My Former Company Bought a Company. I’m Pissed.

Not sure where I first saw the announcement. I think it may have been on my LinkedIn newsfeed. Through the wonder that is Google, however, I found the actual press release.

My former company, the one that didn’t have enough revenues to support my ginormous salary, acquired another company. Picture me slapping my right palm on forehead.

I immediately shared the news with two former colleagues given the boot the same day I was. They were similarly disgusted.

No purchase price was disclosed (private companies don’t have to release that kind of information), but surely simply cutting the salaries of five mid- to low-level employees didn’t equate to what they paid for their shiny new toy of an acquisition.

Which begs the questions: Where did they find the money to buy another company when they clearly stated that they didn’t have enough funds to pay our salaries? So where did that money come from?

Oh, yeah, now I remember. During my “you’re laid off” session, the corporate tool said it was because they wanted to put money into more “profitable” areas. Well, that may be the company’s stinky justification for their callous behavior toward its employees. Yet there are several problems with their fetid logic.

First, will this new acquisition rain down manna from heaven to their bottom line? At this point, any business plan and projections are just words and numbers on paper that may or may not come to fruition in the form of actual profits. How long will it take before profits are realized and how significant? From I could glean from the press reports, this was not a huge, transformative acquisition. More of meh from my reading.

It reminds, sadly, of my beloved New York Mets, who seem to be ever undergoing a "rebuilding phase," only to crash and burn into one losing season after another. All the best laid plans...

Worth pointing out that my former former workplace once undertook a much-ballyhooed merger. Yet not even a year after the merger, the economy tanked, and the acquiring company had a serious case of buyer’s remorse when it realized it had widely overpaid for my sinkhole former former workplace. The parties “de-merged” as they say in business. The newly installed head of my former former workplace took a hatchet to the division in which I worked…and well, what happened next is the basis for this blog.

The lesson learned from that horrible experience, and one I think every business executive should be cognizant of, is that sometimes business mergers, like marriages, don’t work out, and all the optimistic spreadsheet projections can’t put it back together again. This shiny new toy may amount to nothing more than shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. As far as I'm concerned, there's a moist, dark place they can insert their ballyhooed new acquisition.

What of the workers, like me, who were sacrificed to make this grand scheme happen? Reading the announcement, I felt worthless and foolish—stupid to have worked so hard for a company that saw me as nothing more than a line item that had to be discarded so they could pursue some nebulous business strategy that has no guarantee of being successful. Obviously, the corporation is more worthy than any one person. Despicable. Oh how I wish these corporate gunslingers would realize how destructive their “business strategies” can sometimes be to real people trying to make a living. Fat chance.

What of the people at the acquired company as well? They have every reason to be scared. Because there is nothing that gives wannabe corporate cowboys a hard-on faster than to scour for redundant positions in both companies and then decide who gets to stay, who gets the boot. It makes them feel strong, like a big man. Hey, they can’t be a superhero or a star athlete, but they can sure feel the power in laying people off. Look out below!, is all I can say to the people working for the company just bought by my former company. It's bub-bye, here's your severance check, please pack up and leave...

In one sense, I can understand why the CEO at my former workplace made the merger. He came on board three years ago when the company was in deep financial straits. Since then, he has outsourced whole departments and hacked away staff in what seemed like regular intervals. At some point, he had to make a positive move, one that might bring the company some honest-to-goodness revenues, rather than just a slice-and-dice swath through the expense side of the ledger.

It’s not like he’s the new guy anymore, either. He’s been at the job for nearly three years. More than enough time to turn the company around—if it can be. He’s dispensed with the easy moves, like cutting staff. Now, he has to book some real-world profits for the company, not just conjure up some hoity-toity business plan to impress the board. That’s a bit harder to do.

Make no mistake, he’s on the clock now. If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be out of a job, just like all the people he’s laid off in the past three years.

Of course, he’ll have the cushion of his golden parachute. Meanwhile, several of us have run out of unemployment benefits, still have no job, and are staring at homelessness.

Pays to be a CEO, even if you an incompetent one who runs companies into the ground and gets to lay off and destroy the lives of so many people. Nice work if you can get it.