A big fish ate my company

A big fish ate the company I recently worked for. I take what may be considered inordinate pride in the work I do and in the company I work for. I am cynical for the humor value, but I honestly believe that upper management truly has a vision that will be good for stockholders and employees alike. That's the world that I live in.

The company I worked for had begun in someone's garage back in the 70s. A group of investors looking for high-tech startups had purchased this little niche-market manufacturer, and by the time I signed on they had a business plan and had started improving on the basic breadwinner product.

Wall Street liked us. When we found out that the company was being purchased by a competitor, there was a sense of disbelief. Over the course of my six years with the company, their head count grew from 35 employees to 85. Two years before I left they had gone public and had acquired two other companies in order to expand their product line and customer base to compete with the big players.

We made a quality product and had a tight-knit technical staff who took pride in the product. Wall Street liked us. When we found out that the company was being purchased by a competitor, there was a sense of disbelief. There was monetary compensation, promises that no one would be laid off, and tears.

There was the inevitable rough period during which two corporate cultures came to grips with each other's business philosophies and then settled into grudging cohabitation. Now I have just heard that the company that bought us out is itself being purchased. Disbelief morphs into surrealism. I had a friend who had been with the original company for 10 years. I supposed that he would be sweating bullets with this new revelation, so I called him to commiserate on the state of society and the demise of workplace security. And I found that I was totally off base. He had left the madness and had found a job in another industry doing challenging work. He had landed on his feet and now sports an office with real walls and a door. Life has always been full of challenges. Whether the challenge is hunting bison or tracking down an acoustic-coupling problem, sometimes the environment changes suddenly and the measure of our survival skill is knowing when to migrate. So, in today's economy, do you feel like you're the hook, or the bait? Let me know. Gary Evan Jensen, Associate Editor

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