Hello World!

Congratulations, your company just announced a “transformational strategic merger.” Translation: you’re about to spend 18 months in PowerPoint purgatory while the C-suite assures everyone that “nothing will change,” right before everything does. As a seasoned systems engineer, I’ve weathered enough mergers to know a few survival hacks. Here’s the basic 10-step playbook.

1.     Assume Nothing, Trust Less: Management says that nothing will change, but things already have – behind closed doors. Lots of things. Survival tip: Hoard everything, including customer notes, designs, process documents, and demo scripts. When chaos reigns, your stash of “how things actually work” receipts will make you a minor deity.

2.     Decode the Corporate Buzzwords: Executives say, “We’re doubling down on efficiency through collaboration.” Translation: Time to update your resume.

a.    Synergy = Layoffs

b.    Streamline = Budget cuts

c.     Cultural Alignment = Lots of workshops led by overpriced consultants

Pro tip: Keep a buzzword bingo card handy for the all-hands meetings.

3.     Become a Master of VPN Juggling: Suddenly you will have multiple VPN clients, six different MFA tokens, all of which will expire on Friday, and maybe even a second laptop. Keep a spare phone for all of the authentication apps – you’ll need it.

4.     Stockpile Coffee and Sarcasm: During one integration meeting early in the merger process, we spent two hours debating whether we should use Teams or Slack. Someone actually said, “We need a task force to evaluate this.” Lesson learned: Your meetings will triple in frequency and length. Keep your caffeine IV nearby. As for sarcasm, deploy it liberally, as long as HR isn’t around.

5.     Embrace the New Storm of Acronyms: Shortly after one merger, we went to an OCM meeting. That’s Organizational Change Management. Or Oh Crap Moment. Either way, it was still the same meeting. While we were there, we heard all about XLE, BYH, and G2C. I nodded and pretended that I knew what they meant. Write them down so that you can decode them later. If anyone asks you to explain another new acronym, just pivot and say that it is still being defined.

6.     Always Look Busy: Mergers are basically the Hunger Games with business cards. People are either considered to be “critical assets” or else “redundant.” You need to look like you’re irreplaceable. Pro tip: Perfect the art of staring at dashboards with deep concern. Sprinkle in phrases like, “That could impact latency under scale.” People will assume you’re indispensable.

7.     Customers Don’t Care About Internal Drama: While you’re busy learning who will sign your next paycheck, your customers will ask if their support contract is still valid, why their CSM quit, and if the roadmap is still accurate. Spoiler: Nobody actually knows. So pacify them with comments like, “Our commitment to your success certainly hasn’t changed.” That should mollify of 95% of them.

8.     Identify the Real Power Players: Forget the guys on stage. Find the people who really matter, and make friends accordingly:

a.     The Executive Assistant who controls the VP’s calendar

b.    The IT guy with Admin rights in both domains

c.     The Financial Analyst who already knows which budgets are real and which ones are likely to vanish into thin air.

9.     Wait it Out: This too shall pass. Eventually the chaos will settle down. Logos will change, titles will shift, products will be cancelled, and sales quotas will increase. But in the long run, you’re still demoing products to customers, just like you always did. Just make sure you maintain your sanity and your sense of humor.

10.  Always Have an Escape Plan: Let’s be real – sometimes mergers leave a few of us behind. After all, the newly merged company doesn’t actually need two separate SEs for that tiny patch of real estate that you call your territory. So keep your resume polished, update your LinkedIn profile, and start replying to those annoying recruiter emails. It certainly can’t hurt. Do it now!

Corporate mergers are less about synergy and more about survival. Remember: the execs will get their golden parachutes, the consultants will get big checks, and you, the SE, will get to awkwardly duct tape solutions together until the next “transformational journey.” But hey, you will persevere. This is just another production bug.

Stay tuned for more nerdy columns about my experiences as an SE.