4 ms·

Wow. This is so doomed to fail. German bigcorp with a faked startup culture unit ingesting Hackaday/Tindie. Congrats to the sellers.

by tpmx 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ldite 5y ago
Yeah. I worked for a tech company that was acquired by Siemens. It didn't go well.
- NockNock 5y ago
  Can I ask why? Or what company?
  - rasz 5y ago
    In 1993 Siemens acquired ELWRO, Polish computer manufacturer (RIAD - IBM 360/370 mainframe clones for Russian/Indian market) and ZWUT, Polish telecommunication equipment manufacturer. They paid $38mln. First thing they did was to fire everyone from ELWRO. They also send manufacturing lines and unused parts stock back to Germany, and on top of it demolished manufacturing plants and sold off bare land. Good old German efficiency, scorched earth policy. 7 years later Siemens finished this "investment" by selling remaining telecomm part of the company to US investor Telect who planned to manufacture fiberoptic switches in Poland. Rumor has it Telect came to some sort of a deal with Nortel and closed manufacturing in Eastern Europe as a result. And that was that, from Mainframe manufacturer to nothing in 7 years from Siemens acquisition.
    - iagovar 5y ago
      Great investment.
    - tpmx 5y ago
      Siemens buying a USSR-era IBM mainframe hardware clone manufacturing company ~28 years ago for a relatively small amount of money and then failing to do something useful with it seems very different from this story.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I worked for another company acquired by Siemens and it went quite well. Profitable, full of world class people, chill atmosphere, and you get to work on some pretty amazing challenges. It was a bureaucratic beast, for sure, but definitely the best place I've ever worked. That being said, this was a business unit that was very complimentary to a lot of their other BUs. So the acquisition was for growth, not to destroy competition.
renw0rp 5y ago
a bit historical story: In 1993 Siemens bought Polish early computer manufacturer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro it seems just to close it down
jdkee 5y ago
See ROLM(1) as a prime example. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROLM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROLM

Wow. This is so doomed to fail. German bigcorp with a faked startup culture unit ingesting Hackaday/Tindie. Congrats to the sellers.

by tpmx 5y ago

Wow. This is so doomed to fail. German bigcorp with a faked startup culture unit ingesting Hackaday/Tindie. Congrats to the sellers.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ldite 5y ago

Yeah. I worked for a tech company that was acquired by Siemens. It didn't go well.

NockNock 5y ago
Can I ask why? Or what company?
- rasz 5y ago
  In 1993 Siemens acquired ELWRO, Polish computer manufacturer (RIAD - IBM 360/370 mainframe clones for Russian/Indian market) and ZWUT, Polish telecommunication equipment manufacturer. They paid $38mln. First thing they did was to fire everyone from ELWRO. They also send manufacturing lines and unused parts stock back to Germany, and on top of it demolished manufacturing plants and sold off bare land. Good old German efficiency, scorched earth policy. 7 years later Siemens finished this "investment" by selling remaining telecomm part of the company to US investor Telect who planned to manufacture fiberoptic switches in Poland. Rumor has it Telect came to some sort of a deal with Nortel and closed manufacturing in Eastern Europe as a result. And that was that, from Mainframe manufacturer to nothing in 7 years from Siemens acquisition.
  - iagovar 5y ago
    Great investment.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    Siemens buying a USSR-era IBM mainframe hardware clone manufacturing company ~28 years ago for a relatively small amount of money and then failing to do something useful with it seems very different from this story.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
mywittyname 5y ago
I worked for another company acquired by Siemens and it went quite well. Profitable, full of world class people, chill atmosphere, and you get to work on some pretty amazing challenges. It was a bureaucratic beast, for sure, but definitely the best place I've ever worked. That being said, this was a business unit that was very complimentary to a lot of their other BUs. So the acquisition was for growth, not to destroy competition.

renw0rp 5y ago

a bit historical story: In 1993 Siemens bought Polish early computer manufacturer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro it seems just to close it down

jdkee 5y ago

See ROLM(1) as a prime example. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROLM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROLM