Advice for Surviving a Buyout? 51
Anonymous for Good Reason asks: "I'm working for a small-medium sized software company that looks like it's going to be bought by a much larger company. We (employees) aren't being told anything yet, but the behavior of our management and some of the information we have been asked to provide all make it pretty clear that somebody is going through due diligence and trying to close the deal. How have other people fared during these kinds of buy-outs? What did you do to make sure you kept your job and weren't RIF'd after the dust settled? How did your stock options, pay, benefits, etc transfer, and was there anything you would have done different to protect yourself? Was the cultural change a problem, or were you welcomed warmly into the fold? I'm mostly interested in stories from people whose companies were bought by the really big players (IBM, MS, Sun, CA, HPaq, etc.) since that's what this will probably be. Since I have never been through a merger of this type, I'm not sure what to expect and with the current economy I would like to increase my chances of staying employed. Any insight the Slashdot crowd has would be interesting."
Don't admit to liking Michael Bolton! (Score:3, Funny)
It depends on the Company (Score:5, Informative)
The part of DEC that got bought by CA was destroyed. Most of the folks didn't make it past the end of the first year, and you could count on one hand the number of people who made it past 2 years. (Out of about 150.) Many speculated that they bought the division of DEC that they did to eliminate competition.
CA's "Culture" was very, very different than it was at DEC, and many people considered it to be employee hostile. The attrition rate was aboout 2% per week.
I lived thru the network business at DEC getting bought by Cabletron. That was another culture clash as well, but not as strident as the CA one.
In this case, many felt that it was a company that bought a good sized business and didn't really know how to get the value out of their new products and employees. It, too, shrunk from something like 1400 people when the deal was announced to 800 by the time the deal was closed, to about 100 by two years latter. Then, that business, with no (new) products, and most of the knowledge of the current products gone out the door, was spun off to another tiny company, which
still exists today, but much smaller, since they layed off most of the remaining engineers.
Bottom line, it depends on who is buying your company and why, as well as the attitudes of the new buyer. If they can deal with absorbing your company, and have an interest in continuing the products, then there is reasonable hope.
HP (Score:1)
Buyout experience. (Score:5, Informative)
First, getting bought out is a lot better than getting laid off-- I've ridden a couple companies all the way down, and let me tell you its no fun.
My experience with having our 40 person company bought by a 40,000 person company:
1- Stock options. They paid off well. And the company handled all the unvested options by sending a separate check covering the value of those options (We were bought for cash).
2- When you get bought for stock (which is more likely) suddenly, you're an investor in this other company. You need to go out and do good research on this company to decide whether this company is a good investment. whether your share of the company getting bought is worth $1,000 or $100,000 -- you now have invested that amount in the new companies stock. If this is a bad investment, you need to start moving your money out! (And if this is a big percentage of your net worth, diversifying may be a good idea.)
If you've spent a couple years investing and know how to do this analysis (and your "Analysis involves actually reading their financial reports, and determining the right price, not just momentum) then you already know what to do. If not, the only short cut is to go to quicken.com and get their one-click scorecard for the company buying you. Use the NAIC Rules or the Buffett method. If the company is not a "buy" under these criteria, and the reason is more than one thing (or the reasons are fundamental ones- and the company hasn't been a buy for awhile) then you probably should consider selling. I'm not giving you advice- I don't know squat about the company thats buying you-- but you are essentially selling your stock in the old company and buying stock in the new company at the price of the deal! IF that price is not a good one, then its a bad investment! Even if it seems like "free money".
3- You're probably going to get better benefits. big companies tend to have these worked out, with lots of little benefits, etc. The biggest benefit you risk loosing is vacation time, as bigger companies tend to be less smart about this than small companies. Ask for adjustment to your salary to cover the weeks you lose if you lose any.
