Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 464 posts

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

#61

Post by PragmaticPulp »

I’ve been there before.

It’s all going to come down to your manager. You shouldn’t be out there fighting for resources from other teams and arguing their relative priority. Your manager needs to be working within the new company to establish priorities and get the appropriate time, money, headcount, and resources in place to make these things happen. The platform team won’t automatically know your situation and it’s not really your place to drive it. Get your manager involved.

However, you have to watch closely to see how your management chain is handling the acquisition the great energy and enthusiasm they had for the startup might be completely gone now that they’ve been acquired. If they’re only sticking around long enough to cash in their earn-out provision, they may be completely uninterested in helping out. If this is the case, you probably aren’t going to get any happier in your current role.

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

#62

Post by gwbas1c »

dpark wrote: post #29

> Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app), they quote us a delivery timeline of end of Q1 in 2022. This is where your manager (and if necessary their manager) needs to get involved. Is this actually important and urgent work? If so, they need to work with this other team’s manag…

Exactly, and:

> I'm working on migrating our apps to the parent company's VM launching and deploy platform

Who asked you to do this? They should be "going to bat" to make sure that you're getting what you need to do this.

If it's some high up in your acquiring company who asked for this, that high up should be talking to the other team and making it known that they need to cater to you.

But: If this is some initiative from your team because you're good team players, expect whoever wants this done to put in the political grind. ("You asked for xyz, you need to do the politics if you want this donw.") Otherwise, it's best to move to a different task.

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

#63

Post by itoocode »

Yes, large companies work this way. I think you are person who does not want to waste your time for the sake of slow process. Staying longer will make you feel less confident of yourself. If it was me I would look for another fast paced startup or medium sized company.

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

#64

Post by mfrye0 »

Yes, this is how a lot of large companies work - I've worked at several like that.

As far as what to do, it depends on your comp. If you're still vesting, mentally check out and rest/vest until you make enough to feel comfortable. Depending on the company, it's pretty easy to get by doing nothing, and/or you can work on your own stuff on the side.

If you're not vesting anymore, the vesting amount is not worth it, or you prefer to move faster / do something, quit and get out.

Alternatively if you want to stay, a large company is a different game. Again depending on the company, but it's more about image, strategy, politics, and non technical sort of work.

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

#65

Post by beaconstudios »

JamesBarney wrote: post #42
dogleash wrote: post #21

>Is this how it's like at all large companies? Not all, but a lot. >What should I do? Short term: Mentally check out. Embrace the Zen of just doing what's asked of you. It's not your job to be a go-getter anymore. Half because of institutional complexity/inertia, and half because in a tall organization hierarchy the middle managers don't want anyone below them swimming outside their lane (even if it would be to their…

This. I call this achieving Enterprise Zen. You have to let go of your attachment to productivity and ponder on kohns such as "If a task is accomplished but no one sees it on a report, was that task accomplished?"

Ugh, the management visibility dance might be the worst part of enterprise work.

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

#66

Post by ameliaibwne »

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/

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

#67

Post by achillesheels »

_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…

>Learn how the system works, and learn how to be effective within that system.

And what if the system is corrupt? Do you advocate complacency?

> but I also know for sure that new employees who try to bypass process and question the priorities of other teams, before they learn the ropes and build credibility and trust with other people, do not succeed.

And what if the people who do not succeed with such bureaucracy are actually better off for not being compliant? What is your measure of success? $?

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

#68

Post by davidw »

I did some work for a Large Company. One Monday I try and log in, and my hyper-secure laptop won't let me do anything. Try a few more times and then call my immediate manager, wondering if they've let me go or something. Nope, they're aware of the glitch and are working on it. I hang out and wait. Call again before lunch. Nothing. Still nothing at the end of the day. I call again the next morning. "Still working on it". I go for a nice bike ride at lunch time but otherwise hang out hoping it'll get fixed and I can continue doing my work.

In the end, it took them an entire week to fix it, and since none of it was my fault, of course I got paid. No one seemed to really mind that a week's worth of senior engineer salary was just gone. Except for me, I guess - I like coding and building stuff and fixing bugs and making things work.

I prefer startups, although I'd love to find a small stable company - one that's doing well but growing a bit at a time via revenue. Those are some of the best places I've worked.

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

#69

Post by danabrams »

I’m a consultant. This is my experience at most large companies, at least in legacy industries.

Different large companies have different cultures, which mostly is about how much the employees like each other. But they’re all giant, kafkaesque bureaucracies that our government red tape to shame, in my experience.

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

#70

Post by achillesheels »

fileeditview wrote: post #34

I understand your frustration because I work in a large company and stuff can take forever. And this is the case for 99.9% of large companies. However one thing you should consider is this: there are probably 50 other people like you demanding to just have feature xy implemented. They are all totally simple etc.. until you have seen a large enterprise code base with lots of legacy cruft. Test suites that take hours t…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN