Diary of an acquisition part2

Chapter two: fairy tales

Everything were so wonderful…. Once upon a time there was a company 🙂 …
Ok don’t keep it wrong, it was not a fairy tale, livin in a startup is not always so good, but every startup share some specific characteristics:

Nowhere to hide…. We use to know one with the other… We know our targets and there was not a way to hide. That means basically that everyone is committed to success. Rules do not have to be so strong, if the target is the common goal.

This is common for everyone, from manager to the latest employee we cannot hide. On the other end everyone is watching you for good and for bad, believe it or not this make a strong sense of team, and makes everyone share responsibility.

A short command line does not allow you to feel as the last wheel of the truck.

Of course this is not what happen outside, and the same things that look good can be seen from a bad side: always under the lights can be font of stress, a short command line can male confrontation harder to manage, reactivity and rush can drive yiu crazy…

But after those years when I meet a colleague I cannot avoid to remember those year as great :-).

Chapter three: here comes the king, hail to the king

Acquisition, how sound this?
Well a gian comes and take a small company…why? Well usually the answer is because of its tecnology. Nor the men nor the management style. Some acquisitions are easer then other, the big one have to digest the small one withouth destroing the newcomer.

So we small ironporer were acquired by “big c” how life will have changed? Thiscwas the mainvconcern for me and for most of the others. Well nothing happened the first year, just there were a sense of change floating all around, but not real indications…

I will not enter in detail or organizative discussion, just would like you to imagine this big question mark floating over our heads…

The last kick off meeting was full of this sense of “end of an era”.

The first real impression of the following acquisition step was becoming a cisco employee… Geez how many tools, burocracy, hierarchy… So different.

Quite confusing, moving in a new environment, needs time…meanwhile people start leaving…
Main reason is they cannot do anymore what the liked to do in the way they liked, second reason the money.

A startup is more “risky” and those risks are paid with money, so being in cisco meant to every one of us less money (big less) less control on your target (means less money as well), and bigger contrain.

But on the other end they gave me the car 🙂 full petrol so i did not complain… Part of the game I chose to play so let’s go. Still the hope was to make the difference….