4- Bigger companies do weird things. They will likely put lots of silly contracts in front of you. In my experience, they asked us to sign something that was illegal or unenforceable in our state. I balked and the HR drone didn't know what to do-- but the HR rep was cool about it, and impressed when I showed him the law in question. Generally, I've found you don't have to sign all the silly paperwork. FRankly, in reality, all the paperwork you already signed you're still bound by, and they still have an IP contract and all that, since they bought the company and your responsibility transferred with ownership-- so if they ask you to sign new noncompetes, and stuff like that, take that for the negotiation opening it is and make sure you don't get screwed.
4- Layoffs. I was laid off about a year after the company bought us. They laid half our staff off cause they realized they probably shouldn't have bought us. The severance package was good, and that was a pleasant surprise. When a startup goes under the severance is usually two weeks, this was much better. How to avoid being let go? Be a good employee. Usually they don't reorg the whole thing... but many people start bucking for positions inside the larger company. If you smell layoffs, get on the larger companies intranet and find other position there to apply for. You have an advantage by already being an employee.
5- You have warning, if you haven't already saved 6 months of living expenses, start putting away %25 of your gross income now. IT almost always takes a couple months for them to start axing people-- if that's what they're going to do-- and so the next six months will allow you to save a couple months salary.
You're right to be wary-- be conservative with money, seriously look into the new companies stock to see if its a good investment, and keep your bosses happy-- they'll probably be your new bosses and if layoffs come, they'll have to decide who gets to go.
Good luck!
Re:Buyout experience. (Score:2)
Yep, didn't think so. Video is 720x480 at 29.97 fps.
Not 320x240 @ 5 fps.
Expect the unexpected... (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck! Regards,
-too frequent chute user.
Also... (Score:2)
Do it nicely, saying that you of course trust the person you're talking to, but it would ease your mind greatly to have everything in writing, blah, blah, blah. But get it in writing.
I know of one recent acquisition where it was promised that everybody who wasn't immediately layed off would get signing bonuses. The execs of the acquired company had negotiated separate contracts that mentioned the signing bonuses. But the regular workers signed a contract that said nothing about that. And funny, a month later, the new parent company cancelled the bonuses.
Re:Expect the unexpected - no joke! (Score:2)
Get your resume in order, call your contacts, network, take the secretary who Knows All out to lunch and find out what's happening, if possible. But in all circumstances, be ready to move when the situation becomes a difficult one, as the odds are probably against you and your co-workers in the current business environment.
Regards,
-ocelot wreak.
My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope your experence is better.
Often a reverse-rif.... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of examples of this out there.
Re:Often a reverse-rif.... (Score:2)
Re:Often a reverse-rif.... (Score:1)
Why are you eing bought? (Score:3, Insightful)
Happening as we speak... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been working for a large financial company for the past 5 years. We were just bought out by the biggest bank in Europe. I was chief geek for our company's web apps & architecture team. What happened is that at first, there was a merger where people scrambled and said "Ok, who can merge X and Y fastest?" You'd think that in that situation the bigger, newer player would always choose their own technology, but that didnt' happen. On the contrary, I thought that we dazzled them with exactly how prepared we were for such things. For the merger, several of the bigger company's sites were killed, and we got to create a couple of new ones. In short, we thought we were doing pretty good -- we offered a platform that the new company just didn't have. I was one of the chief cheerleaders trying to shoot down hallway rumors by pointing out how much we offered that the new company just didn't have.
Then the geography rumors hit. The new company is based in New York, we're not. So regularly we would hear that they're closing us. yet, all the officers would tell us "There's no mandate to close this office." On the contrary, the new company even had some 9/11 issues to deal with, and we were under the opinion that they *liked* the idea of not being centralized in New York like they used to be.
Then the IT pruning began, and this is what killed us. It seemed like every quarter we'd be given another percentage number to hit. Layoff 20%. Now another 30%. You agonize over what 3 people to get rid of in the first round, then have to find another 4 people 2 months later. Sucks. You start saying "We can't *do* anything now that we're this small", and you start to realize the end is near. You realize that you're getting hit far greater than New York, and despite the fact that there "is no mandate", the simple truth is that all the bigtime execs are in New York and like to keep their people close.
