I’ve been through this a couple times already, when your company is “hiring” and flexes “record profits” but you also see mid-level managers start to disappear and no new people actually start working, you need to understand that it’s the first signs of your whole company is about to get digested by private equity.
It’s the dream of every CEO with a moderately successful company to get the interest of some giant whale of a company who specializes in digesting smaller companies and skimming off just the profitable assets, be it technology or talent or existing clientele. The buyout is usually in the millions, and the private equity company will chew up the remaining employees and company structure like one of those industrial grinders they make youtube channels to watch shred engine blocks and the like.
To get the dark gaze of Sauron to fix upon your company, you have to inflate its value and potential, and that starts with working your numbers to show profit rising and show your need to expand by hiring more people, by creating listings and even whole hiring departments, but not actually do any hiring.
When you come out the other side unemployed, you will then have to wade through about 50% ghost listings from companies who are also trying to do this same thing and won’t return your call or they will make you jump through hoops so they can say they have “new talent in the running” for new openings.
My small company (~120 employees) got swallowed by a giant whale (rhymes with “Crisco”) of a company like this. Except that everybody in the original small company got laid off six months later, and we had no assets whatsoever except for the “talent”. Crisco even got stuck with the lease for our recently-renovated office and had to buy it out. Our C-suite got large stock awards when we were acquired but they all got dismissed, too. I have no fucking idea why it happened.
That’s one thing that’s more profoundly frustrating about the whole mess, these giant carnivorous whales have already taken into account that not every meal they digest is going to be profitable, they make enough money from the ones that do turn a profit that they can write off the destruction of entire, functioning companies for no goddamn reason as “the cost of doing business.”
Yup. Either eliminating a competitor, or getting ahold of some obscure patent that they don’t want to be stuck leasing indefinitely. Or they want to be the ones to lease the patent for exorbitant amounts, and they’re willing to write off a short term loss for longer term profits.
I’ve been through this a couple times already, when your company is “hiring” and flexes “record profits” but you also see mid-level managers start to disappear and no new people actually start working, you need to understand that it’s the first signs of your whole company is about to get digested by private equity.
It’s the dream of every CEO with a moderately successful company to get the interest of some giant whale of a company who specializes in digesting smaller companies and skimming off just the profitable assets, be it technology or talent or existing clientele. The buyout is usually in the millions, and the private equity company will chew up the remaining employees and company structure like one of those industrial grinders they make youtube channels to watch shred engine blocks and the like.
To get the dark gaze of Sauron to fix upon your company, you have to inflate its value and potential, and that starts with working your numbers to show profit rising and show your need to expand by hiring more people, by creating listings and even whole hiring departments, but not actually do any hiring.
When you come out the other side unemployed, you will then have to wade through about 50% ghost listings from companies who are also trying to do this same thing and won’t return your call or they will make you jump through hoops so they can say they have “new talent in the running” for new openings.
My small company (~120 employees) got swallowed by a giant whale (rhymes with “Crisco”) of a company like this. Except that everybody in the original small company got laid off six months later, and we had no assets whatsoever except for the “talent”. Crisco even got stuck with the lease for our recently-renovated office and had to buy it out. Our C-suite got large stock awards when we were acquired but they all got dismissed, too. I have no fucking idea why it happened.
That’s one thing that’s more profoundly frustrating about the whole mess, these giant carnivorous whales have already taken into account that not every meal they digest is going to be profitable, they make enough money from the ones that do turn a profit that they can write off the destruction of entire, functioning companies for no goddamn reason as “the cost of doing business.”
This is not sustainable.
Sometimes the purpose of your acquisition is just to eliminate a competitor.
Yup. Either eliminating a competitor, or getting ahold of some obscure patent that they don’t want to be stuck leasing indefinitely. Or they want to be the ones to lease the patent for exorbitant amounts, and they’re willing to write off a short term loss for longer term profits.