[999900000999]

Thanks for writing a great article.

I was honestly impressed with how much you cared for your employees.

The American way would be to just sell it to the highest bidder without any concern for anything else.

Does India have a different social contract? I'd never expect a company to actually look out for my best interest.

It seems like you really cared for your team. Are lifers common in India?

Back in my grandpa's time, you worked at the same place for 20 years, they gave you a gold watch, and then you retired.

Now your expected to jump ship often or your leaving money on the table.

[asanwal]

Thank you.

I don't think there is an Indian social contract but having been born and brought up here in the USA, I'd be talking out of my a$$ on that topic :)

This was maybe more of an implied or expected contract I had with my dad and mom who built the business and by extension the Atlas team.

Job hopping is quite common in India, but that's probably more common in larger cities. In a tier 2 city like where my dad's business was, there are limited options for a plant engineer for example, and as far as I can tell, the skills they have in a fine chemicals plant may not be immediately transferable to a plastics manufacturer.

And finally, many were with my dad for 10+ years so probably some amount of comfort in knowing the domain, the job, the boss, etc.

[jll29]

Thanks for the story and for putting the employees first. M&A of your sort should always select suitors based on chemistry fit - so when I read your list of candidates, it was already clear to me you would sell to the one listed last, and I'm glad it worked.

Selling to Private Equity is almost never what any founder would have wanted, as their job is to slice and dice, "cut the fat" and sell the pieces to different highest bidders.

[999900000999]

>Selling to Private Equity is almost never what any founder would have wanted, as their job is to slice and dice, "cut the fat" and sell the pieces to different highest bidders.

Depends on the founder, I'm happy that the OP decided to look after his workers, but there's no loyalty in business.

Many founders would just look at the largest payday and be done with it.

I guess you can have a George Lucas moment and criticize the new owners for destroying what you made, but you're sitting nice with your profits.

OP comes off as someone who was already really comfortable, and the business appears to of been profitable.

But it would have been a completely different story if they were losing money, at a point you might just have to sell the company for parts and cut your losses.

Maybe offer some of the lifers generous severance packages.

[Applejinx]

Does it count as business, though, if you're just busting it out, light a match? Is that not more, vandalism? Seems not as difficult.

[gopher_space]

He means “just business” in the mob sense.

[mattzito]

There are lots of family owned businesses in the US that look after their employees. I think it’s more that there are significantly fewer tech companies in general that are family owned businesses.

[bruce511]

I think maybe it's because the tech industry is so young, and because it was mostly populated by the young when it exploded in the 80s and 90s.

In IT I've never has a boss a generation older than me. Folk were/are basically my generation. In the early days there wasn't an "adult in the room" so we made it up as we went along.

We (as people) tended to be more about "people" than "money" (although I'm sure not all ex employees would agree.) There's a fine line between caring for people and staying profitable. But one can do both.

I'm not one for job-hopping (and I've likely left cash on the table for that) but that seems to permiate down. (Half the staff are 10 years+ now). We're also only adding a few posts a year. We don't hire fast. We don't fire fast.

But the industry in general was build by narcissistic folk in their 20s, who had ideas like "young is better", grow-fast, high risk, break things etc. IT culture is still like that (despite us being in our 50s now.)

But I don't think this reflects the world in general, or indeed industries in general. I feel like most people want a stable job, a stable life, and dont feel the need to move all the time.

As an employer, the OPs criteria of caring what happens to our staff has been front and center when succession planning. Just cause we retire shouldn't mean they're out of a job.

[ren01r]

Lifers are common in manufacturing/industrials in India. Jumping ships is the norm in tech as it is in the US.