<p>I have worked at more or less the same company since the mid-80s, but my business card logo keeps changing because during that time we were bought and sold by larger companies three times and merged with another similar-sized company once. </p>
<p>It’s a roller coaster ride each time. Lots of lay-offs each time. Lots of restructuring. Lots of new processes, culture, and customs to learn each time.</p>
<p>In the early 80’s I worked at a small bank that was bought up by a larger bank when they started allowing mergers across county/state/international lines. Down in the trenches we heard a lot of rumors, but the administration kept telling us people would not be laid off or forced to move to a different city. Once it all went through employees in redundant departments (like ours) got laid off or offered positions in the headquarter city. The rumors were more true than the lies corporate was telling us. </p>
<p>My advice: don’t believe what the higher ups are telling you - take it all with a grain of salt. They don’t want good people to jump ship before they can evaluate the situation and decide whom to keep and whom to jettison.</p>
<p>DH and I got our first jobs as engineers at a firm in Portland in 1986. A big company bought it. A bigger company bought THAT one. We were there almost four years. The same week I found out I passed the professional engineering exam, the company got rid of almost all of its design engineers. DH and I were laid off the same day. We’d been there ALMOST four years, the length of time required to be fully vested in the retirement fund. </p>
<p>Like sylvan, we had been told our jobs were safe. Of course, the manager who told us that was also let go!</p>
<p>It sucked, but we took our five weeks (each) of severance pay and went to Quebec City for a week. We didn’t have kids, so we rebounded OK. I did end up on unemployment for awhile, which was surreal.</p>
<p>I happened 3 times in my career. I jumped ship in the first time. I was offered bonus for staying in the second time but I quitted after 1 year because the merged company did not do well. The third time happened 2 years ago. I am OK now but cannot predict the future more than a year. A lot of duplicate functional departments are eliminated. Plus there are strategy conflicts among the top guys. If something happens I will do contract work. I can buy health insurance now and I may make more with contract work.</p>
<p>I am in Mergers and Acquisitions. </p>
<p>There are two types of buyers, Financial and Strategic. Financial buyers buys a company for financial reasons, just like buying a stock on the market, they tended to keep the acquisition structure intact unless the acquired company is a run down company and require a lot of restructuring.</p>
<p>Strategic buyers acquire companies for various reasons and they are in like kind business as the acquired company. They could buy the acquired just for the brand name, product line or distribution. If so, they will take what they wanted and fire everyone in the acquired companies. They also could buy the acquired to complement their old operation, in that case, most of the acquired company will kept intact, but to make the acquisition work, they will eliminate duplicate operations, mostly administrative.</p>
<p>For that reasons, most of the seller does not want to be acquired by a strategic buyer, but some times it is inevitable.</p>
<p>We have experience with both positive and not so positive outcomes.</p>
<p>In one case, everyone was wooed about the new ownership and management…who turns out to be fabulous!</p>
<p>In the second case, folks we’re offered jobs but after a year, the company closes the division in our area. Folks were offered jobs out of state…actually everyone we knew was given a offer. Of course , some did not want to relocate.</p>
<p>It can go any number of ways…prepare for all options!</p>
<p>“My thought is that over time things will change though.”</p>
<p>Good instinct.</p>
<p>I’ve been through multiple buyouts, and they follow a predictable pattern. Early on, very little changes, as the acquiring company is reviewing the details of the business they have acquired.</p>
<p>About 6 months out, the changes come. Slowly at first, then more rapidly.</p>
<p>The main advice I can give:
<h1>1 is about acting like you are the brand new employee of a new company. Make them happy they “hired” you, even if it was by default and not by choice.</h1>
<h1>2 is about recognizing that given the choice between a senior employee of their own company and someone new and unfamiliar to them, they will always choose the senior person they know well if they have 2 people and only need 1 person for the job.</h1>
<h1>3 is about recognizing that companies serve shareholders, not employees. If it means they can achieve better outcomes for shareholders (by not causing a sudden mass exodus), they will lie to employees as long as it is necessary to do so.</h1>
<p>Good luck!!</p>
<p>My Dad went through this. It was pretty horrible for him. He was a loyal employee, 18 years on the job, very good at what he did, and the company was doing fine, but it got bought out by a high-flying conglomerate that thought it could make money by buying up smaller companies and reorganizing them to eliminate management redundancies. Dad’s engineering lab was eliminated. They offered him a job in another city but he didn’t want to relocate and he really didn’t trust the new company as they had a track record of being very aggressive about reorganizing and putting people out of work, then reorganizing again, so nothing seemed stable. He eventually got a job at a local university doing essentially what he had been doing in the private sector but for lower pay. He got hosed on his pension, though; his pension rights were fully vested but the new company quickly ran the business into the ground and went into bankruptcy with huge unfunded pension liabilities. Employees got pennies on the dollar from the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Dad was pretty bitter about the whole experience. He was raised in a time when employees were expected to be loyal, and loyal employees could expect loyalty in return from their employer; he felt the new company was playing by a different set of rules, and he got burned by it.</p>
