or #2 trading places with another company. Just recently the main rival bought the software division (all Canadian programmers at this time).
On one hand it was kinda sad seeing "our"biggest rival buying “my” company, but on the other hand serves them right for letting us go.
Probably, I was intentionally vague originally in fear of annoying SEC and FTC. Brocade bought McDATA, pending government approval (which is still up in the air). I don’t think I’ve said anything that’s not public, except for my offer letter but since I’m theoretically anonymous, that should be cool.
I’m going to have to stop spelling their name “broke-aid”.
Probably would have had major layoffs if they didn’t acquire us, and Brocade is better than Cisco!
I’m no economics genius, but isn’t buying off the competition rather than developing a better product or service rather unhealthy for the economy? Instead of many companies competing through improvement of their product and advancing themselves thereby, we get one or two companies whose success is due mainly to engulfing and devouring everyone else. People are thrown out of work and there’s no motivation to improve. Something does not compute.
Sometimes the market can only handle so many producers, and the rest will close up shop or sell out to their competition. Sometimes the effects are bad; sometimes the effects are good.
Silkworm… Well, the conglomeration of storage, servers, and switches is known as a fabric, so I guess the Silkworm is the… the… well it’s a stupid name. Not nearly as exciting and descriptive as our product names. Who could resist the ED5000? Or the aptly named I10000?
Internal code names are usually more interesting, but marketing always manages to intervene.
Would you be ok with working for the arch-rival?
