Ask HN: About to Be Acquired by MSFT
For those who have gone through this - what can I expect: pay, layoffs, politics, length of time to integrate into HQ
Then we were acquired. All the visions and plans that we had made for where our company was going to go fell apart. The new company was in charge.
It still hurts, at times. I no longer work for the previous company.
You will soon work for Microsoft. I would recommend beginning to act like it: see if Microsoft is the kind of company that you want to work for and find teams within Microsoft that you would like to work with, if you want to work for Microsoft. If not, well, there are other companies.
Take care of yourself, first.
Pay - expect to be mapped to their levels, and your pay related to that level. Not much flexibility unless you are promoted to the next level after performance review. So make sure mapping is done fairly. They would usually use your CTO and other tech leaders to help them map.
Layoffs - law probability, but with each perf review 5% is expected to get less than Meets All - and those are candidates for departure.
Politics - it’s terrible. Try not to let anyone from MSFT join your team for as long as you can - or interview them ferociously and gather references from several teams that they worked with before, to make sure you are not getting a surprise. Some of the transfers from MSFT to our team had previously known HR issues that we were not aware of but later on got hurt by.
Disclosure: former Microsoft employee. I have no trouble speaking my mind about how I feel about the company but I prefer more honest nuance.
I didn't believe a word of it. The point of acquiring a competitor is to shut it down, or absorb the best parts of it. Within a few months the CEO announced he was leaving to spend more time with his family, and a bunch of projects that were in progress were suddenly put on hold indefinitely. I left before the layoffs.
Some people moved to their company, maybe like 5%. The rest of us watched as they nickel and dimed us out of existence. Layoffs ever 6 months. After 10 years of this, in my arrogance, I thought it would never happen to me. That when my number came up. A year later the place closed.
On the positive, they treated me very well in the layoff process. 3 months healthcare and pay, classes on how to obtain a new job, and office space to work on a new job.
Unfortunately for me, we had just had our second child and the market for hiring was awful. In 6 months I had only one interview. And it was for a company that sucked, I would rather not work than work for them. A buddy of mine got the job and hated it, left as early as possible.
I am happier now, although I still have fond memories of that job. And I still rely on resources from the outplacement.
And, though it shouldn't come as a surprise, if you weren't using a Windows machine and 100% Microsoft software for your daily work currently, you eventually will be.
Test people changed their titles to software engineers and were judged by that, this means that if you could code (and MS helped with that when necessary) you were fine. Since MS favored test people who can code anyway that wasn't a big problem for most, but not all.
Personally I used a macbook and so are many of my colleagues,some even use Linux machines- all on a need to basis.
My advice is: day-one stop thinking about it as your company and stop caring. Do what needs to be done to help your employees and to make the transition to MSFT a good one and then leave. I lost a great deal of money because I cared and stay around. If I had sold my stock at the first chance I could and left I'd be a millionaire many time over. I lost it all because I made dumb decisions that involved caring about my company when it wasn't mine anymore..
If you are searching you don’t have to take another job if offered, but you have a contingency plan and other options should things not go as swimmingly as a person might hope.
It's pretty common to have to re-interview for engineering jobs with the acquirer. A lot of engineers get cut in that scenario.
So make sure you update your resume and ask around if re-interviewing will be required.
It was quite a change, to say the least, and as it often happens, everybody got told nothing would change.I was having a hard time to believe it.
We went from Swiss management to American management. The cultural differences are huge. For instance,the Swiss,no matter how high up in the food chain, would pop in to our London office and handshake with every single person in the office. The Americans never spoke to anyone but the local managing director. The Swiss were casual, somewhat even relaxed,the Americans made it understand they own the place and were ready to squeeze even a stone if that'd make extra money.
The comp was shit in both companies,so hardly any changes there.
The tech side was much more superior at the mothership,so migrations were needed. What was supposed to be a quick, one month job,turned into half a year nightmare with no good result afterall.
The worst part was weekly corporate emails with so much jargon and corporate bs that it was even difficult to read or make sense of it.
I quit shortly after the acquisition and would do the same in any other company if I would find out thet it's being acquired.
MS as a employer is good for steady source of income with reasonable work-life balance if that’s what you need in your life in near future.
If you are extremely passionate about tech, bail out as soon as possible.
Azure usage will be thrusted on your company sooner or later for obvious reason. So your work will involve some part of dealing with that.
MS is a huge company, so things will move slow.
Politics / Culture in some of the teams stink, may be AWS will be the only other which is worse that MS.
If you are young, bail out right now, there are better places to build your career.
We were in a small local office. It took many months before they started integrating. Pay adjustments, moving into their local office. The product was integrated into their offering over a few years and the original product finally killed off.
I left within the first few months. Didn't want to work in a big company with lots of baggage.