[dmharrison]

I was the same (although got to see the acquisition from the inside which was pretty interesting), we were in Aus though which meant we had comparatively high degree of independence, ie all our dev platforms, code tools were hosted locally. So our team stayed pretty much the same, nerf guns, christmas trees, boardies in the office and all. Releases slowed but revenue went up which meant we could take time to really think through releases etc. Learnt heaps about the business of software as opposed to just engineering. So good and bad like most things.

Generally I think it depends on the group; as with any large group there's the excellent and below average, you just see more of it. Different to a startup/small company though where you can't really suffer poor performance for long.

As a engineer I went into dev management. Anything above IC5/6 (high level engineer) in Aus seems not really to happen, but more a function of less product dev as opposed to service delivery in Aus. This is generally true of Aus. Good product management and strategic releases, so was interesting experience. I found your M/IC level matters dealing internally within the org, ie trying to make stuff happen with people you've never met before means you prioritise based on looking at ARIA, but what you'd expect in a large distributed org.

I've got friends still there, still fighting the good fight. As with all things it's really about what you make of it and want to do.