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I was going to say the same thing. Worked at a mid-sized startup, great culture, amazing coworkers that I'm still friends with today. We did great work and got

I was going to say the same thing. Worked at a mid-sized startup, great culture, amazing coworkers that I'm still friends with today. We did great work and got bought out by a large company who had promised not to mess with our culture too much. That didn't last very long haha

cutemonster 4y ago
> mess with our culture What did they change/do? If I may ask
- krageon 4y ago
  At a guess, having seen this before: - Paperwork - Extra managers - Lots of "stakeholder management"
  - cutemonster 4y ago
    Seems that was a good guess, have a look at the sibling reply :-)
- TranquilMarmot 4y ago
  It was a very slow creep of changes. For the first year, they really didn't change much (except gutted our health insurance plan and got rid of "unlimited" vacation). Eventually, they tried to get us to integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders" on every single project. With every extra stakeholder they also had to introduce extra meetings and extra process until even making a small change felt like a massive chore. I went from merging dozens of changes a week to maybe one or two. Felt pretty claustrophobic after a bit so I ended up leaving to go somewhere smaller.
  - cutemonster 4y ago
    How interesting! (And sad, I hope that / guess that the new place is/was better) > integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders" That scenario I hadn't heard about before. Good to know about that way for things to fail, too. If you haven't seen: "Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539
    - TranquilMarmot 4y ago
      The company we were acquired by is massive ($2bil annual revenue, 7.5k employees). If you live in the US, I can guarantee that you've used their products before but don't know the name of the company. They basically just go around acquiring other companies and absorbing them into their other products. I'm talking like 10+ acquisitions a year (at least for the last few years).

cutemonster 4y ago

> mess with our culture What did they change/do? If I may ask

krageon 4y ago
At a guess, having seen this before: - Paperwork - Extra managers - Lots of "stakeholder management"
- cutemonster 4y ago
  Seems that was a good guess, have a look at the sibling reply :-)
TranquilMarmot 4y ago
It was a very slow creep of changes. For the first year, they really didn't change much (except gutted our health insurance plan and got rid of "unlimited" vacation). Eventually, they tried to get us to integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders" on every single project. With every extra stakeholder they also had to introduce extra meetings and extra process until even making a small change felt like a massive chore. I went from merging dozens of changes a week to maybe one or two. Felt pretty claustrophobic after a bit so I ended up leaving to go somewhere smaller.
- cutemonster 4y ago
  How interesting! (And sad, I hope that / guess that the new place is/was better) > integrate with more and more of their other products, which introduced a TON of extra "stakeholders" That scenario I hadn't heard about before. Good to know about that way for things to fail, too. If you haven't seen: "Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539
  - TranquilMarmot 4y ago
    The company we were acquired by is massive ($2bil annual revenue, 7.5k employees). If you live in the US, I can guarantee that you've used their products before but don't know the name of the company. They basically just go around acquiring other companies and absorbing them into their other products. I'm talking like 10+ acquisitions a year (at least for the last few years).