Right around now you realize that the world is not what it was 3 years ago, and that sucks. Engineers get pissed and say "Screw it, I'm looking for a new job." Management counters with, "Have a nice time. You're not going anywhere." Chaos ensues when people who anticipated a layoff actually *do* find jobs and quit, thus royally messing up the headcount. We had this happen - had to get rid of some people, told them, and then another guy said "Well, I quit" so we had to un-layoff somebody.
About 2 months ago the final word came as the new owners swooped in, said "All developers on this team except for you two guys, you're gone. You two are transitional until next quarter. Operations crew can stay and keep the sites running." And that, as they say, is that.
First reaction of all the people around me was, "Oh, come on, you've done really good work for them for 5 years, surely if they're getting rid of your department, they can find a place for you somewhere else." Rebuttal: "Anybody at the original company who might have been able to do that is already gone. I'm lucky to have survived as long as I did. The new company never saw us as anything but a number on a budget. Nothing we could possibly have done would have changed that."
Sucks, but that's the story of what happened to us. The painful part was watching it happen with our hands tied and wondering if we could have changed it. I don't think we could have, which is what keeps me from getting too depressed. I can still tell myself that we did some good work, and not beat myself up over mistakes we might have made that cost us our jobs.
Good luck to you.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:3, Interesting)
This cautionary tale is probably not that rare or unique-- and it shows just how screwed up management at large companies can be.
This is why small companies have an advantage- letting geography, or other non-performance criteria decide who stays and who goes undermines the companies ability to function.
Employees should be loyal as long as the company is loyal... but if they have layoffs one quarter and then layoffs again the next quarter, its clear they don't know what they are doing. (Layoffs once a year are acceptable-- sometimes things happen. But when you do it twice-unless something serious happened, like a major earthquake or 9/11 that affected the economy- that's a sign of bad management. Always lay off enough people to make yourself profitable for the year and do it ONCE. You have two layoffs and you just shot the moral and the loyalty of every employee still at the company.)
And if you didn't get laid off in the first round, and a good job opportunity came by, take it. Unless you know your position is secure for the long term, the company has put the writing on the wall (eg, if they are the kind of company to likely have new layoffs next quarter).
Companies aren't and shouldn't be loyal to their employees when times are tough-- though good companies never let times get that tough on them. Employee loyalty is called vesting-- if you aren't vesting, you don't owe them more than 30 days notice.
That's the breaks. My company laid me off, and did such a class act job of it, that I'd be very happy to go work for them again-- they bought my happiness, essentially. Hell, I *want* to work for them again because I know I like the people there and that they are a class act (I had a choice whether to leave or not, and took the severance).
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:5, Interesting)
One company I worked for had layoffs in December one year. The following February, the CEO said in a webcast to the whole company that if business didn't pick up there would be more layoffs the following May. Maybe he intended it to scare everyone into working harder, but the result was productivity went through the floor as most employees did one or both of a) sending out resumes, networking and interviewing full time or b) scheming to get laid off and collect a severance package. Everyone helped themselves to office supplies and used the printers, fax machines and phones for job hunting. Many employees openly referred to the office as "job club" (in the UK that is the term for a government-run employment agency) and getting laid off as "hitting the jackpot".
That round, the second, really broke the back of the company since by happenstance or their own design, most of the "heavy lifters" were gone. Not just the tech elite, but the MBAs too. Next September there was a third, not long after that a fourth, then I stopped bothering to keep track.
Lessons learnt:
It's funny how things go around. The "vibe" at the time was almost the same as the vibe at the IPO - like a party. People who got kept their jobs were the most depressed, the people who got laid off felt they'd been freed!
