

Acquisitions: cull the managers - copper
http://www.edn.com/blog/920000692/post/270049427.html

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kgrin
The author makes a telling comment about how "worker-bee" programmers can be
reassigned that displays the same contempt for developers as the managers who
call them "resources". Call it a pet peeve, I guess.

One other factor to consider is that if a company were to do multiple
acquisitions and consistently behave this way (immediately lay off every
manager of the "losing" internal product), it would likely create a not-very-
healthy culture of fear and opposition to acquisitions.

That's not to say, of course, that underperforming managers should get a break
"just because". Rather, it seems reasonable to say that their performance and
future roles should be re-evaluated along with every other affected party's -
and yes, they probably shouldn't end up leading the newly acquired team a la
Collabra.

(Keep in mind that sometimes the internal product's lack of success is quite
often due to senior management's decisions... the same senior management that
makes the decision to acquire).

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mattmanser
This isn't a blanket solution, according to this interview that's what
Netscape did and it killed them:

[http://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-
rew...](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-
rewrites.html)

On the otherhand in that scenario the incumbent product was successful where
the acquired company wasn't, which is probably more the reason why it was a
disaster.

~~~
copper
Absolutely - I think the original article implicitly assumes that it's a
successful product that is being acquired. After all, why would anyone buy a
company with an unsuccessful product? (but then, there are a lot of good
reasons to do so.)

