Welcoming our New Overlords

So it looks like Cisco has decided to purchase the company I work for.  I have to admit that my feelings are currently mixed about this.  Those of you who I've worked with at TVWorks here in London Ontario will know why I'm a little skittish.  Long story short...they shut down the office about 2 years ago now. Here's a funny side note that I just found in looking up that link about the closing: The website still says that they have an office in London, Ontario.  On top of that, the second hit in my google search for: "TVWorks closing london" was a job posting that was still active for a position in the London office.  And if any of my ex-co-workers were to check out the site you'd see a couple familiar faces.

Anyway, my story goes like this: I used to work at Liberate Technologies.  I started there while they were attempting to file for bankruptcy.  I was recently out of University and wanted to work for a tech company that was doing something more interesting to me than the place I was working.  I was impatient and left my previous employer after about 3 months of full time employment to join Liberate. I figured they'd go out of business in a year or so, but at least I should learn something along the way that I probably would not have learned if I didn't give it a shot. I was right...at least partly.  I was learning a great deal.  My manager was great.  My team lead was a very good mentor who had a lot of great stories, great patience and a quirky sense of humor that I absolutely loved.  

Then something odd happened which I hadn't accounted for.  We got purchased by the company that was the big fish customer we were constantly chasing.  It was great!  There were retention bonuses, pay raises and a lot of talk about the things we could do together.  The day of the announcement our management was running around with cases of beer.  This place just turned it up to 11.  I was on cloud nine.

But over the next few months some things started to change.  The teams were getting pulled in lots of different directions and some of the people that I really admired and wanted to work with were leaving for far off places.  But I was busy and doing well and making a name for myself.  Things were still pretty good.  Then more people left.  Things continued on.  It was actually still pretty good.  We were really busy.  We were hiring like crazy.  Our numbers swelled.  Then we got a new name.  TVWorks.  For me this was a bad smell.  Mostly because the name seemed like a cheap knock off of GuideWorks, who was a partner of ours (and previously a competitor).  Oh and I moved in with my long-time girlfriend.  And we promptly got a cat.

Then things started to shift.  New management from the mothership, as we called it, came in with a lot of talk about how they were going to help us deploy things faster and make things happen.  The term "doubling down" was used and promptly mocked around the water-coolers.  The hiring turned from full-time, to contracts. The perks were starting to claw back.  There was more talk of fairness with other sites and integrating with the mothership in various ways in order to streamline things.  By the way, I married that girl I moved in with earlier...and bought a house.

This continued for some time.  We tried moving to an Agile-ish development style that was met with mixed results.  Some people really embraced it, others chaffed. The mothership was not all that amused.  Our co-owner backed out of the partnership.  Our free drinks suddenly had a cost and our Christmas party lost some of the previous flare. I was getting restless, but was still generally ok with things.  I struggled to find a place to fit and seemed to be always one step away from getting to do the work I'd hoped to do.

Then things got real sad. The contractor positions were removed.  We carried on.  Various key positions in senior management were suddenly removed. We looked at each other with odd expressions, but still marched on. And after a few more months of slow decline, and after numerous others left of their own accord due to the shifting winds, the final axe came down.  The office closed. And on the lighter side, my wife and I got pregnant with our first child.

All of those things came flooding back to me the moment I read the e-mail Thursday morning.  The ups and downs and the excitement which eventually turned to resentment.  It's because of that experience that I have a hard time walking into this new change with bright eyed optimism. Perhaps it's also because I'm a lot wiser and more cynical now that I'm older and have a daughter to think about.  Maybe the last experience has just made me a more jaded person.  I don't really know.  But I'm trying really hard to be positive about this new change. I think there is a good chance that it will be positive for a lot of reasons.  This is a very different situation than the last purchase that I went through for a lot of good reasons.

For starters the value that the buyer has put on us this time around is considerably more than when Liberate was bought up.  This time a technology company is buying another technology company rather than a media distribution company buying a software development company.  This should be a better fit between the way the corporations work.  It seems that we have a lot to offer these new overloads and I think they actually understand what it is we do and what we have to offer. I'm not clear that the previous transaction I was a part of had that same solid foundation.  And my daughter is walking around nowadays and is ridiculously cute.

Enough with my blathering.  I've just ordered the new Apple TV and I'm way more excited about that than this work stuff anyway.  But I feel better geting this off my chest.  Hopefully I don't get called into a dark office on Monday for saying something that I shouldn't have.  (It's happened before)