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Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

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Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#371

Post by Fiahil »

Your story lacks all the details that makes it interesting. Which company? What's your app? Why is it so different from existing apps that you cannot work out how to adapt on the current deployment system?

Nevertheless, yes it's very similar to my experience of bigger corporations.

First of all, you should understand your local political landscape, find allies, build your network and trade favors.

Second, things are going to take longer, there is no workaround for this. Wait until you discover you need approval from the security or ops teams for your app, you'll understand what I mean.

Then, you should also understand that you won't be able to get access to things and ship patches in projects on which you don't have responsibilities. That's expected, what do you think would happen if everyone would do the same ? On the same topic, respect your fellow engineers' time, always ask your and their managers first.

Last, you might have to talk to consultants, now (hi, it's me). It doesn't matter if they are strategy, management or AI consultancy. What does matter is that they have MUCH MORE political power than you. So, if you don't like their ideas or their approach, remember to always be nice and helpful or you will be shunted, demoted and removed from valuable teams and projects.

Welcome aboard.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#372

Post by glitchcrab »

shp0ngle wrote: post #369

Yeah that's what you get for working at a large company. The good thing: they pay is pretty good, and you can reasonably get away with doing absolutely nothing and get paid awesomely. The bad thing: nothing gets done and there are 4 layers of management, and you will end up frustrated. The job market for IT is great now. You won't "change the company from the inside". You won't be "a startup within an org". This will…

> and you can reasonably get away with doing absolutely nothing

I see comments in this vein a lot and it just blows my mind that you'd want to sit around all day doing nothing. To be clear, I'm not advocating the sort of role/company which demands 110% for 12 hours a day, work/life balance is extremely important. But I could not find any enjoyment in just sitting at my desk all day without actually doing anything productive. I guess I'm fortunate enough to have a job which I really enjoy.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#373

Post by [deleted] »

treis wrote: post #152
ascar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct link https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/rkk9qg/im_a_new_s... for everyone else having a hard time figuring out how to find the actual comment. Really worth a read and absolutely puts OPs story into perspective.

Yeah that story is total bullshit. It's someone's fantasy. The equivalent of me telling the story of my epic comeback in the Superbowl.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#374

Post by foxylad »

You just moved from a family to an organisation.

I was part of a small company that grew agressively. When you're small, you're a family - you know everyone else, you know each other's strengths and weaknesses, you help each other out, and things get done fast.

At a certain level, this breaks down - someone drops the ball and management decides that they need documented processes and systems for everything. Then you need more managers to make sure everyone is following the the processes and systems, and then you need meetings with those managers. Productivity drops by half, the number of forms you need to fill in multiplies by ten, and you get really frustrated.

I'm with you - I hate the inefficiency of larger organisations. Leave for another small startup, or even better, start your own.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#375

Post by xg15 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #118
_skel wrote: post #37

> 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…

I mean sure there is "some" truth to it. But more likely than not the acquiring company has two conflicting priorities: 1. acquire startups/talent to improve certain things that the company is incompetent at 2. actively block efforts from the startup because a certain part of the company actually believes that they are doing things better themselves, i.e. ego I advised a big US car maker on their autonomy and one par…

Not implying this is the case for OP, but there is also:

3. Acquire potential competition to get rid of them. There are cases where the parent company never intended to develop the startup's product, but simply wants to keep the startup from competing with them.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#376

Post by rgj »

sokoloff wrote: post #312
pavel_lishin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't explain why they wouldn't accept the offer of work from /u/lopkeny12ko. 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 intr…

Heaven forbid someone introduce a popular feature into an internal tool. I do know the concern here, but it seems to miss the forest for the leaves on the trees.

You mean just like when someone thought it was a cool feature to have JNDI lookups in Log4J ?

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#377

Post by garmaine »

ornornor wrote: post #368
garmaine wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt he saw a large compensation increase with the acquisition.

When $snallstartup I was an employee at got acquired by $hugemultinational, all we got was a big fat juicy 1000$ „bonus“, an attaboy, and those who had been grossly underpaid for years were brought up to market pay. And that’s it.

And "market pay" being HR's idea of the going rate, not what a good engineer with niche knowledge and startup experience could command at a big tech company.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#379

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

_skel wrote: post #37

> 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…

Having worked for years in large companies including in the public sector, your comment made my day. Everyone having experienced this kind of environment and not forced to drink the company kool-aid to advance their career knows the actual reason things take ages are far less positive especially when the request comes for a recently acquired team. Also bypassing process is the only way to truly achieve anything at very large corporations but doing it properly take skills.

Unless you are stuck there for reasons linked to your compensation or find you now want to work a lot less, provided you are good at building things in a startup environment, my advice is to leave as fast as you can.

Re: Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?

#380

Post by LatteLazy »

People here are quite caught up in why things are this way and whether it's right. But I 5hink that is irrelevant to OPs question.

OP cannot change the organisation he is part of. He lacks the authority and even if he had authority (was say CEO) changing organisation culture is really hard.

So OP must either put up or leave.

Whether, How and When to leave are the questions.

These depend on OPs circumstances:

* What other opportunities does OP have? Are there interesting startups hiring in his area (geography and expertise)? Could he start his own business? Would the mega corp let him start a separate business unit with some autonomy?

* What are ops finance's like? Can he afford to quit without another job, go to an insecure job, become an entrepreneur? Will he get a nice big bonus or stock vestment if he stays another X months?

* Does OP really care?

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