Has the company that you work for just announced that they are being acquired? Are you anxious? Are you wondering what comes next?

Obviously I can’t respond to all the specifics about your particular situation, but I do I have a track record of the companies I work for being acquired. Once, the company that acquired us was itself acquired. I’ve even started making a joke of it interviews: if your exit plan is to be bought rather than IPO, I’m your man I say. (I’m a blast, you should hire me!)

I’ve seen the fear in peoples eyes when it’s announced and, while I can’t say the fear is entirely misplaced, I can talk you through some of what you can expect in the coming days and months. Of course, every acquisition is different, every role is different, and everyone is different. But the list of things that you can influence has been fairly consistent so you can at least calibrate your expectations.

As an added benefit, you may be able to get a reputation for zen-like calm when everyone else is panicking around you.

I should add that my experience is mostly around startups being bought by much bigger enterprises. If you’re dealing with something more like a merger you might find that things are quite different. And it should go without saying that my experience is entirely subjective; if you’re lucky you’ll get a much better deal than I’ve ever seen! I’m also doing a lot of “averaging” here. None of the following is the story of any particular acquisition.

# Denial

It may be a bit cliched by this point, but the Kübler-Ross model is a good place to start.

The first stage – denial – will come from people who say that nothing will change.

Of course things will change.

Change can be unsettling and you may have a few nights of less-than-perfect sleep while your subconscious catches up with the reality. There will be change. Maybe not today, but in the near future. Think about it: what’s the point of buying a company if everything remains the same?

# Anger

You’ll find that many people are immediately angry about the whole thing. The founders are sell-outs. Or, if they had to sell, why did they sell to [insert name of soulless corporation here]? They immediately update their CV/resume and start talking to recruiters.

While I’d say that updating your CV at this point might be pragmatic, immediately trying to jump ship is probably premature. (Unless you manage to snag a really great offer, in which case, go for it. It’s not unusual for recruiters to be on the lookout for disgruntled employees of acquired companies.)

An exception might be that you’ve worked for the acquiring company before and know that you can’t handle what’s about to come. Or that you work in a part of the company that services the rest of it, like HR, finance or IT. Those functions are almost always “let go” rather than get merged into the new parent company.

For software companies, they’ll probably want to keep a lot of engineers and customer facing staff. If you think about it, about the only asset a software company has is the people. They may have different opinions about the right size of team, though. In short, while there are never any guarantees – hence the uncertainty – there’s a decent chance that they’ll want you to stay. The question is: do you want to?

# Bargaining

Let’s assume that you’re going to stay, if only for a few months to see how it all plays out.

Your current management team stands up at an all-hands meeting and explains that everything is cool and nothing significant is going to change. This has happened every time for me and they’re either lying or naive, and I honestly don’t know which. Things will change. Some changes will be good – honest. But many will not be. Your first reaction might be to fight for everything you currently have.

Sadly that’s just not realistic.

There are battles that are winnable and some that are not. If you’re to maintain your zen-like calm, you need to understand which is which.

The first thing to understand is that chances are your company culture is going to start to normalise with that of the acquiring company. Your snack cupboard, your weekly sponsored drinks, your masseuse. If the company that acquired you doesn’t do these things, eventually you won’t either. Think of it from the point of view of everyone else in the company: why should you special snow-flakes get better perks than everyone else?

Which is not to say that it doesn’t suck. It does.

And you may get special dispensation, but it will probably be time-limited.

And there’s another side: bigger companies often have better benefits. In most of the acquisitions I’ve been involved in, we’ve lost many of the day-to-day benefits (like a snack cupboard) but have gained others (improved healthcare, more generous pension contributions). There will also likely be adjustment to salaries, bonuses and job titles. In Europe, generally things have to be the same or better, but that’s not true everywhere and, even then, what’s “the same or better” might be subjective.

So far I’m mostly been talking about the monetary value of your perks, but there is more at stake here. It’s still worth fighting to keep as much of your culture as possible. The people make the company and that’s what they bought. Your culture is part of what they bought and part of the culture is the environment that you all work. If they trash everything the current team value without some balance, they won’t have bought very much.

There are elements of your culture that make you effective as an organisation and others that just lubricate the process a bit. You should fight more for the former than the latter. (That should be stating the obvious, but every acquisition I’ve been involved in has seen people practically crying over pretty small things.)

Example 1: getting rid of your bug tracking software because your acquiring company uses Excel for the same purpose makes no sense.

Example 2: maybe you love Gmail that your startup uses and, quite sensibly, hate Exchange that your acquiring company uses. I’m sorry. You’re going to lose Gmail. The hundred people being acquired are not going to change the mind of corporate IT of the fifty-thousand employee acquirer. (It could be worse. One of the companies that I moved to had Lotus Notes as their corporate standard.) Nor is there a good argument for keeping a different system from everyone else.

If you have obviously better tooling, fight for that. If they just use a different tool, you’re unlikely to win. If you use Slack and they use Teams, you’ll almost certainly be moving over. If you use Slack and they use Post It notes and shouting, it’s winnable.

There are, however, some vectors that are worth looking out for. If you have an awesome tool that there is no equivalent for in the new company, fight for that.

The other thing that’s worth pushing for is where the new company is open to new ideas. In one take-over, I successfully advocated for WebEx to become their new video conferencing standard (taking over from a terrible existing system that couldn’t be used to talk to clients!) at one company and then, ironically, advocated getting rid of the very same product in favour of a more modern solution in a later acquisition.

Overall, if you like your day-to-day job, very few of these things should be deal breakers, so pay attention to people who act like it’s the end of the world and try to talk them down. Equally, you are going to lose stuff that you like. It’s important to keep a level head and consider the overall picture.

# Depression

Then again, it could be death by a thousand cuts. All those small changes, many of them not for the better, can get you down.

Many bigger companies are not as generous with things like being able to work remotely or from home. These days, I would consider that a deal-breaker.

Some of the things that bothered me were kind of odd. Like the fact that I had to use the company travel service when visiting a client, but they’d aggressively booked the rack rate for most hotels; that they’d know so little about the cities I was visiting that they’d try to put me in the red-light district; or that you had to fly for international travel so I got into trouble for expensing a trip on the Eurostar to Paris.

These affected me personally very little, but I had to work much harder to get a worse level of service. And that’s ultimately why I left most of these companies after the acquisition.

I mention these simply as examples. The cuts that bother you will be different. Maybe there’ll be so few that you’ll stay. What I’m saying is, expect some but try not to pre-judge.

# Acceptance

I would urge you to stay, at least a little while, to see how things play out. There are benefits to working for a bigger company.

You might find it easier to move to another department, which might be good. There may be better promotion opportunities. Big companies often also have better perks and more formal structures for things like bonuses and raises. You might like the increased structure found in most large corporations.

Try to embrace the things you can’t change as best you can and remember that no job is perfect. The mix of things you like and things your merely endure will undoubtedly change but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Try to remember that it’s working with your colleagues (or whatever else) that really keeps you at work, not the various perks.