7 ms·

Cisco buying your company should be considered a worst case scenario for most employees. The important thing to remember is not to trust a word they say. I was

by tedivm 3y ago

Cisco buying your company should be considered a worst case scenario for most employees. The important thing to remember is not to trust a word they say. I was at Kenna Security when Cisco bought them (I was only there for a month too, so Kenna hired me knowing the purchase was going to happen). They lied through their teeth about the process. They promised every resume would be reviewed for leveling, but then gave out the worst offers I've ever seen. They were literally dropping people by multiple levels, and if anyone complained they told them they couldn't make personal exceptions. They wouldn't even listen to people's managers about it, it was just a bunch of anonymous resume reviews. At the same time Kenna leadership said they'd pay for Cobra for me if I didn't want to stay. The VP of Eng, David La France, at Kenna promised me that to my face. Then once they sale went through he refused to talk to me and told me to cover it myself. Ultimately they did back down, and were "kind" enough to give me a whole two weeks severance. However it made me realize that Cisco views it's acquisitions in the worst way possible, and if I ever work at a company that Cisco purchases I will immediately start looking for a new job. It's worth noting that I've kept in touch with a lot of the Kenna people who stayed (at least initially), and according to my old manager more than half of the people who stayed on are gone now.

leetrout 3y ago
> The VP of Eng at Kenna promised me that to my face The real lesson to learn here is twofold: - People recruiting / hiring are incentivized to say whatever is needed to close the deal. With the exception of a bold faced lie (I don't think this was that). - People at the company being acquired are more often than not going to lose most of their power. Including the C-suite. No one is safe and as an employee/victim you won't know the actual arrangements of the deal until the dust settles.
- argiopetech 3y ago
  Three fold: - People forget and circumstances change. Signed documents don't.
  - chii 3y ago
    Exactly. Get all promises in writing (ala, a contract of sorts). The company certainly would when they get a promise out of you.
- morgango 3y ago
  Yea, I think more often it is the second point more than the first one. You would be surprised how often makes leaders into liars. Honestly, I would bet that the VP probably had assurances from his leadership that what he was telling you was true. Sorry to hear that happened, that sucks.
greggsy 3y ago
This isn’t a Cisco thing - it’s M&A in general. The sellers need to maintain the appearance of growth before the sale, and the buyers want to rationalise costs. Once they have the IP, or have successfully eliminated the competition through acquisition, those in the old company are really just numbers in an hr system.
- tedivm 3y ago
  When I was at Malwarebytes (I left in 2014) I helped with two acquisitions. In both cases we took care of all of the people in the new company and rolled them into Malwarebytes. M&A can be done without being ethically and morally bankrupt. It's totally possible. Cisco just doesn't think that's a priority.
  - 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
    Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people; they don't have ethics and morals. All that matters is the balance sheet, the stock price, and the executive bonus. You can have people running the company change what the company does to be more ethical or moral, but it's like training an elephant to do tricks: an unnatural edge case. Their natural incentives are more like swarms of locusts or jellyfish; the more you feed them, the larger they grow, the bigger impact they have on their environment. No real thoughts, just an urge to consume and expand.
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      Ethics an morals have financial upside, for people and groups of people (companies). For instance, do to their past behavior, and its publicity, Cisco is likely to lose many more competent employees during an acquisition than had they behaved otherwise.
      - keiferkif 3y ago
        I would say that a lack of ethics has more financial upside
dangus 3y ago
Worst case scenario? That seems unlikely. Worst case scenario would be employee stock options and RSU grants remaining or becoming worthless, like in the case of a private company that never gains enough traction to exit or exits at a low valuation. Usually in a public acquisition, shares are purchased at a price premium. E.g., many Twitter employees got to cash out at a stock price well above the value of the company. Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive.
- rapind 3y ago
  > Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive. Good advice in general, but not a hard rule. There are roles where you need to expend a lot of energy learning proprietary stuff (processes, languages, frameworks, business rules). If you're in one of these roles it can give you a ton of leverage, but tread carefully around egos (you could get fired out of spite if you flex too hard, and maybe that's fine, but generally it's lose / lose).
- kjs3 3y ago
  Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive. You're right, of course, with just a nit of misinformation here that always bugs me: there are still lots of places that have pensions, just not places the HN demographic considers worthy of working at. I have one from my time at IBM, one from my telco days, and my current employer (financial) has a pretty generous one.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  Yes, I was part of the Kenna acquisition and got my equity paid out. That was nice. I've also had a company get acquired by private equity. I got nothing for my shares and they shut the team (and the product) down within two years.
bbayles 3y ago
For a contrary perspective, this wasn't my experience with being acquired by Cisco. I had my issues with the process, but I felt well-treated throughout and was never lied to.
- rubymancer 3y ago
  Agreed. I was also part of the Kenna acquisition after being there for 2 years and am still there. My equity got paid out quickly, I have since gotten raises and bonuses, and the only shittiness has been all the mega-corp nonsense (omg the trainings) and worse health insurance. Cisco is not a nightmare acquirer, that would be Amazon. If AMZN had acquired us I'd have left immediately.
solardev 3y ago
Isn't this the usual case for an acquisition by a big company? People are just resource units to them, same as any other asset...
kjs3 3y ago
So the Kenna execs lied to you about the Cisco merger and what it means. OK. FWIW, I've never be bought by Cisco, but my best friend has been at 3 startups bought by Cisco. He never enjoyed working for Cisco, but always said Cisco was very clear about their process, and it basically worked the same way each time, except when execs at his startup threw monkey wretches into things. YMMV.
- tedivm 3y ago
  They weren't clear about anything with me- I had to really push to even know information about what the new insurance would look like. It was a very stressful situation, and while I do blame the horrible leadership at Kenna for a lot of it I can definitely say that Cisco did not help matters at all.
eschneider 3y ago
In any M&A situation, you want to start looking for a new job ASAP. They don't _always_ turn out bad, but they often do, and you want to be in a position where you have options.
QuinnyPig 3y ago
Clearly you misunderstood them; they were going to send a venomous snake to your house and not even charge you for it.
paulryanrogers 3y ago
Interesting. I too was at Kenna, hired a few months before the acquisition was over. Don't remember hearing promises of interviewing. As far as I could tell, my role was leveled based on salary. Since I was an IC and promised shares would covert to cash, it all seemed OK to me. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention? Regardless, a dream offer landed before my shares vested, so I made the hard choice to leave empty handed. There did appear to be a lot of turnover before and after the acquisition. Though during M&A that's to be expected IME, so experiences may vary.
- tedivm 3y ago
  I didn't say they were going to interview people, just that I was told that each person would be reviewed separately and given custom offers based on their actual background. Then after being strung along for a month on that lie, I was told that they were going to level based on title instead without looking at the individuals background. As a result Cisco vastly under leveled me in their offer (I was able to get another job at the appropriate level pretty trivially, so it's not like I'm over judging my qualifications here).
andygeorge 3y ago
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/876/233/4c9.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/876/233/4c9...
Dopameaner 3y ago
I was at Cisco bought company, what a disaster it became 5 years later. Politics after politics, made me wonder why they even bought it.
finefinefine 3y ago
I think everyone whose equity became worth actual US dollars disagrees that Cisco buying them is a "worst case scenario". You would not understand that perspective however, since the vesting cliff is longer than 3 weeks.
kcplate 3y ago
Sorry that happened to you, I have been through a few acquisitions as both a survivor and a casualty. Being a casualty is certainly no fun. However, if you only have a month of time with your organization and it gets acquired, unless you are some hotshit super hire—you are probably getting RIF’ed, no matter who the acquiring company is and no matter what promises were made to you at any point. Even getting promises in writing doesn’t really help unless they are in your employment contract and most good employment contracts will give the hiring company a legal out for just about any reason within a probationary period (which is often around 90 days). The two weeks of severance was actually pretty generous too for your time invested.

