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Not feeling great after an acquisition isn't uncommon! These articles might help Examples of things going wrong after acquisition: https://sifted.eu/articles/gopuff-dija-acquisition-dilemma/ What staff actually need during mergers and acquisitions: https://sifted.eu/articles/employees-mergers-acquisitions/
I was an engineer and very early employee at a startup. I helped grow it from four clients to many millions in revenue and a successful exit. I nurtured a team of amazing engineers. I felt like I needed to stick around to see the product off to a good start and my team thriving at their new home. I was also excited because I hadn't worked at a large company since I was just out of college and I was interested in the unknown challenges that awaited.
Our parent company isn't quite as bureaucratic as yours sounds, but it's more bureaucratic than our original company, for sure. But they said all of the right things. More resources. More opportunities for personal and team growth. But things wouldn't change and we'd be left alone to continue our success but with more fuel and maybe a slight shift to integrating more smoothly with the rest of the company's products.
I also found myself in a leadership position, so I thought I could change what few small things I noticed as a bit inefficient in the the culture to be a bit more responsive.
Long story short: I'm looking for another growth stage startup to join. I probably should have done so right away.
First warning -- the new company was obsessed with what title I should have. The startup didn't put much weight in titles. We did what needed to be done. My official title was Director of Engineering -- mostly to make clients happy when I talked to them, but they definitely could not have that...that tier was full. I ended up a Solutions Architect and Technical Manager. Ok, cool. Similar responsibilities and team.
Second warning -- lots of leadership changes at the home office. We've had three CEOs since we've been acquired. We're just the right size to be a stepping stone for ambitious leaders. It's kind of amazing that we have CEOs step into a very complex organization selling very complex solutions and they expect to learn enough to make an impact in a month. Then they start to pursue their agenda with verve! So...they inherit the broad brushstrokes of the previous administration, add a few of their own, and the organization is off on a new adventure. Unfortunately, it's a recipe for a lot of stuff to be ignored. The previous agendas that might have been the first step in a fine program of ideas that would lead to wonderful things becomes The Agenda. Predictably, the first step isn't enough to see a whole lot of fruit so...yeah.
Third warning -- we weren't allowed to even talk about creating new products. We're an acquisition company, now. We buy winners. We don't risk creating losers. Not so fun for someone who Really Loves Creating New Things.
So...here I am envying your early clarity. Large companies are just different. I am starting to believe innovation at scale is rare, if it exists at all. If I were you, or me two years ago, I'd start looking for a better fit.
Let the MBAs run these companies through the motions of the terminal stages of the business lifecycle. I'm ready to get back to bringing new things to life. It sounds like you are, too.
A lot of people have talked about the issues with this post, but I wanted to call out one specific thing: The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt to answer my question but redirects me to their manager. Ok, that's odd, I think, but whatever. This is definitely not odd. The whole point of managers is that they're there to protect their engineers from getting off track with every random request that comes up.…
If that’s the case (and having found myself in that position many times, it likely is), this a failing of the parent company. I’d expect those managing the integration to assign point people, both technical and managerial, to assist with OP’s task, schedule introduction meetings and communicate expectations to both teams. That’s not too much to ask. It sounds like OP was left to navigate the situation on their own.
> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…
The amount of people on HN nowadays that are okay with getting nothing useful done is striking. Startup guy, you don't have to accept being part of a bloated hierarchy that rewards politics more than good decision-making. You could check out at the corpo job and start prototyping your own startup ideas. Or join another early stage startup where your performance matters. I'll be starting one soon - let's keep in touch…
Startups are busy trying to build a functional house of cards.
Established businesses are trying to keep employees from knocking over that functional house of cards.
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>Is this how military's organize themselves, or do they just get shi*t done? If you think the military isn't a large government bureaucracy with mountains of paper work, I recommend you talk to a veteran.
> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…
The amount of people on HN nowadays that are okay with getting nothing useful done is striking. Startup guy, you don't have to accept being part of a bloated hierarchy that rewards politics more than good decision-making. You could check out at the corpo job and start prototyping your own startup ideas. Or join another early stage startup where your performance matters. I'll be starting one soon - let's keep in touch…
You're mistaking the role of a mature company. Unlike a startup, in a mature company there are a ton of customers relying on your product and making sure you don't f*k up their business with a mistake or careless change is much more important than building cool new stuff quickly. You don't want your bank "moving fast and breaking things". There are a whole lot of industries where stability and consistency are an order of magnitude more important than fast innovation. This may not be as sexy or fun as rapidly prototyping some MVP, but it's how a lot of important stuff that runs the world works. To this end, a large org may not be everyone's cup of tea.
Yes, there will be some waste and bureaucracy at any large org, but that's not the same as a place full of people "that are okay getting nothing useful done". If anything, it's the established boring companies that are doing something useful (even if that something is not sexy or exciting), while a lot of startups are just burning through someone else's money designing things that no one really wants or needs.
> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…
> Take this as a learning experience: don't assume that you are at a startup where people will drop everything to handle a request from you right away. This doesn't explain why they wouldn't accept the offer of work from /u/lopkeny12ko. I've been in the same situation multiple times. Sometimes I've been allowed to do the work and sometimes not. In the cases where I was allowed to do the work, I certainly took longer…
I know of at least two teams who would kindly ask me to refrain from doing this; me doing the work doesn't mean they don't have to do any. They still have to take the time to review my code, provide feedback, possibly explain to me their standards and conventions. Afterward, they have to maintain and own my changes - what if I introduce a bug? What if the feature is popular enough that they now have to add additional functionality onto it?
And the people telling you, that's just the way it is, and the managers have their reasons? Of course they have their reasons, but they are not yours. They have families they need to take care of, they got used to their big pay checks, and all of these things make it impossible to do certain things anymore, although they might seem simple.
> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer. Your simple task, which you think would only take a few days to implement, is probably one request in a long queue of requests that team is dealing with. That means they won't be able to start on it for a long time. That team probably set up t…
> Take this as a learning experience: don't assume that you are at a startup where people will drop everything to handle a request from you right away. This doesn't explain why they wouldn't accept the offer of work from /u/lopkeny12ko. I've been in the same situation multiple times. Sometimes I've been allowed to do the work and sometimes not. In the cases where I was allowed to do the work, I certainly took longer…
Probably because $BIG_CORP was also a nimble startup ages ago, and people had written important APIs as fast as possible because they had to, and they were successful, and the company grew, and three years later the core team realized they're supporting three different sets of APIs which all overlap but do things slightly differently, and because 70% of the company revenue depended on it, it took five more years and the souls of a few dozen developers to finally get it cleaned up.
Understandably they don't want to open their codebase to someone thinking "It's just one feature that takes a few days to add! What's the issue?" - they're probably thinking "Will this make sense five years from now? What if $ACRUIRED_PROJECT gets deprecated later? Honestly I bet this project won't last two years..."
...or maybe they are just power-tripping lazy-asses. That also happens.
In my experience, it helps a lot to imagine the motivations behind each process in an uncynical light. Everyone is trying to solve their own problems, which aren't necessarily the same as your problems or the organization's as a whole. You went from an environment where whatever you were working on was a huge part of the overall organization to another environment where, proportionately, it simply isn't as important. If your startup had kept going, it would've ended up looking very similar as it got bigger.
Large companies are just startups that've learned more hard lessons. Every one of those processes were put in place in order to protect something or someone from the harms of doing what you're doing. They didn't emerge from nothing. You don't have to like it, but I encourge you to respect it.