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Watching an acquirer ruin your company

startupwin.kelsus.com

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Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#181

Post by pdimitar »

ignoramous wrote: post #166
pdimitar wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is extremely stressful some of the times even. But it's the reality we live in. People don't change. Companies change extremely rarely. If you are smart enough to reverse-engineer software systems -- a necessary skill during onboarding -- then you are smart enough to see nobody will change things to a more positive environment, and hence you should leave. I hate it with all my heart but if I have to, I'll do it 50…

> I am never allowing myself be held hostage. So, you navigate this quagmire begrudgingly, yet don't favour unionisation?

Unionization can be hijacked by employers, history knows of such occurrences. Plus Amazon and Google have been caught up (in the recent times nonetheless) of hiring paid saboteurs to impede people from unionizing.

My job is not to do underground mafia wars. If the employers want to fight dirty I'll just move to someplace else. Eventually they'll be stuck with the people who are OK with being slaves -- but won't be creative or efficient.

I wish them luck. They are hurting themselves, not me or the other worthy programmers.

Unpopular opinion: unionization is like democracy: people think it works but in reality there are a lot of shady deals under the table and the system hasn't worked as it is supposed to, for a long long time.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#182

Post by mruniverse »

lovich wrote: post #81
hinkley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the death spiral begins. The death spiral becomes visible, really. The gun had already been fired, the body just hadn’t hit the ground yet. I must say these failure modes are much worse than the ones I’ve experienced, which maybe I should be grateful for, I’d have to think about this. Generally I’ve seen a slower burn, where the remaining fiscal year plays out with soothing tones and promises of not changing th…

> I don’t know which business school teaches people to say “ah can you smell that fresh mountain air” while they have their hands wrapped tightly around your neck … It’s all of them and the higher you get into management the more apparent it is. They sell a system of meritocracy where those who work the hardest get the rewards. Then you get into management and working side by side with people whose first job out of c…

> Software engineers have been tricked...

I think of this when managers come up with different requirements during the project. If the requirements seem to make the product better, I'm all for it. I like to work this way and they pat me on the head for being "agile". But I always end up kicking myself when they ask why the project is taking longer. I fall for it almost every time because I like to tinker.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#183

Post by blntechie »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…

I’m in mid of one of those exact death spirals. Finalizing a launch date before even knowing full well what the scope is. Yeah there is a general fuzzy idea of what the end goal is but that’s not what requirements are. A well defined requirement takes too much time to arrive on especially if multiple stakeholders involved, that people trivializing it really get to me.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#184

Post by pbhjpbhj »

killingtime74 wrote: post #146
AussieWog93 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever started a business before? Yes, you technically no longer own it once sold, but there's a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into building something from nothing - not to mention a sense of loyalty to your staff - and you genuinely do want to see it go into good hands and become managed well. I guess a somewhat leaky analogy would be like giving away a dog you raised to another family and f…

I empathise and think the only solution is to either not sell (only sell a non controlling stake?) or vet the buyer very carefully

A pattern I've seen a few times (can't recall examples right now, sorry) is to sell the business and then when the business fails, or turns bad, start a new business to compete.

Obviously companies try to tie past owners hands to avoid future competition, but it still happens sometimes.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#185

Post by varjag »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #70
TameAntelope wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being willing to throw away work is the single most effective way I've seen at running an engineering org, both in terms of promoting innovation and in being able to quickly adapt to evolving customer needs as they get revealed. If your morale is harmed by throwing away work, that's something you should work on.

It depends at which level you're at. If you're working at an infrastructure or firmware level, throwaway work can be expensive and time consuming. Re-architecture can also be time consuming. There are some parts you have to spend design cycles on, especially if you're doing a large project. It's not that you can't pivot, but the pivot takes a lot of time. At the very least have a set of System Features and System Gua…

With embedded development it's entirely fine to iterate fast and throw away work, until the product is shipped. And in certain applications it is fine even after it is shipped.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#186

Post by taneq »

WalterBright wrote: post #113
beefield wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trouble is that management seems to be a P != NP type problem. Really easy to tell when done wrong but really difficult to get right - for variety of reasons.

It's a rare employee who doesn't think he can do a better job than the manager. If he does start his own company, he'll discover his employees are sure they can do better than him. It's an immutable fact of life.

It’s an eye opening experience making the jump from one to the other; you realise that often the technical nitty-gritty is a small fraction of the overall business, and that the obviously technically correct decision can simultaneously be a terrible business decision.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#187

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

pdimitar wrote: post #181
ignoramous wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am never allowing myself be held hostage. So, you navigate this quagmire begrudgingly, yet don't favour unionisation?

Unionization can be hijacked by employers, history knows of such occurrences. Plus Amazon and Google have been caught up (in the recent times nonetheless) of hiring paid saboteurs to impede people from unionizing. My job is not to do underground mafia wars. If the employers want to fight dirty I'll just move to someplace else. Eventually they'll be stuck with the people who are OK with being slaves -- but won't be cr…

Inquiry: does this apply to other well-paying unions, such as the actors guild and professional sport players? I’m genuinely asking, because as far as I know they are still in existence and regularly ensure better working conditions for their membership without limiting their mobility.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#188

Post by JackFr »

ignoramous wrote: post #166
pdimitar wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is extremely stressful some of the times even. But it's the reality we live in. People don't change. Companies change extremely rarely. If you are smart enough to reverse-engineer software systems -- a necessary skill during onboarding -- then you are smart enough to see nobody will change things to a more positive environment, and hence you should leave. I hate it with all my heart but if I have to, I'll do it 50…

> I am never allowing myself be held hostage. So, you navigate this quagmire begrudgingly, yet don't favour unionisation?

Unionization does not magically change poorly managed companies into well managed ones.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#189

Post by jmyeet »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #84
jmyeet wrote: post #13

As soon as someone hands you the check it's no longer "your" company and you should stop thinking of it as such. Only misery lies on that path. I see this on a smaller scale where ICs leave a company and take a copy of "their" code (ask Sergey Aleynikov [1] if that's a good idea). It's not yours. If you ever use it you could face legal consequences. And there's no code I've ever written that I wasn't convinced I coul…

Have you ever started a business before? Yes, you technically no longer own it once sold, but there's a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into building something from nothing - not to mention a sense of loyalty to your staff - and you genuinely do want to see it go into good hands and become managed well. I guess a somewhat leaky analogy would be like giving away a dog you raised to another family and f…

This isn't unique to running a business. You see it with screenwriters for example. A script is sold to a studio and as soon as the check clears, it no longer belongs to the author. The studio is free to completely change it or just put it in a drawer and forget about it. Some have a problem with that. It's their baby.

Selling something is letting it go.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#190

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

mm007emko wrote: post #144
Phlarp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still too busy smelling our own farts to unionize.

Well, question is which part of the world you live in, of course. But I don't need to unionize. If I am not satisfied in my job I can switch. Each consecutive job hop past 15 years got me better pay, better benefits and sometimes a better job (sometimes it was equaly shitty as the prevous one but for better money). This does not happen for unionized workers. Maybe in the future we will have to unionize. Definitely no…

I also don’t need to unionize but I’m pro-union. I think software should have a guild like the actors guild, that enforced minimum standards. when Kickstarter ran its unionizing campaign it turns out one of their demands was no productivity tracking software! I would love to know as a member of such a hypothetical guild I have collective clout to ensure I’ll never have to deal with a bullshit metric tracker again.
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