<p>My brother had a better experience. In his case the buyout meant his division–a successful unit within a larger struggling corporation–got a fresh infusion of resources that allowed it to expand its production and product lines, while other, less successful divisions took it on the chin. My brother moved up pretty quickly to a fairly high management level. He always had mixed feelings about that, however. Certainly he was better off financially, but he didn’t really enjoy management as much as he had enjoyed the pure engineering work he had done earlier in his career. But he earned enough that he was able to take early retirement and he seems perfectly happy tinkering with his cars and doing his various home improvement or home reconstruction projects.</p>
<p>I just think it depends on why the buyer bought the seller.</p>
<p>How do you guys feel about company that is co owned? For examples lets say both Company A and B are well known/large companies that own Company C. However, one company, lets say Company A, is the most prestigious and has a bigger input into Company C. How is stability going to effect Company C?</p>
<p>Anongrad…could you please start your own thread with your own question rather than high jacking this thread with an off topic question? You will likely get better answers with your own thread!</p>
<p>My national company bought out a regional competitor whose office was only a few hundred yards down the street. They thought the smaller firm had a better office so they moved everybody into it…and then laid off most of the regional’s staff. I’m glad I wasn’t around then for the fireworks.</p>
<p>“That being said x the higher ups like me a lot”</p>
<p>OP- This has happened to my husband and me a number of times over the years. One of the main things that almost always happens is the “higher ups” were let go or they “find” a better opportunity at a different company… So don’t count on them sticking around.</p>
<p>A few years ago H changed jobs–big late in life move for us. After one year that company went bankrupt, but fortunately it was bought by another company. A few of their “branches”
were sold, but nothing changed for H at all. Company even kept the old name.</p>
<p>A couple years ago, sis worked for a small accounting firm that was bought out by one of the big guys. They let go almost everyone–except those in sis’s division who worked on a particular type of government contracts. Sis was extremely lucky because she had cancer at the time and was able to keep working and keep her insurance. And she always wanted to work for that big name firm.</p>
<p>
Soon after starting my first job after college (engineering), the company I joined was sold multiple times. We worked in the same building each time, and the same founding employees remained, but we dropped a lot of others. In some cases, we dropped whole divisions. At our smallest, only ~4% of the original employees from when I joined remained. I believe they made selections based on performance reviews and who they thought would be most helpful for the new company from a value/salary type perspective. Understandably this bothered a lot of persons, but I don’t recalling feeling stressed or even particularly concerned. I wasn’t looking for work elsewhere, but if I was, there was no shortage of opportunities with so many former employees switching elsewhere and encouraging others to join with them.</p>
<p>Each time we changed companies, they sent a check for our accrued time, such as vacation hours, and reset our balances to 0. In some cases, seniority benefits were also reset. Each company had a different focus and different corporate policies. When owned by larger companies, there was a lot of red tape, bureaucracy, and meetings that I did not find helpful, such as HR team building type efforts. I favored the smaller company ownership. We also often switched to different tools, even for things like email. With different companies, we worked on different projects, sometimes in quite different areas. In some ways, this type of change can be good, as you get exposed to more ways of doing things and have a better sense of what type of companies you want to work for.</p>
<p>My company has been bought or merged into others twice within the past dozen years. In the end it has worked out fine for me although there are always some issues with transitioning. I ended up making a lot more money but merging into companies with deeper pockets and more money to spend on building our business, albeit with some strange plans and support… but I also lost holidays we used to get and I no longer have a Hudson River view. In fact my office while equally convenient for commuting is not as nice an office building. This is troublesome to me, but not to most people. Depending on the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal. There is also the transition with 401K plans from one provider to another and rolling over to original company or staying with the new. DH is federal retiree so I never had health coverage with any of the companies I work for, as I have always declined in favor of our family coverage so that has not been an issue for me although it has been for others, having to switch to different plans and different coverage.</p>
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<p>Yeah, sure. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>It hasn’t happened to me, but it happened to H twice. In both cases disastrous for most employees.</p>
<p>Chances are excellent they are lying through their teeth, and planning to either slash the workforce or move it elsewhere, or both. H’s employer here told outright lies through the PR department.</p>
<p>My advice: try to keep an open mind and continue to be pleasant and professional, and get your resume updated immediately. Try to start looking around before the layoffs begin. If you find something better, take it.</p>
<p>Like Consolation said.
IT is the first department the acquirer will get rid of. We had 400 in the IT department and when they finally went through, everyone except the wire pullers were gone.</p>
<p>What typically happens to your salary and accrued vacation time? Is there a “typical”?</p>
<p>My s’s company (employer) just got sold (well it isn’t final just yet but will be) and its a SWEET deal for everyone! Yours may be too. Dont freak out yet.</p>