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.