# A weird tale of a "mystery company." **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 12, 2012, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664 "2012-05-12T02:06:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/1 "2012-05-12T02:06:15Z")
Apparently,[this company](http://wrttn.in/04af1a) was hit by a perfect storm of layoffs and document procedures. I say “perfect storm” because this kind of thing can’t be common, right? Right? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/2 "2012-05-12T02:12:56Z")
Thanks for this - I’m going to pass it on to some folks at work. ---
**Author:** ![Rocky\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@Rocky\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocky_Dog)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/3 "2012-05-12T02:27:00Z")
Sounds like a Goverment operation to me. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/4 "2012-05-12T02:39:27Z")
Welcome to my career. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/5 "2012-05-12T02:51:40Z")
This is my favorite part. > [@](#): > > Oh, and as an external consultant, I’m not allowed to know some of the trade secrets in the documents. The internal side of the team needs to handle the sensitive process information, and be careful about how that information crosses boundaries when talking to the external consultants. Unfortunately, the internal team doesn’t know what the secrets are, while I do. I even invented a few of them, and have my name on some related patents. Nonetheless, I need to smuggle these trade secrets back into the company, so that the internal side can handle them. They just have to make sure they don’t accidentally repeat them back to me. ---
**Author:** ![troubledwater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f4b2a3/32.png) [@troubledwater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/troubledwater)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/6 "2012-05-12T03:17:32Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > I say “perfect storm” because this kind of thing can’t be common, right? Right? Wrong. Wrong. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/7 "2012-05-12T03:48:02Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > Apparently,[this company](http://wrttn.in/04af1a) was hit by a perfect storm of layoffs and document procedures. I say “perfect storm” because this kind of thing can’t be common, right? Right? In my anecdotal sample size of the one\* company I worked at for 12 years, it is more common than you might think. \*Well, that “one” company was technically five companies in the time that I worked there. - Company A went in Chapter 11 and reorganized into Company B. - Company B was bought and merged with Company C. - Company C was bought and merged with Company D, who immediately spun off the original Company A into Company E. - Company E then merged with and became a division of Company F. As you can imagine, between all the layoffs, relocations, and general attrition, A LOT of institutional knowledge fell by the wayside until Company F was left with a division that was a shell of its former self. Such was the disarray, that it became necessary to essentially rebuild the company/division and its systems from the ground up. Company F found itself with not much more than a brand name and a few increasingly frustrated customers. This is the point in the story where my pink slip mercifully arrived, and I ran out of there glad to be free of that madness. I did feel a bit sorry for them though, because after the previous round of layoffs that I had survived, there were several critical and undocumented things that weren’t really part of my job description, but I was the only one left that knew how to do them. I followed their goings on at [fuckedcompany.com](http://fuckedcompany.com) for a little while, but now even [fuckedcompany.com](http://fuckedcompany.com) is fucked! From what I’ve been able to glean, my previous employer is still scraping by, servicing the same very few customers’ accounts who are basically stuck with them for reasons I can’t elaborate on without possibly giving away the company’s identity. Ahh, the dotcom days, what a long strange trip that was! ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/8 "2012-05-12T03:59:08Z")
It happens. Every time an organization goes through a cycle of layoffs, it loses some of its institutional memory. I wish people wouldn’t think of this kind of thing as a “government” problem; any large company or organization will have the same symptoms. It’s a result of organizational extent being much greater than what individual humans can handle, and the resulting difficulty of internal communication across space and time. Where I worked, I thought for years that there should have been an official museum and archive showcasing all of the old products, especially ones that had been discontinued… and right next to it an official “unofficial” archive to record the informal “folk” methods and information that sprang up among the workers as they did things. It sort of happened with a display in the lobby, but that wasn’t quite the same. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-weird-tale-of-a-mystery-company/621664/9 "2012-05-12T04:00:19Z")
P.S. The (not so) funny thing is that I still own stock in that company. But with the several rounds of significant dilution that took place, it’s all probably worth less than $1 … in Zimbabwe currency.