a job change

[cellio]

On Friday the company I work for was acquired by a large defense contractor (no fooling!). This surprised me; I didn't know that we were looking to be acquired. It's too soon to say how it will all play out.

I've been casually trying to figure out if this is the largest company I've worked for or the second-largest. Information on how many people worked for IBM (total) in 1994-1995 turns out to be hard to find via Google. (That's when they bought the company I was then working for.)

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

It sounds like we should follow your working career, and buy the stock of your employers. Takeovers follow you, don't they? :-)

[cellio]

Takeovers follow me somewhat, but it's not clear you'd make money from the deal most of the time. So far, the largest amount of money I have made from an employer's stock came from a purchase I made myself, absent any stock options. (Woo hoo, speculating on the Japanese market... do you know how much trouble it is to complete such transactions?) That said, I did make a little money from two others, but not all that much (total of a few months' salary). My current employer didn't issue stock options; we got some profit-sharing instead, which was fine with me.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

Well, at least they've kept you in the loop.
The company I do regular contract work for was purchased last year and they never told any of us.

[cellio]

Wow, that's pretty wacky! I'm surprised it didn't generate any ripples like different paperwork for invoices.

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

I heard through the usual channels.

Crazy. :)

[cellio]

It's pretty strange, yes.

[yorkshirelad.livejournal.com]

Less then a month after I started at my company(small one) we were bought by a major defence company. Imagine my surprise. Thankfully they did not get rid of anyone.

I hope the change goes smoothly for you. In my experience corporate buy outs are not fun.

[cellio]

My experience matches yours on buy-outs. We'll see what happens this time.

They are not getting rid of anyone; in fact, that was one of the first things they said. Assimilation will be more gradual, it appears.

This is having undesirable effects on our newer employees -- for example, those who weren't already vested in the 401(k). There's some definite suckitude in the benefits transition, and I hope something appropriate can be done to help folks who are caught in that.

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

The company I work for was bought out by a large (and foreign, which is just weird) defense company last year. Happily, it's all been almost entirely invisible to us minions (actually, the fact that they are foreign is one big reason why it has been invisible to us - lots of barriers). They also told us they were looking to sell the company, and to who, before it happened, which was nice (I like knowing what could happen with my job).

[cellio]

A foreign defense company? That would be weird, yes. I once worked for a company that was owned by a Japanese parent and that was sometimes weird, but at least neither they nor we were doing defense work.