Companies aren't and shouldn't be loyal to their employees when times are tough--
Agreed. After all, employees are always disloyal to employers when a better offer comes along. Loyalty only makes sense when the interests of both counterparties are aligned.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:2)
* The second round is the best time to be let go - you don't have the stigma of first-round deadwood, and the company probably still has the cash to gice a decent package (the folks after round 4 I believe got statutory minimum).
I laughed out loud when I read this. It's so true. The first round at my old company was no big deal, it wasn't till the second when people who were really good started getting hit.
* If you think it's coming, sit tight, no point in resigning if they want to pay you to leave.
Amen! We spent the last two weeks looking for jobs and working on each others resume's.
It's funny how things go around. The "vibe" at the time was almost the same as the vibe at the IPO - like a party. People who got kept their jobs were the most depressed, the people who got laid off felt they'd been freed!
Memories. Yeah I remember when I got laid off, the feeling of relief, not having to wonder if it was going to happen. I talk to people still at the company and they lived like that for a long time.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:5, Informative)
Where in the world do employees then get the idea that a company is entitled to give you a job? You knew the conditions of the relationship before you started; why do you honestly think you have room to bitch about them when you get axed?
Also, a lot of people have the idea that it is immoral to fire or lay someone off. Why? Because you expected to work there until it was convenient for you to quite? With the same argument, it is then immmoral for a person to quite or retire from a job. Afterall, the company expected you to work there until they didn't need you any longer.
I'm just an employee of a large insurance company, but I'm a realistic. We have a deal. I give 40 hours, and they send me a check every two weeks. I get certain time off, and some other benefits while I'm working there. It's in writing. If for some reason, they don't need me anymore or they can't afford me, they can lay me off. If for some reason, I find a better opportunity some where else, I can quit. If the company lays me off on good terms (severence package), I may come work for them again. If I leave the company on good terms (2 weeks notice), they may let me work for them again. I UNDERSTAND THE AGREEMENT. Don't read into it or make assumptions beyond this. They don't exists. If you don't like the agreement, find some other way to make money; ie, start your own business.
Think about that... starting your own business. Whatever you are doing, whatever your skills are, you are producing a profit for your company. Use those same skills to produce a profit for yourself. A little easier said than done, and a lot riskier, but it's a different agreement, and you can't get fired or laid off. You also won't get paid for lazy days or weeks or whatever, but it's a different arrangement.
Other possible arrangements include those of thievery, black market sales (ie, drugs), conning, marrying into money, hoping for rich granny to die, winning the lottery, living on the street, moving to a warm place and living on the street, traveling the world teaching english for food and shelter, mooching off your parents-friends-sibblings-etc, selling sex on the street corner (after all, it's my sexy body and i'll do what i want), sueing everbody, or even asking for donations and when refused suing for racial discrimination (it works for jesse jackson), living off of wellfare checks and food stamps, begging for change, begging for change on the internet. Send me $20 and I'll send you pamphlet on these alternative arrangements.
DISCLAIMER I neither advicate or advise doing anything illegal or immoral to make a living.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:4, Insightful)
It saddens me to think that people have been conditioned to think this way. Saddens and sickens me.
My first "Real" job out of college was with a small software firm. It had about 50 people, about 40 locally and the rest in remote offices scattered around the country.
The synergy of the employess struck me as awesome. The people were an eclectic mix of various techinical and educational backgrounds and personalities. Everything simply worked.
The driving force -- no, the soul -- of this company was the owner. He was the most genuinely good man I think I've ever known. Everyone thought the world of him. The big story was that in the earlier days of the company, he took out a 2nd mortgage several times to cover payroll until sales picked up!
When times were lean, we didn't mind not getting raises or top notch pay because the workplace was so great and we knew the owner would take care of us when times improved.
While some true deadwood and/or bad apples got cut occasionally, there were never any layoffs for the sake of keeping the company afloat.