by tedivm 3y ago

leetrout 3y ago

> The VP of Eng at Kenna promised me that to my face The real lesson to learn here is twofold: - People recruiting / hiring are incentivized to say whatever is needed to close the deal. With the exception of a bold faced lie (I don't think this was that). - People at the company being acquired are more often than not going to lose most of their power. Including the C-suite. No one is safe and as an employee/victim you won't know the actual arrangements of the deal until the dust settles.

argiopetech 3y ago
Three fold: - People forget and circumstances change. Signed documents don't.
- chii 3y ago
  Exactly. Get all promises in writing (ala, a contract of sorts). The company certainly would when they get a promise out of you.
morgango 3y ago
Yea, I think more often it is the second point more than the first one. You would be surprised how often makes leaders into liars. Honestly, I would bet that the VP probably had assurances from his leadership that what he was telling you was true. Sorry to hear that happened, that sucks.

greggsy 3y ago

This isn’t a Cisco thing - it’s M&A in general. The sellers need to maintain the appearance of growth before the sale, and the buyers want to rationalise costs. Once they have the IP, or have successfully eliminated the competition through acquisition, those in the old company are really just numbers in an hr system.

tedivm 3y ago
When I was at Malwarebytes (I left in 2014) I helped with two acquisitions. In both cases we took care of all of the people in the new company and rolled them into Malwarebytes. M&A can be done without being ethically and morally bankrupt. It's totally possible. Cisco just doesn't think that's a priority.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people; they don't have ethics and morals. All that matters is the balance sheet, the stock price, and the executive bonus. You can have people running the company change what the company does to be more ethical or moral, but it's like training an elephant to do tricks: an unnatural edge case. Their natural incentives are more like swarms of locusts or jellyfish; the more you feed them, the larger they grow, the bigger impact they have on their environment. No real thoughts, just an urge to consume and expand.
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    Ethics an morals have financial upside, for people and groups of people (companies). For instance, do to their past behavior, and its publicity, Cisco is likely to lose many more competent employees during an acquisition than had they behaved otherwise.
    - keiferkif 3y ago
      I would say that a lack of ethics has more financial upside

dangus 3y ago

Worst case scenario? That seems unlikely. Worst case scenario would be employee stock options and RSU grants remaining or becoming worthless, like in the case of a private company that never gains enough traction to exit or exits at a low valuation. Usually in a public acquisition, shares are purchased at a price premium. E.g., many Twitter employees got to cash out at a stock price well above the value of the company. Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive.

