On the otherhand in that scenario the incumbent product was successful where the acquired company wasn't, which is probably more the reason why it was a disaster.
Absolutely - I think the original article implicitly assumes that it's a successful product that is being acquired. After all, why would anyone buy a company with an unsuccessful product? (but then, there are a lot of good reasons to do so.)
The author makes a telling comment about how "worker-bee" programmers can be reassigned that displays the same contempt for developers as the managers who call them "resources". Call it a pet peeve, I guess.
One other factor to consider is that if a company were to do multiple acquisitions and consistently behave this way (immediately lay off every manager of the "losing" internal product), it would likely create a not-very-healthy culture of fear and opposition to acquisitions.
That's not to say, of course, that underperforming managers should get a break "just because". Rather, it seems reasonable to say that their performance and future roles should be re-evaluated along with every other affected party's - and yes, they probably shouldn't end up leading the newly acquired team a la Collabra.
(Keep in mind that sometimes the internal product's lack of success is quite often due to senior management's decisions... the same senior management that makes the decision to acquire).
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadhttp://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rew...
On the otherhand in that scenario the incumbent product was successful where the acquired company wasn't, which is probably more the reason why it was a disaster.
One other factor to consider is that if a company were to do multiple acquisitions and consistently behave this way (immediately lay off every manager of the "losing" internal product), it would likely create a not-very-healthy culture of fear and opposition to acquisitions.
That's not to say, of course, that underperforming managers should get a break "just because". Rather, it seems reasonable to say that their performance and future roles should be re-evaluated along with every other affected party's - and yes, they probably shouldn't end up leading the newly acquired team a la Collabra.
(Keep in mind that sometimes the internal product's lack of success is quite often due to senior management's decisions... the same senior management that makes the decision to acquire).