Some business owners may say it's foolish for the captain to go down with his ship, but I respected that attitude. The guy already had enough money in the bank to float a long time if the business ever folded. So he knew he had "enough" money and actually cares for the well-being of his employees.
That said, I would have stayed with the company until the end -- all of us would have. It was a true two-way relationship.
Sadly, tbe company merged with another larger one (~250 employees). The new management sucked ass. The customers balked. We employees balked. But the former owner was pretty much powerless to resolve anything at that point. While he thought he was benefitting everyone (and we all did, too -- I myself was a poster boy for the merger), it appeared in retrospect that the larger company simply wanted our (very loyal) user base and didn't give a rat's ass for the assimilated employees or customers, as it pretty much shelved our software and most of the original employees from our company.
I aspire to one day, if I ever run a business, be as good a man as the one I once worked for. If every owner was like this, this country would be a better place for it.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:2)
Ya think so?
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:2)
If you believe that companies should not be allowed to fire workers when times are tough, then you must also believe that employees shouldn't be allowed to quit when they get a better offer. They're two sides of the same coin.
Re:Happening as we speak... (Score:2)
You're saddened and sickened, but you didn't seem to comprehend what I said.
I worked for a company much like the one you described. With an owner who was the first programmer, and still was programming day to day. He was a great guy, and the only bad thing about that situation is *I* left it (when they hired a bad manager, but before they realized he really was a bad manager-- it was a catch-22, me and another top flight guy leaving is what made them realize the problem.)
But he ran his business a certain way, and he was loyal to us, and thus we returned the loyalty.
There's nothing wrong with loyalty-- and I'm always loyal to someone in the company (Rarely the "Company", but often the CEO, or my boss- whomever is worthy.)
But the idea that companies are doing something wrong when they lay people off is incorrect-- it comse from the deep seated marxism in modern liberalism. Good companies never really have to lay people off- attrition takes care of it for them. Less good companies do ONE-- and only one-- layoff. When a company does a second layoff inside of a year, all bets are off.
But I've known a couple companies that did one layoff (And its not a "getting rid of the slackers layoff- they loose good people, cause they have to cut deep to make it worth the cost)-- and then didn't do any more.
When EMC ate DG (Score:2, Interesting)
The death of Truevision (Score:3, Interesting)
When tv was small, it was a cool company, profit sharing,
everyone pulling together, driven to get great products out
the door. Then things changed. "Management" viewed the
company's success not as a group effort but due to their
management skills. Profit sharing dried up. People started
getting fired, mainly for trying to keep a stake in the company
the started. The company's product focus shifted from video
to being the company itself. This lasted about a year. One
day, they got everyone together and told us what great news
they had. We'll all have to make some sacrifices but it'll be great.
In less than two years, it was all but dead. Exec's playing musical
chairs, grabbing for money. The engineers and support staff that
actually build the company were viewed as disposable equipment.
Sucks. It was cool when it started. Ego and greed did it in. About
all that's left is the legacy of the
Run (Score:1)
You are screwed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Read This (Score:3, Insightful)
3 times... (Score:1)
I quit and got another job before any of the buy outs were finalized and have never regretted it.
Things might work out - things will be OK - things will be better - BULL SHIT. Each time I would have HATED it if I would have stayed. You work for a company because A: you want to - B: you have to. If your in the B section - then it might be OK for you stick around and see what happens. But if you choose to work at the company that your at - then you won't like the buy out one bit.
The buy out process is painful and stupid and frustrating and several other things - its not worth the bull shit to me to see if I will still have a job at the end of the day. My advice is look elsewhere before everyone else is looking.
Duke
Re:3 times... (Score:2)
Three times you gave up all those stock options just before a liquidity event? Talk about selling low! Especially when the shares are so dear.
I can't see how that's a good thing.
Oh, you didn't have stock options, did you.... I see. I think that was the problem.
IF you're working for a company, and them getting bought out (not as a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy) isn't the best thing to happen to you all year-- you negotiated a bad deal when you got hired.