rapind 3y ago
> Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive. Good advice in general, but not a hard rule. There are roles where you need to expend a lot of energy learning proprietary stuff (processes, languages, frameworks, business rules). If you're in one of these roles it can give you a ton of leverage, but tread carefully around egos (you could get fired out of spite if you flex too hard, and maybe that's fine, but generally it's lose / lose).
kjs3 3y ago
Every employee should see their role as temporary. This isn’t the lifetime employment pension days anymore. I see many opportunities for employees to walk away as a positive. You're right, of course, with just a nit of misinformation here that always bugs me: there are still lots of places that have pensions, just not places the HN demographic considers worthy of working at. I have one from my time at IBM, one from my telco days, and my current employer (financial) has a pretty generous one.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
Yes, I was part of the Kenna acquisition and got my equity paid out. That was nice. I've also had a company get acquired by private equity. I got nothing for my shares and they shut the team (and the product) down within two years.

bbayles 3y ago

For a contrary perspective, this wasn't my experience with being acquired by Cisco. I had my issues with the process, but I felt well-treated throughout and was never lied to.

rubymancer 3y ago
Agreed. I was also part of the Kenna acquisition after being there for 2 years and am still there. My equity got paid out quickly, I have since gotten raises and bonuses, and the only shittiness has been all the mega-corp nonsense (omg the trainings) and worse health insurance. Cisco is not a nightmare acquirer, that would be Amazon. If AMZN had acquired us I'd have left immediately.

solardev 3y ago

Isn't this the usual case for an acquisition by a big company? People are just resource units to them, same as any other asset...

kjs3 3y ago

So the Kenna execs lied to you about the Cisco merger and what it means. OK. FWIW, I've never be bought by Cisco, but my best friend has been at 3 startups bought by Cisco. He never enjoyed working for Cisco, but always said Cisco was very clear about their process, and it basically worked the same way each time, except when execs at his startup threw monkey wretches into things. YMMV.

tedivm 3y ago
They weren't clear about anything with me- I had to really push to even know information about what the new insurance would look like. It was a very stressful situation, and while I do blame the horrible leadership at Kenna for a lot of it I can definitely say that Cisco did not help matters at all.

eschneider 3y ago

In any M&A situation, you want to start looking for a new job ASAP. They don't _always_ turn out bad, but they often do, and you want to be in a position where you have options.

QuinnyPig 3y ago

Clearly you misunderstood them; they were going to send a venomous snake to your house and not even charge you for it.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Interesting. I too was at Kenna, hired a few months before the acquisition was over. Don't remember hearing promises of interviewing. As far as I could tell, my role was leveled based on salary. Since I was an IC and promised shares would covert to cash, it all seemed OK to me. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention? Regardless, a dream offer landed before my shares vested, so I made the hard choice to leave empty handed. There did appear to be a lot of turnover before and after the acquisition. Though during M&A that's to be expected IME, so experiences may vary.

tedivm 3y ago
I didn't say they were going to interview people, just that I was told that each person would be reviewed separately and given custom offers based on their actual background. Then after being strung along for a month on that lie, I was told that they were going to level based on title instead without looking at the individuals background. As a result Cisco vastly under leveled me in their offer (I was able to get another job at the appropriate level pretty trivially, so it's not like I'm over judging my qualifications here).

andygeorge 3y ago

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/876/233/4c9.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/876/233/4c9...

Dopameaner 3y ago

I was at Cisco bought company, what a disaster it became 5 years later. Politics after politics, made me wonder why they even bought it.

finefinefine 3y ago

I think everyone whose equity became worth actual US dollars disagrees that Cisco buying them is a "worst case scenario". You would not understand that perspective however, since the vesting cliff is longer than 3 weeks.

kcplate 3y ago

Sorry that happened to you, I have been through a few acquisitions as both a survivor and a casualty. Being a casualty is certainly no fun. However, if you only have a month of time with your organization and it gets acquired, unless you are some hotshit super hire—you are probably getting RIF’ed, no matter who the acquiring company is and no matter what promises were made to you at any point. Even getting promises in writing doesn’t really help unless they are in your employment contract and most good employment contracts will give the hiring company a legal out for just about any reason within a probationary period (which is often around 90 days). The two weeks of severance was actually pretty generous too for your time invested.