<story><title>Watching an acquirer ruin your company</title><url>https://startupwin.kelsus.com/p/watching-an-acquirer-ruin-your-company</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mm007emko</author><text>Well, question is which part of the world you live in, of course. But I don&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Maybe in the future we will have to unionize. Definitely not now and not in Europe. And this is not a matter of pay, e.g. airline pilots are paid more than programmers here yet they are heavily unionized.</text></item><item><author>Phlarp</author><text>And still too busy smelling our own farts to unionize.</text></item><item><author>cr__</author><text>&amp;gt; Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s&lt;p&gt;This, and additionally we&amp;#x27;ve been tricked into feeling guilty about it as well.</text></item><item><author>lovich</author><text>&amp;gt; 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 …&lt;p&gt;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 college was as a VP, who explain to you how they are forcing the newly hired manager to fire someone at random to “make sure they have a backbone”&lt;p&gt;Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s, but we are being systematically stripped of the value we bring.&lt;p&gt;If this wasn’t true then we wouldn’t be able to point towards recent events like jobs setting up a hiring cartel to depress our wages</text></item><item><author>hinkley</author><text>&amp;gt; and the death spiral begins.&lt;p&gt;The death spiral becomes visible, really. The gun had already been fired, the body just hadn’t hit the ground yet.&lt;p&gt;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 things, and if money doesn’t magically appear in their accounts, which why would it? Then they don’t give you money for some of the things you usually do and while they technically didn’t tell you not to do them, if there’s no money you don’t get to do them.&lt;p&gt;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 but that’s some gaslighting BS that I hope nobody experiences, but I know people have. Best I can do is tell them to watch out for it. Some places you’re safe until FY+1, and things don’t go fully absurd until FY+2.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen:&lt;p&gt;1) Management gives an unreasonable deadline to developers before defining the deliverables. Clock starts ticking.&lt;p&gt;2) Management then fails to settle on the requirements for months and&amp;#x2F;or continuously moves the goalposts while people are trying to work, turning an unreasonable deadline into an impossible deadline&lt;p&gt;3) Developers start realizing that they&amp;#x27;re going to receive the blame when impossible deadline isn&amp;#x27;t achieved, despite not having any control in the matter. They start leaving for new jobs, and the death spiral begins.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the universal pattern of a management team that doesn&amp;#x27;t know how to do anything other than make demands and then apply pressure. Unless you can get someone in charge who has real leadership and planning skills, it&amp;#x27;s not recoverable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smcl</author><text>Would this not be the &lt;i&gt;best&lt;/i&gt; time to form a union, though? If we start to hit tough times when programmers are treated like shit and the job market is tight, then your colleagues will be less inclined to rock the boat and management will be actively trying to crack down on any attempts to organize. Basically when you &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; a union it could be too late.&lt;p&gt;Right now management will be off-guard, not expecting any unionisation push and will be a little bit unprepared as to how to counter it (that is, if they even &lt;i&gt;try&lt;/i&gt;). Employees will likely feel comfortable openly discussing unions knowing that they probably won&amp;#x27;t feel any reprisals (and if they do, well the job market is still pretty good for the moment). The tough part would be convincing someone on $1x0,000&amp;#x2F;year that they might benefit from a union.</text></comment>
<story><title>Watching an acquirer ruin your company</title><url>https://startupwin.kelsus.com/p/watching-an-acquirer-ruin-your-company</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mm007emko</author><text>Well, question is which part of the world you live in, of course. But I don&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Maybe in the future we will have to unionize. Definitely not now and not in Europe. And this is not a matter of pay, e.g. airline pilots are paid more than programmers here yet they are heavily unionized.</text></item><item><author>Phlarp</author><text>And still too busy smelling our own farts to unionize.</text></item><item><author>cr__</author><text>&amp;gt; Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s&lt;p&gt;This, and additionally we&amp;#x27;ve been tricked into feeling guilty about it as well.</text></item><item><author>lovich</author><text>&amp;gt; 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 …&lt;p&gt;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 college was as a VP, who explain to you how they are forcing the newly hired manager to fire someone at random to “make sure they have a backbone”&lt;p&gt;Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s, but we are being systematically stripped of the value we bring.&lt;p&gt;If this wasn’t true then we wouldn’t be able to point towards recent events like jobs setting up a hiring cartel to depress our wages</text></item><item><author>hinkley</author><text>&amp;gt; and the death spiral begins.&lt;p&gt;The death spiral becomes visible, really. The gun had already been fired, the body just hadn’t hit the ground yet.&lt;p&gt;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 things, and if money doesn’t magically appear in their accounts, which why would it? Then they don’t give you money for some of the things you usually do and while they technically didn’t tell you not to do them, if there’s no money you don’t get to do them.&lt;p&gt;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 but that’s some gaslighting BS that I hope nobody experiences, but I know people have. Best I can do is tell them to watch out for it. Some places you’re safe until FY+1, and things don’t go fully absurd until FY+2.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen:&lt;p&gt;1) Management gives an unreasonable deadline to developers before defining the deliverables. Clock starts ticking.&lt;p&gt;2) Management then fails to settle on the requirements for months and&amp;#x2F;or continuously moves the goalposts while people are trying to work, turning an unreasonable deadline into an impossible deadline&lt;p&gt;3) Developers start realizing that they&amp;#x27;re going to receive the blame when impossible deadline isn&amp;#x27;t achieved, despite not having any control in the matter. They start leaving for new jobs, and the death spiral begins.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the universal pattern of a management team that doesn&amp;#x27;t know how to do anything other than make demands and then apply pressure. Unless you can get someone in charge who has real leadership and planning skills, it&amp;#x27;s not recoverable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SamoyedFurFluff</author><text>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.</text></comment>