Always work for equity. Most of the time, the equity I got paid ended up being nearly worthless, but when it wasn't, it more than made up for all of them, and then some.
Here's what happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Big company institutes its policies on small company, perhaps cuts some of small company's redundant staff -- small company's HR department, for example, goes bye-bye.
Small company is now dependant on big company for resources, like HR.
Attrition begins on small company: if big company is doing layoffs, small company has to do layoffs with it, but small company doesn't get many (if any) new hires.
Small company, which now has less employees, can do less, resulting in big company treating it like a liability and stepping up the attrition rate.
Small company eventually folds, with any remaining employees fired or relocated to wherever big company is.
Long story short, big company buys small company because small company has something it needs. Once it has it, it doesn't need small company beyond a short transition period, and it's not going to keep small company around.
Yes, I'm cynical.
Your old company is being eaten (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll see layoffs in HR, Finance, and Accounting first - these departments are nearly identical across all companies. If you mainly do work for one of these departments, get transfered. Then come the easily digestible IT departments: Networking, Desktop support, Help Desk, etc. Day-to-day Ops Application support is usually safe for a while. Developers, DBAs, and SAs it depends. I've seen a couple of companies layoff all the SAs & DBAs and add those duties to the Dev staff.
Let's see... (Score:3, Funny)
(for the humor-impaired, this is the plot to the movie "Office Space", a geek standard).
Seriously, good luck! A few good things can happen: you're kept and enjoy your job. you're laid off and find a better job. You hate the new company and find a better job.
Can take years before you know the effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a word, it can take years before the effects are known. I used to work for a company that wa sbought out. 7 years latter the parent finially admited that the salemen would never sell the (good) products that the smaller company had, and got rid of everyone. Of course in 7 years most of the work force in the smaller company had changed just because few people stay on that long, so the people affected are not the people who were there when it happened. All along they funded some good engineering.
Historical perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Make sure the company buying really knows what your company does, has realistic expectations of what they want you to do for them, and is not over-valued in the market. If none of these happen, hope to the Gods they vest your options when the merger hits (Sun didn't) and that they have a good severance plan (Sun did).
In the case of Sun/Cobalt:
* Sun didn't understand the Linux market and therefore didn't realize that Cobalt appliances were -not- going to carry them into the Linux server space.
* Sun didn't understand that to penetrate the linux server space (beyond appliances) they would need to add people to the Cobalt force if they also expected the server appliances to continue. Worse, Sun didn't allow the group to replace members who left.
* Sun didn't understand the sales model behind the Cobalt appliances and just assumed that sales and support could be folded into the same organizations as everything else. This killed the Cobalt sales model and forced many distributors to go away. I won't even talk about support beyond that fact that after Sun it was even worse and Cobalt struggled there to begin with.
* Sun / Cobalt chose not to vest employee options at the time of purchase, supposedly to provide incentive for employees to stay on with the company. In truth, it did have that effect (and we also got a 6-month retention bonus) but in the end it meant no one ever saw any money from stock options unless they got in when Cobalt was valued at less than $3/share.
* Sun was very overvalued during the tech bubble. I don't know of anyone who joined Cobalt after November, 1999 (when they went public) who made any money off of stock options except for the 2 or 3 people at the very top. If they had vested employees at the time of merger this would have been different.
* When Sun saw the bubble collapsing they decided to slowly kill off Cobalt by attrition rather than invest in helping create new appliances that would satisfy new markets.
* When the RIFs/layoffs finally hit about a year after the merger, more than 50% of the former Cobalt field employees were gone (average at Sun was less than 20%) and about 30-40% of the employees at the home office were hit.
* A year later, when further RIFs/layoffs hit another year later, most of the rest of us were gone. Damage estimates so far make it appear that they laid off nearly 100% of the field folks and about 30-40% of the home office employees. About the only people left from Cobalt are the folks key to providing engineering and support to the existing products.
