Has anyone been through a merger or acquisition? 2

[CivilEngAus]

My engineering employer is currently being acquired by a larger firm approximately five times the size and this will be the first time I have been affected by a merger/acquisition. Has anyone been through this before and have any advice to offer or pitfalls to avoid etc?

 

[jgailla]

You have no control. The new and old management will lie to you. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets worse. See how your vacation, benefits, and health care change, not how management says they will change.
The last merger I went through I got an extra week's vacation and better health care for less cost. My wife has been through one where she got a 25% raise since they were equalizing salaries between organizations for the ones who weren't let go. A couple others weren't so good.

 

[IRstuff]

"Seamless transition" isn't.
Generally, companies that merge expect to relocate engineering to save on HR and the other stuff.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Latexman]

I got relocated in one of my two "takeovers". A merger it wasn't! The company that bought us basically said, 1 + 1 = 1.

Good luck,
Latexman

To a ChE, the glass is always full - 1/2 air and 1/2 water.

 

[CWB1]

My advice would be simply to remain calm and tight-lipped around coworkers. Focus on getting work done and being seen as optimistic about the future. Avoid negativity and try to be "bubbly." There will be changes, some of which others wont like and will want to gripe about. There will also likely be some faces leaving and new ones arriving, including leadership. When leaders are new to a position they tend to spend a few weeks closely observing their surroundings and team looking for weaknesses and necessary improvements. The last thing you want is a new leader to form a negative opinion of you bc you spent time sympathizing with others' (often irrational) gripes. Realize that both staying and leaving are gambles so dont kick yourself too hard if your career suffers temporarily bc you made a "bad" choice. Stay as the company improves and you may find yourself moving up quickly. Stay as the company gets worse and the local job market may shrink the longer you are there. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you'll learn through it all.

Best of luck.

 

[MintJulep]

Hope that you do not become a "synergy".

Tune up your resume and start putting out feelers, just in case.

Has the acquiring company acquired other smaller firms before? History can be interesting.

 

[metengr]

For a merger, consolidation = job losses
For an acquisition, take over = job losses

 

[TheTick]

Weird things can happen. Formerly trustworthy coworkers can get awfully back-stabby when jockeying for position in the new regime.

 

[cranky108]

You can let it happen, or you can try to control you future. Put out job feelers, and make the decision of where you want to land.
Some people are planted and some are willing to relocate. Decide who you are, and feel out the job market with your decision in mind.

Civil engineers are in demand in some areas, so look at those locations, if you think you would want to live their.

 

[Mr168]

The closer your hours are to 100% billable, the better your likelihood of survival.

With my current company, I've had 2 buyouts and 5 name changes/reorgs. In most cases, big cuts at mid-upper management level, with worker bees largely unaffected other than benefit changes, training, etc. When they did cuts, the new hires and those charging to overhead were the first to go, particularly admin types. After that, a lot was filtered by performance reviews (rightly or wrongly.)

 

[SuperSalad]

Went through one a few years ago. It did not go well.

As long as the one doing the acquisition actually understands what you do and has people who know the business, you've already got a jump start.

If they don't know what they are getting themselves into, watch out and hold on if you are trying to stay put.

Andrew H.

http://www.mototribology.com

 

[Agent666]

Find out the motivation, is it to get your engineering knowledge (people/processes), or to get clients/projects.

The cynic in me thinks the value is only in the jobs, future workload, and not the staff as they can simply walk out the door at any time during or after the change.

I think as well how closely aligned the systems the two organisations has a lot to do with how well things are accepted. People hate change, and hate it more when it's forced upon them, even more so when stuff like verification/quality assurance processes seem over the top compared to what occurred beforehand (or didn't in some cases!).

 

[berkshire]

I went through one of these about 12 years ago. My company was the acquiring company. The company we were taking over had management problems and a sour atmosphere in the work place. They were also in financial trouble. The first thing our company did was to let everybody go, then get them to re apply for their old jobs. Several of the more senior members refused to do that, and the company just said goodbye. The rest were interviewed on a one by one basis. the better ones were retained, the rest were sent on their way. After the acquisition there were problems with a few ( That's not the way we used to do it.) guys, but that got sorted out and the company became much stronger.
Some years before I had applied to that company for a job, and encountered a particularly nasty HR person. I took great satisfaction in giving her name to my managing director and seeing her leave.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[jfpe]

Management is often ham handed with mergers and acquisitions. I worked in field service for one equipment manufacturer that acquired another company and immediately cut 80% of the engineering staff. You can imagine how unwilling the remaining 20% was to share their secrets.

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Definitely clean up your resume, get your contacts up to date, etc.



-JFPE

 

[FreddyNurk]

I experienced a takeover of a particular engineering firm a few years ago. For me there wasn't that much effect, we were made to use most of the acquiring company's processes and systems, although in my perspective they were a lot more organised than the company being acquired so that was a good thing. One of the things that was most beneficial was the means to access and discuss different problems with a wider resource base than what we could previously.

From what I can gather though, as far as consultancies go, its fairly normal to have this sort of thing happen every few years, although how large the bigger ones can get is yet to be seen. The same company I worked for that acquired our (then) 150 person firm was itself acquired last year. Every so often it also seems that a bunch of people jump ship and start their own operation again too, seen that one from the sidelines more than once.

EDMS Australia

 

[drawoh]

CivilEngAus,

It depends totally on the two firms. Office politics is something you choose to do or not to do. This massively affects your experience.

My experience of being in a taken-over firm was that the new, big company imposed its ethics and security training on us. Eventually, I was laid off, but I don't know if this was the big company or the original small one.



--
JHG

 

[CheckerHater]

Last time I've been thru the merger, about 6000 people got laid off.

So you may want to dust off that old resume.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[ctopher]

The reason why there are mergers is because of $$.
So, to make the $$ work, they let people go. That's how it works.
I have been through about 3-4.

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks '17
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[vthomidis]

The main issue is the difference in mentality and culture between the two companies.

SuperSalad made a good point concerning the aquisitioner's Knowledge on your company's business.

From your posting I understand that the buyer is a engineering firm too. If that's the case you may have to be prepared to justify, toward your new management, why some "things had to be done that way", why some procedures were such and not different and reply to questions the answers of which may seem ridiculously obvious to you.That may not be hard to do.

On the other hand, if your new management are mere beancounters (dilbert type) a lot more patience will
be necessary from your part in dealing with them...
Wishing you all the best.

 

[ctopher]

What happen to my reply above?
That's not what I posted, I checked it, it was somehow edited. Weird...

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks '17
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