exithrowaway

I have a feeling the reason more folks shut their whole computer down in windows is because sleep / resume is "untrustworthy". I've tried using sleep/resume over multiple windows laptops , and half the time it either didn't turn the display on, or worse, the wifi wouldn't enable which caused me to reboot anyways.

I haven't had the same problems since I switched to mac, aside from occasionally having the screen not come up immediately. This lets me run many things and not feel fearful about it all getting lost when I resume.

* that said, I did watch a non-techie guy always shut down his imac when he didn't use it, seemed awkward to me but eh.

eh, I blame our former management for not selling us before the recession. We had some much acquisitions better offers come our way and they were too thickheaded about the success of the market to take em.

I worked at a semiconductor startup that was acquired in the recession of 08. Got 2 years of a 12.5k annual retention bonus, and well, my job (engineers stayed on, sales/upper management were out)

Was it worth staying there for 2 more years? Dear god No. My opinion these days is that "most post-m&a situations suck", especially those where you're not immediately integrated into the acquiring's company culture, or promoted to lead them to better things. The problem is that it's deceiving at first. When you get acquired, you're like, "hey, my fellow engineering team stays the same, and all the crappy management from startup is out!". They built a new satellite office for us to move into with their other recent acquisitions. While it sounds nice, it's miserable if you don't see a growth path for yourself, and don't understand how the rest of the acquiring company functions. Why should I work for some options of a company I don't understand?

In the 2+ years, I've dealt with lack of funding for projects I want to do (project customers want and competitors already have), watched several very smart engineers (the ones you look up to) leave the company, as well as my own manager recently leave. Simultaneously, I feel like my work-life is more stressful as I have to work with "company-wide" field engineers that don't necessarily care about our product line, we've been losing customers since they notice us not shipping new parts and integrating our support across the company.

To help clarify, I'm an apps engineer - i.e. a mix of trying to do software development, customer support, working/managing a contractor, setting up our issue tracker, and dropping everything to hack something up for a tier-1 customer.

My advice to other non-founders getting acquired: If you're not in debt, don't worry about the money from your acquisition. Worry about whether you'll be gaining any new experiences post-acquisition. If the acquiring company is just dangling you along, leave. Be very weary of "retention bonuses" - they can alter the way you perceive your work for the worse.

Disclaimer: I need to start following the above advice.