I agree, except for the part about people being incompetent in product design. My take is that it can be generalized to be... Acquire a company, then do everyt

I agree, except for the part about people being incompetent in product design. My take is that it can be generalized to be... Acquire a company, then do everything you can to ignore them. Integrate them technically, but not socially leaving them completely unaware of the rest of the company. Demand they launch a product while decisions are made from a distant location filled with people that don't know anything about what they are doing, and don't care because they have enough of their own work to do. Next Stage - Technically the company is integrated with many hiccups, the servers are on the correct domain, and the network moves have happened. Still nothing feels different except that they know they have some decision making that feels almost random. Next Stage - Product Release Product is released, and doesn't match any of the assumed standards from big corp. Everything is ripped a part for not meeting unknown and unknownable objectives. It is easy to do because the other development teams HAD to follow the objectives, and they didn't, so it can't even be CONSIDERED! The remote company also can't defend themselves in discussions as most of them happen without them physically there. - Next Stage Team starts losing people rapidly. They aren't rehired locally, and are instead backfilled at big corp. Since there are fewer people, they can't do the full thing, and are then integrated with other development teams. The ideas together help build a product that can launch and reach acceptance, because the teams from remote know how to do it. - Next Stage The remote teams start going to conferences meeting people, they've had enough meetings with people remote they start to know who to go for. The big corp has just acquired a new even bigger company, so now you start to feel like more a real part of the company than even they are. Your product was fine, and you start to move through the normal processes, just with everything driven by people who have done it before remotely. Some of the team members even move on to other parts of remote corp because they did particularly well. Next Step - Total integration has happened, most of the teams are different people, but there are a few guys that remember the good old days. You're now just another random development unit, you might not even be working on what you initially were acquired for. You're now a remote office, a fully integrated part of remote corp. You're just a development group, and you're more expensive at that. But hey, you still have jobs. ... That sound about right?...