So first of all, thanks for writing the books. I'm a happy customer :) Second, I felt a lot of empathy for this, having gone through a similar situation, ulti

So first of all, thanks for writing the books. I'm a happy customer :) Second, I felt a lot of empathy for this, having gone through a similar situation, ultimately the company getting acquired during the pandemic. I've learned many things, but I think I can share one takeaway that might resonate in this conversation: Know thy users. Keep the people that are directly using the software in mind. In times of corporate strife: remember the users. Let their happiness be your guiding light. There are real people that depend on the software we write. Regardless of how any corporate decision turns out, those people will always be thankful that you made their day to day lives a bit easier. Find the disproportionate pain points. That one preference that were it defaulted differently would save 90% of users a one time frustration when on boarding. That one janky error message that no one understands. Fix that sort of stuff, the stuff that users are interacting with regularly. At the end of the day, unless you're contractually entrenched at oracle levels, if the users aren't happy, then whatever corporate structure that puts food on your table probably wont do well. They may not do well if users are happy, but very likely wont if users are angry. Any given change might not matter to your executives, but they matter to your users, keep them in mind and heart and you'll know what to do. And periods of corporate strife like in the article are a great time to actually get that sort of stuff prioritized, because no one can say anything else is more important.