How a bad buyout killed a good company

A satisfying IT job that directly contributes to a company’s growth is certainly one to hold onto. But all too often business decisions beyond IT’s control can kill a good organization and drive off faithful employees. I witnessed a maddening example of this tragedy early in my career, when I was hired to help a small computer firm expand its PC business.

Our main tasks were to attract corporate customers and grow the service offerings. Working closely with the director of operations, I recommended we start with the basics, such as a PC staging area where we could customize both hardware and software for customers. Soon this workflow was running smoothly, and we moved on to other changes.

To increase the service side of the business, we hired new techs and made sure all of them were at least A+ certified, with additional certifications from the manufacturers of the brands we sold. This part took a bit longer to work out than expected, but we proceeded slowly to make sure all was operating well.

As we continued to expand, we started to not only do repairs in-house, but also made onsite visits for customers who were willing to pay a bit more. We found that onsite calls could generate a lot of revenue without that much overhead, so we focused even more on our field support services. The number of techs eventually doubled.

By this point, two years had passed. Eventually I convinced the director of operations to boost the training of our techs so that we would have a few systems engineers. That way we’d have personnel to handle higher-level IT problems. This move, too, paid off quickly.

After another year, we were doing superb and our revenue tripled. We kept our field service overhead low, which continued to be the main source of profit. Customers were loyal, and we kept adding more companies to our list.

I eventually became the lead tech, and I felt like — and was told — that I was making great contributions to the company. The senior managers valued the employees, which led to a high level of satisfaction among the ranks. Things couldn’t get any better for a tech job.

Of course, as they say, all good things must come to an end.

Our company continued to grow rapidly, and corporations noticed. Acquistion offers started coming in. One day, the owner and senior management accepted an offer and sold our business, pocketing themselves quite a sum of money in the process. They explained to us the reasons behind the sale, told us that great things were in store for the business, and walked away.

The company that bought us did not have a presence in our area, so we thought perhaps it wanted to increase its physical market space and our customer services would continue. But a couple of weeks later, the director of operations quit without advance notice. In retrospect, he may have seen the writing on the wall or learned something the rest of us hadn’t.

Things started going downhill from there as more closed-door meetings took place, none of them involving anybody from the tech side. More managers left, and the rest of us polished our resumes and kept an eye on job postings. Soon afterward, a group of techs was let go — including me.

A month later, I’d found a job at a new company. I kept in contact with my former coworkers, who told me the situation had grown even worse. The company that bought us had zero experience running a service shop, so they closed it down and fired all the service techs, keeping a few IT staff for internal tech support. They had decided to run the business like their company, which was to just sell computer hardware and software.

However, the new owners failed to understand that many of our corporate customers picked our company as their vendor because we offered a full turnkey solution for their IT needs. When the new owners disbanded the service side, customers left in droves.

About a year later, the company went out of business, and the new owners sold off the remaining inventory at a loss.

I’m not sure what happened to the parent company, but to this day I’m still vexed that the new management destroyed a sound, rapidly growing company. I’ve had quite a few satisfying jobs since then, but I still rank my time at that employer near the very top of positive career experiences.

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