Over the past year I’ve been spending some time in the sub-reddit r/ProductManagement and with my background of 10 years in Software Development and 3 years in Product Management, I’m happy to write where I can contribute. In this series, I’ll republish some of the responses I’ve written and maybe expand on them. This is part two, also checkout Part One on Team Culture.
If a start-up is acquired by another org and the employees (PM here) are offered to be acqui-hired, how do the employees evaluate the decision of continuing in the new org OR making a switch?
My last company was in both situation, in 2016 we acquired a smaller competitor. In 2019 a bigger competitor acquired us. 2016 I was a developer, 2019 developer and junior Product manager. So much for context.
You’ll have three groups of people.
- Those who were selected not to be re-hired in the new company and they will be let go.
- Those who move to the new company and will adjust in the new environment.
- Those who move to the new company and will leave soon.
In the third category it’s also likely to have people who — very utilitarian — stay for the merger, but will either leave soon after or will be “pursuaded to go”.
Mergers hurt, have very ugly sides and there are many personal stories. Everyone is a bit afraid and shocked, nervous and insecure. Management will try their best to calm everyone down and give re-assurances. Still, in any merger 75% of the people from the smaller company usually leave within a year. [citation needed] I heard this number from a MBA student, I can confirm it for the two mergers I experienced.
The factors for staying are very individual, but I guess they can be broken down into personal, professional and political reasons.
For personal reasons, consider, that the new company is a place they never applied for. Even if it’s a similar product, the new company will be a very different organization with different unwritten rules and its unique atmosphere. If you apply for a job, you have the interview process that is also for the interviewee to learn if the company is a place that works for them. In a merger employees don’t get that. They are thrown cold into the new environment.
Professional reasons are the most straight forward. Do the technologies you work with match? How different are the products? Is the Product Management structure working for you? What’s the standing of Product and Technology in the new company? What are the resources available?
Thirdly political reasons, even when it’s sold as an amiable merger, there is a power dynamic at play between the company, between the managements and between the employees on all levels. Usually this is to the disadvantage of the smaller company. This power dynamic grinds people down — I had several colleagues getting burnout and depression in the process of the merger.
I only witnessed the merger as somebody in middle-management who did not have to make any tough decisions and I’m sure mergers are full of tough decisions. What I learned was, that it’s important to keep the people in sight and not only look at them as pawns on a chessboard. Be empathetic, be straight, cut the bullshit, but be hopeful and encouraging.
Any tips on identifying where they fit in a large organization after being acquired?
The company I work for was acquired by the behemoth in our industry and it’s been a tough time acclimating to a 5,000+ person organization. They recognized my talent and promoted me up the ranks a bit but the newer role pigeonholed my skillset considerably. Prior to acquisition I ran what was in essence a startup within the company and PM’d, designed and developed (some pieces) across all facets of the platform and apps I had conceptualized.
This included ETL, Computation, API’s, Frontend and BI. I worked at a much more detailed level than most and even prototyped and developed certain components. My title was Product Manager but I was much more according to the new company. Even as I look outside the organization my skillset seems to span too wide for some of the roles I’m looking at. I’m just struggling to define what I’m looking for as a job since I enjoy the “world building” aspect of what I just finished working on.
Anyone have experiences with the same?
What you did in the old company is kind of a unicorn-role. I’ve been there myself and they are fun, but in my experience, they only come organically from staying in a company for a while and carving out your skills and responsibilities and growing with the organisation. The larger the company, the more static these roles get as specialization increases and companies pay more attention to setup roles that are “replaceable” with similar talent.
Unfortunately for you, focusing on the main task in your new company is the goal. You will find many things to be annoying. For example, without the privileges of being a developer you’ll fight to get a computer setup and software permissions all the time. It’s a goal in itself to grow and learn the new rules of such an environment — it’s much different to startups. That’s my motivation at the moment.
If you realize eventually, the role is too boxed-in, you learned something and can start looking for a new smaller company that needs someone more into generalization than specialization.
Merging or integrating 2 products
My company bought a part of another company and with it came one of their products (let’s call it ABC) that was developed a couple of years ago.
It is quite similar to our core product, XYZ, in fact ABC in terms of features, can be considered a subset of our product. They target a different type of customers and the UI is designed accordingly. However, our product offers a lot more in terms of features and use cases.
Now, I am responsible for integrating the two products. The level of integration will depend on available budget but I have to make a proposal based on costs and time for both full and partial integration. I’m new to this and after a couple of meetings, I’m quite lost. There are two many things to be done and that can be done and I’m unable to structure the work.
Has anyone worked with integration of products? Any insights?
I’ve been involved with two company mergers where each company had the same product that was integrated into one core system.
This has many perspectives:
Motivation
Why do you want to merge the two products. The easiest and common answer is to free resources on one end to have them available on the other end. Totally legit, but what else? Are there political motivations you may not be able to influence but need to be aware of? What is the communication strategy to your customers going to be. Do you know strengths or required features ABC has that need to be integrated into XYZ?
Requirements
Together with the motivation you have to figure out how big your playing field is. What kind of external requirements do you have? How many people/departments are/need to be involved. How much budget do you have? Do you have deadlines? Regarding the product itself, how should XYZ should look like ideally to confidently turn of ABC? What would a MVP look like as the minimal thing you need to do to shutdown ABC? What is the overall priority of the project on the roadmaps/OKRs in relation to other topics?
Bringing it together
This is where you need to talk with many people to learn what it is you are actually expected to build together. Where is this project embedded? This is where you formulate the actual plan with everybody involved, including rough break-away features to reduce scope. By the end of this, you should be able to write tickets for everyone involved. You should know what features are essential, which are necessary and which can be put on hold in case of delays.
Who needs to be involved as a stakeholder? Who do you report to? How will customers be offboarded from ABC and onboarded to XYZ? How is Customer Service and Marketing involved? Who do you need to bring in from the maintainers of the XYZ system?
This is very very rough and just a starting point. Something important is to check-in with the people involved. There are politics at play, there are emotions involved and shutting down projects and the uncertainty of change can bring those up. Build the environment for people to express them and build trust.
Good luck in your endeavor!