I haven't written a work related post in what seems like ages. I am currently living through the aftermath of a third M&A in my career. The company I currently work for is in its third incarnation - from a small tech startup 15 or so years ago to something that was sold to a large software company - one of those lumbering giants that have their hands in all kinds of technology driven fields - where they invested sufficiently in it to grow it in its current location - to now finally being acquired by an even larger technology company - one that its hands in all kinds of technology fields.I came along post the second phase but I have seen 2 other US tech company acquisitions, one that made me quit fast and the other that took me around the world but made me leave anyway.
The difference from the previous take-over of the current place and this one is stark. While there was a lot of churn up top in the previous acquisition and differences in what you paid for benefits etc, for the most part, they did a bit of thinking and rightly left the group alone. They invested properly and the little unit they bought tripled its revenue in 3 years. I am not a business person by any means but to me, that is a good performance.
Along the way, well, even prior to that, the Vancouver tech market has grown tremendously. There are many reasons for it - geographic closeness to Silicon Valley, good universities and colleges that are generating great talent, good startup culture and perhaps most importantly, a cheaper dollar and better skilled immigration policies. All sorts of US based companies have been setting up offices in Vancouver - mostly to hire top talent for a fraction of the cost. I recall people who had hiring privileges at my workplace throw around numbers like we are all paid about 40-60K less than a comparable Silicon Valley employee and that too in Canadian dollars (which is about 75 cents US per Canadian dollar). I am not surprised that it was the case. Pay has increased in the last little while because large US tech companies like Amazon are paying well for this market. This has made it hard for startups to compete and for other okay businesses to retain talent.
Whatever the case, my employer did a couple of rounds of what they called market adjustment and bumped up the benefits well. One curious thing they did was change the time off policy. They went to the legally mandated provincial rules - 10 days off for full time employees until 5 years of service, then 15 days. When they introduced it, it caused a huge ruckus - most people had at least 20 days of vacation to begin with and they definitely did not want to lose 10 days. Eventually, a compromise was arrived at - they will pay you out ONLY the legally mandated amount - should you quit - and otherwise, you keep your previous vacation as flex days. They also made sure you used the legally mandated portion before taking any flex days. This was a brilliant move on their part - they made a cost-saving measure, realised that people would walk out the door if they didn't fix it and then came up with a compromise that made most people happy. Time off from work is definitely one of those benefits that causes a lot of backlash if tinkered with in the wrong manner.
The other big thing that happened in Vancouver as far as tech goes is the movement of tech to downtown. When I was in school, the general trend was to go to these industrial zones in the outskirts of the suburbs in these 3 storey complexes with a cafe and large parking lot where folks drove in and worked. That was the 90s and it made some sense then. Real estate was relatively cheap and people expected to drive to work and everyone else was in one of these warehouse type buildings out in the middle of nowhere. After the recovery from the dotcom bust, a different type of tech company came to Vancouver. They used small offices in buildings in downtown Vancouver. This offered a lot of advantages - first, Vancouver's downtown has had a boom in urban residential properties, second, all kinds of transit fed into the downtown core relatively easily. Currently, there are 2 East-West skytrain (rapid transit) lines and one heavy commuter train (taking 1 hour but covering about 70km). As part of the 2010 Winter Olympics, a North-South skytrain line was added. Both of these changed the tech employee landscape. Most people I work with live one rapid transit ride away from work. Worst case, you took the WCE and spent an hour enjoying the scenery or napping. The suburban tech offices had a hard time competing - big companies who had warehouse type space in the middle of nowhere have now moved closer to downtown because they couldn't hire new people. Coupled with the increase in sustainable living and urban cycling, it made little sense to go work far away. And my employer had an office on a main street in downtown Vancouver, with a couple of floors of newly renovated office space.
Now, we get to the meat of the second acquisition and things that are going awry. They got rid of most of the senior leadership locally and instead appointed some Silicon Valley types who have many other things already on their plate. From a business point of view, that makes sense - they are all about saving money and they made a decision based on spreadsheets that made sense. However, this had the impact of causing a lot of unhappiness with the local crowd. People started quitting because they had other options. The fact that leadership was absent locally and decisions were made elsewhere didn't help.
Remember the vacation policy? Well, the new folks decided that vacations had to be standard across the entire company. I have no idea how that makes sense - when you are an organisation that employs people across borders and time-zones where different rules apply. But, they shoehorned it in. And predictably, there was a lot of backlash. Many people lost more than 10 days of vacation and the tone-deaf responses from the powers that be have aggravated their employees some more. They made the benefits worse. Predictable response. Then, their spreadsheet warriors really made things interesting. They decided that it made no sense to have two offices in the same area. On paper, makes perfect sense. You have 2 offices, you try and consolidate. Only problem? The other office is one of those suburban offices out in the middle of nowhere. It is still the middle of nowhere. With one sushi joint and a cafe. And the need to drive a car every day. Which means most people have to buy a car, insure it, fill in very expensive gasoline, spend more time getting there. Which is an automatic 5 to 10k pay cut because... most people relied on rapid transit and did not own a car. Transit fares are not cheap here, but a car costs significantly more. For me, transport was 15 minutes of walking - the same in the morning and at night, whether it was the height of summer or not. Traffic woes included waiting to cross intersections. My future commute takes a little over 4 times my current commute.
All of this brings surprise to the foreign leadership. They made everyone decent stock based offers. Your pay stayed the same, you got a better bonus in their mind (some of us did okay anyway) and they offered this Silicon Valley dream of large RSUs.Or so they are telling us. Except, most people here are unwilling to compromise on their time and wait years and years for a potential payout. As one of my coworkers put it, I will have to not see my child for 2 hours a work day. I will never get that time back as he grows up. This is where we are all at currently - I suspect everyone is working hard to land a better job close to the current office in order to move on.
Spreadsheet based management has taken a very profitable bit of a company to a shell of its former self. By the time the move happens, I suspect the only people left will be those who live close to that office or ones somehow unable to find another job. And the one guy who seems to be content with it - why, I don't know. As for myself, I am busily learning new things and brushing up on old, reaching out to my old contacts and updating LinkedIn. I am not working in suburban bliss unless I have no choice. I look forward to seeing how this little bit of the tech world we built survives, and I am sad to see 5 years of my work destroyed so easily by tone-deaf decision making.
Comments