[granos]

I hope it works out for StrongLoop. When a company I worked for was purchased by IBM, about 3/4 of the engineering staff left once we heard about "Work Life Integration (tm)". It's really hard to work inside Big Blue when you are used to the freedom provided by a small company.

[eikenberry]

Care to elaborate on IBM "Work Life Integration (tm)" and why it caused the mass exodus?

[colordrops]

A quick google search seems to indicate that IBM wanted to allow their employees more flexibility with their schedules and ability to take leaves. I don't understand how this is a bad thing.

[granos]

The problem was their justification. It went something along the lines of "Employees are often thinking about their personal lives while at work, so they should also be thinking about their work life while at home."

I'm sure the intentions were good, but the presentation was terrible. Also, it was only one of many factors, but its a catchy line so I chose to call that one out.

Other include:

  * Far worse benefits package and no attempt/willingness to make us whole in that regard

  * About half the team was told they would no longer be eligible for raises because their salaries were above the top of their IBM pay band

  * Several people lost large amounts of 401k matching because they missed their partial vesting date for that year (some by a few weeks) because the transition was done as being fired and then hired again

  * Likewise we were not eligible to start contributing to the IBM 401k for some amount of time

  * The IP agreement was Draconian (and we aren't in a state with nice moonlighting laws)

  * They took away our office's coffee budget, which seems small and petty but it was a damned nice thing to have

  * Two of the worst performers were promoted to be engineering managers because they didn't know what else to do with them....

I was only there for a few months after the merger. Talking to some who lasted longer made me very happy to have left. In all about 3/4 of the engineering team was gone within 9 months.

[funkysquid]

I find it strange that large companies envy the things smaller shops are able to do, and they'll spend the money to buy them up, but they won't spend the time to understand the culture that let them build what they built. Put employees first and you'll find they can do some pretty amazing things.

[brazzledazzle]

It is really bizarre. I think it really comes down to managers/execs realizing that but there's an imbalance of power towards risk averse groups like legal, finance and HR who have been given the latitude to make stupid decisions.

CEOs of these large companies really need to step up and take control of these groups who develop an unreasonable amount of risk aversion due to a long history of dealing with issues that have a great deal of gravity for them even though they're fairly minor for the organization overall.

There are some companies that get this right, but a general shift hasn't happened yet and there's probably quite a few CEOs that can't justify the political expense and fallout without the backing of a major culture shift in businesses at large. It might be years or even decades before that happens and it's going to be sad to see small agile companies fall to it in the meantime.

[wpietri]

The only way I have been able to explain this is that the expressed purpose of management hierarchies, which is generally about running successful businesses, is almost entirely different than their actual purpose.

As to the actual purpose, I think it's a similar deal to feudalism. Whatever waffle kings and nobles said, looking back it was pretty clearly about self-aggrandizement, filling one's pockets, taking revenge upon one's enemies, et cetera, ad nauseam.

I guess this shouldn't be surprising; primates gonna prime.

[johnward]

No only that. You will see some mega corp acquire some smaller company for their proprietary tech. Then replace that tech with something else, often open source, or just not use the technology they acquired at all. Are they just going for acquihire? Swallowing up competitors? It blows my mind.

[bro-stick]

It might be jealousy combined with power to destroy something cool and maybe eliminate something a competitor might leverage. If they're fewer cool companies thriving, it makes the sucky behemoths look less terrible by comparables.

[johnward]

> The IP agreement was Draconian (and we aren't in a state with nice moonlighting laws)

This caused the most of the problems during our acquisition. I'm still with IBM but we had a few people leave over the "IBM owns everything you ever do" clause.

> They took away our office's coffee budget, which seems small and petty but it was a damned nice thing to have

We had company lunch each Friday that had to end with IBM. It's a small thing but it really changes the culture and moral.

[azth]

> About half the team was told they would no longer be eligible for raises because their salaries were above the top of their IBM pay band

IBM most likely spent (speculating here) several millions of dollars on the acquisition, and they can't afford to pay the devs? This is completely messed up.

[DannyBee]

" * The IP agreement was Draconian (and we aren't in a state with nice moonlighting laws) "

None of these exist in the US (particularly when you work for someone like IBM). Employees who think otherwise are simply misunderstanding the law :)

[anseljh]

Not sure why you think that. Here's California's moonlighting law:

"Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information..."

http://www.weblaws.org/california/codes/ca_lab_section_2870

[DannyBee]

Engineers always get this wrong. They always quote the first part, and then say "see, anything i do on my time with my own stuff is mine".

You forgot the super-important part, which are literally the words after what you quoted, which say: " except for those inventions that either: (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer."

#1 covers pretty much everything tech related that tech related people do. For example, if you work for IBM, i doubt you can find anything not related to IBM's business, or the R&D of IBM. Becuase it's not what you think IBM's business is, it's what IBM think it's business is. It also doesn't matter whether it's a secret project you don't know about, or historical, or anything.

It makes no difference what you do for the company either. If I work as an IP lawyer for Google, and Google builds self-driving cars (among other things), any work i do on my own time related to self driving cars is Google's.

Note also "related to", not "exactly the same as". So if it's in the same area, field, etc, you are screwed.

But you don't have to take my word for it, look at court cases in CA, which find the same :)

Now, maybe if you work for a small, super-focused company, you may be okay.

But good luck if you work for any mid or large sized tech company, which often have so many projects, strategic initiatives, and research that it covers pretty much everything in the world.

To wit: In every case an employee has come to me saying "well, we don't do that, so why would you own it", it has been a case that the employee did not know there was a team doing it. I have never had a case of an employee coming to me and it turned out "yeah, you know what, we don't really do anything in that area"

[coldtea]

>without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information

Good luck trying to prove that against IBM's lawyers and patent portfolio.

[freditup]

I worked for IBM for a period and all the teams I was around were very family-friendly when it came to work/life balance. Much more so than other younger/cooler tech companies I've worked for and read about. There were downsides at IBM for sure, but this wasn't one of them.

[greglindahl]

Huh. When Blekko got acquired by IBM Watson, all of the employees thought that IBM's policies about flexible working hours and locations were great. So far I'm the only techie who's departed.

[granos]

We were in their software services vertical (I forget the name)...the one that had never turned a profit and wasn't sexy. I've known one person who had a great experience on the Watson team. So maybe its a different experience?

[johnward]

Were you on a CAMSS team? That seems to be the best area inside of IBM right now as it's a strategic growth area. This includes the Watson PS team I'm on.

[beginpanic]

As an IBMer, many of the complainers I've heard and much of the heartburn around layoffs come from outside of CAMSS. It's like folks at Apple complaining that the iPod team isn't treated as well as the iPad team. Of course, your group isn't making money.

[chiph]

But you were the CTO .. that likely said something to the remaining folks.

Also - Hi Greg!