I have worked for five companies that have been acquired whilst I was there. None were startups, I was never an early employee. The first company I worked for

I have worked for five companies that have been acquired whilst I was there. None were startups, I was never an early employee. The first company I worked for was acquired within a couple of weeks of my starting to work there. It was a huge employer that kept the local economy afloat, then the new owners instigated tens of thousands of lay-offs. I left as soon as I could. Another company was sold off very cheaply after being asset-stripped. I jumped ship as soon as I could but I'm still in touch with some people there and the new owners made a success of it. Another firm got merged with another to provide a better range of services. There was almost no impact on my day-to-day work and no changes to terms of employment. The next company was a small, scrappy player that got bought by their biggest competitor. A drip-feed of really crappy little changes ensued: no more flexi-time, must stay in this hotel chain, Lotus Notes for email. I had been planning to leave anyway and quit soon after the deal. Eventually everyone from the original team quit and some started a competing company in the same market. Another company that I worked with got bought by a competitor. It became very clear that office politics trumped engineering practices throughout the new organisation. I stuck around for over a year trying to make it work but eventually I counted that my team of three engineers had five different managers each using us as leverage screw over the other guys - quitting time again! In every case the new management said positive things, the outgoing management said positive things but there were never any actions or incentives to keep staff. This is understandable when buying market share, but that was not the case every time. Given that most coders can get a 10% raise by switching jobs, providing a 5% retention bonus seems a good way of getting engineers to ride out the changes of an acquisition. Those managing the transition should pay attention to the little things too. I actually heard one HR person say that our coffee machine had to go because it was better than those in all the other offices of the group. You can imagine how well that change went across.