Comment by apohn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apohn | Hacker News Reader

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I worked at a company that went through a private equity acquisition and I have a question you might be able to answer.

If you exclude layoffs and incentivized retirement, it seemed to be that a greater percentage of individual contributors left as compared to managers. Lots of managers stuck around for 12+ months, and it seemed like the percentage of managers of managers (e.g. directors, VPs) who stuck around was even greater. Almost the entire C-suite stayed for years after the acquision.

Was there any financial or other incentives given to managers to stay? As an individual contributor, the morale was just terrible. I just couldn't understand why the managers and other people in leadership positions stuck around.

> I just couldn't understand why the managers and other people in leadership positions stuck around.

Money. Investors typically carve out equity to retain key personnel (i.e., management units/stock). The units are worthless unless the company appreciates in value, so management becomes laser-focused on doing whatever it takes to increase the company's valuation. Everything else becomes a secondary concern.

I had guessed something like this was going on, but reading this just really makes me wonder what's really going on in the minds of a private equity folks. The C-suite and senior leadership were the ones who drove the company to the point that they ended up in the hands of private equity, but they were incentivized to stay.

I get that they exiting leadership knows the company and it's hard to find new people. But it just seems so crazy to me.

We had teams that had 50%+ percent of people gone between layoffs and attrition. It was comical to see how much stuff fell between the newly formed cracks. I still can't comprehend how much they must have been incentivized to stay when the earth was crumbling around them.

As a one-foot-in manager, I tend to stick around as long as someone is still on the receiving end of one of my policies. Bad practice to not observe the unpleasant consequences with future aspirations to leadership.

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