* The only decent point is Sun had a decent severance package. Most people got between 2 and 6 months of pay depending on how long they had been with Sun.
* Based on what was being said before the last RIF, it would appear that the appliances are on their last leg. Most of the folks that came from Cobalt now work on things like the LX50 (GP server) and Sun Linux, though it sounded like Sun Linux was due for a major shift out of the mainstream, too, despite all the promises that were made for that.
Overall, I think Sun was a good company to work for, the problem was that the Cobalt folks were creating things that were outside the box. That's a bad place to be
Re:Historical perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
Steven DeWitt (former Cobalt CEO) did a masterful job of selling the company and the vision to Scott McNealy, just in the nick of time, and made himself and the top Cobalt execs a boatload of money. I don't begrudge him that at all -- probably that move kept Cobalt 'afloat' for longer than it might have on its own. But Sun just wasn't the right place for Cobalt... Apple or SGI probably would have been better, as they are a bit more "creative"...
So watch your step... if you're already questioning whether you might have a future there, you probably ought to at least brush up your resume and start seeing what else is out there...
And good luck to you, whatever happens!
Re:Historical perspective (Score:2)
When you have stock optiosn you can't exercise after the merger, take some money and buy long term puts on the parent company.
If the market crashes, the puts pay off handsomly, and you have locked in the value of your now-not-so-overpriced stock options.
If the market continues to boom, you've just bought insurance and don't have to feel bad that you covered your ass.
The absolute wost thing you can do (And a lot of people did this because they didn't bother to talk to anyone who knew squat about finances) is to buy a house based on teh value of your stock options-- unless you recognize that value right then and there and buy the house for cash.
Around here, people are killing themselves by sellign their houses for far less than they paid, because they could never really afford them in the first place.
My advice? (Score:2)
Web logs, and why you want to be taken over. (Score:2)
Remember that a takeover can be a time of hope and opportunity. They want your company for a reason. Maybe its to snuff it out, but thats actually fairly rare. If they really want the technology then the technology people can expect job security, with the opportunity for promotion and pay rises. Technology companies real value is generally in the heads of the people who are making it. Without that all the IPR in the world is so much scrap paper. Your purchaser almost certainly knows this.
Paul.
You will or you won't (Score:2)
If you're a hard worker, skillful, and not making a hojillion dollars (unless you are really doing something almost no one else could do) you'll probably survive most buyouts. Take a look around your work area at people doing similar things and ask yourself, objectively "If I was an employer and could keep only one of the two, would it be him or me?".
A buyout WILL involve layoffs. Its sad to say, but if your current company was doing so well to begin with, they wouldn't be thinking of selling.
My acquisition. (Score:1, Interesting)
All the employees made a bunch of noise about the new, hellish commute (15 minute walk vs 45 minute drive!).
Eventually we got a good deal out of them:
6K salary increase.
work from home as your manager would allow.
commuting costs paid for 6 months.
About half of our group of 40 have been laid off since then (14 months since we've been acquired).
Rules I'd follow:
Follow the lead of the most valuable employees. If they're on board, you be on board. If they're going to fight, back them up as much as you can, but realize you might end up being in the most valuable group if they decide they're not coming.
Start looking right away. It can't hurt.
Make your name known. Through efficient use of discussion forums and mailing lists, I made it clear I knew about the product they had just acquired. "If you have a deep technical question, you ask me or you get a wrong answer." If you can't do that, be helpful, be known and be flexible.
Do NOT piss your management off.
We had this one guy who yelled at the President at the christmas party, and then went out of his way to break a few other company rules. He was out in the first round of layoffs (there were many less productive employees they could have gotten rid of instead).
Have compasion for your manager. My manager is someone from the old company. I no longer go out of my way to poke fun at him in meetings, he's got it hard enough. He's now one of the little people, not one of the people "in the know"...