Ask HN: What happened after acquisition?

The company I was at was purchased by a much larger competitor. It wasn't a startup in the least. It was a 12 year old company. The first employee was an IT guy. He didn't win anything. Most of the 250 employees were laid off except for the IT team of 25 or so people. Customer Service, collections, marketing, operations, etc, etc, all gone. It was a high pressure situation and heartbreaking to witness and also somewhat gut wrenching to wait for the other shoe to drop.

One thing I learned is that during situations like that, the acquiring company sometimes NEEDS you to be there to ensure that their purchase does not lose value. In those cases they will provide valuable incentives. So if you find yourself in that situation and unhappy, feel free to find a better offer since you may well get a high value counter-offer.

Experience from the other side...

I've acquired and had to integrate several companies. I can remember writing the operational playbook that was used to handle the types of questions you are asking. After acquiring the companies I also had to manage them for several years and hopefully this sheds some light on what you're asking.

2 top level things. The acquired entity can stay together as a whole or it can be broken up into its functional pieces.

While there are exceptions, the back office functions and people (accounting, finance, admin, etc) will usually get folded into the back office functions of the acquiring entity. If you are an employee in this function, most likely you will get absorbed or let go.

Depending on what the terms and goals around the acquisition the other functions and roles will be absorbed. For example, if the goal is to find "synergies" then redundant or non critical resources might be reassigned or let go.

In one acquisition I kept the product, engineering and business development team completely whole and located in their own building and tried to not mess with the success they had but just give them what they needed. We planned what we wanted to accomplish and then I just let them run and help get the bureaucracy out of the way.

Cultural fit is hard and important. When I acquired another company we tried to fold them in and it was hard on everyone. Within 2 years only 1 engineer remained and he was the one that was hired right before the acquisition so it wasn't as big if a cultural impact to him. If the culture of the entities don't jibe, it can create an unhealthy tension.

Best advice I can give you is to understand the goals of the acquisition, how your role maps or fits into the combined entity, the level of specialization your role has and what your personal goals are.

It will be a process. I've been wildly successful and a terrible failure. My take away is that the goals and people matter.

Hope this helps give you some perspective.

I've worked as a consultant for 4 or 5 large companies that got acquired. One of the first things that happens is they throw out all the consultants of the acquired companies. This is different than startups. In the case of large corporate acquisitions, the benefits are mostly cost savings. "We have this many overlapping functions, if we can get rid of 40% of the people in each of them, the deal pays for itself."

To answer your direct question, I was very late into all of the companies, and didn't survive any of the acquisitions. The changes were very quick. It's part of life as a consultant. (I'm not one anymore)

I was employee # 10, the fourth software engineer. We (a 30 person company) were acquired by a much larger company (600 people), with whom I stayed for 3 more years. I received a decent retention package (walked away with ~$250K in cash from equity when I left, plus the 3 years worth of increased salary). From the day the acquisition was announced until we switched offices, however, it was nerve-wracking. We were all convinced that we were going to get laid off, no matter how many times the leadership said we wouldn't. (I mean, what else are they going to say, right?) It turned out that our fears weren't realized, and things were OK after all. There was a reshuffling of leadership, and the former CEO was let go, but everyone else pretty much stuck around for a relatively long time.

I was the last of the original team to leave. People started leaving within 3 months, and pretty much every 3-6 months another person would leave. I didn't mind it so much. Our new parent company didn't meddle too much until the end of my stay there. By the time I left, the company had grown to 2500+ employees, and I had been with the company longer than 95% of the employees. Kinda crazy.

My advice during an acquisition would be to a) get your boss to fight for you and push for a great retention package, b) polish up your resume, c) hope you don't need B because the new company is awesome. If they suck or they meddle too much or they don't actually share your personal/team values, it's time to leave.

Of course, the best advice is to be C-level, so you get a lot more than regular employees. ;)

I enjoyed my stay at the new company, but they acquired another company whose values I did not share, and that's when it was time to leave for me.

Good luck.

The experience really depends on why you were acquired. I was brought in as a consultant to support a Google acquisition 6 months in. It seemed like everyone had been interviewed during the acquisition process and depending on how you did, you became either a full-time employee or a consultant. Those that were consultants, were given a bonus when it was time to leave although some people were extended and some consultants were converted to full time. When it came time to leave, everyone left on good terms. However in my current industry vertical, companies are typically bought as cheap customer acquisition so most people are fired within 6 months.

I have worked for five companies that have been acquired whilst I was there. None were startups, I was never an early employee.

The first company I worked for was acquired within a couple of weeks of my starting to work there. It was a huge employer that kept the local economy afloat, then the new owners instigated tens of thousands of lay-offs. I left as soon as I could.

Another company was sold off very cheaply after being asset-stripped. I jumped ship as soon as I could but I'm still in touch with some people there and the new owners made a success of it.

Another firm got merged with another to provide a better range of services. There was almost no impact on my day-to-day work and no changes to terms of employment.

The next company was a small, scrappy player that got bought by their biggest competitor. A drip-feed of really crappy little changes ensued: no more flexi-time, must stay in this hotel chain, Lotus Notes for email. I had been planning to leave anyway and quit soon after the deal. Eventually everyone from the original team quit and some started a competing company in the same market.

Another company that I worked with got bought by a competitor. It became very clear that office politics trumped engineering practices throughout the new organisation. I stuck around for over a year trying to make it work but eventually I counted that my team of three engineers had five different managers each using us as leverage screw over the other guys - quitting time again!

In every case the new management said positive things, the outgoing management said positive things but there were never any actions or incentives to keep staff. This is understandable when buying market share, but that was not the case every time. Given that most coders can get a 10% raise by switching jobs, providing a 5% retention bonus seems a good way of getting engineers to ride out the changes of an acquisition.

Those managing the transition should pay attention to the little things too. I actually heard one HR person say that our coffee machine had to go because it was better than those in all the other offices of the group. You can imagine how well that change went across.

My former employer acquired their 53rd company, at the end of 2015. They laid off 20% of staff. ~1600 jobs.