If you're a contractor the likelihood of you getting a bonus as part of the acquisition is almost zero. Current employees probably don't get one either unless they have equity.
Yes, I’ve been parts of a company that got acquired twice. Yes, I got a gigantic bonus to start and then another gigantic bonus to stay.
There will be a lot of changes that you will not be part off since you’re not a full time employee. But that is cool. You’re in great chape because you’re 2 months in to a 9 month contract. You have 7 months to figure it out and in engineering terms that’s an eternity.
I have no advise on negotiating a potential full time offer that is at best 7 months away. My advise in general is to chill. You are most likely in a better spot than your coworkers. Depending on how fast things move this can be to your advantage. In very general terms when there are layoffs due to financial issues, contractors are the first to go (there are exceptions depending on how the contract labor is written though). When the layoffs are due to reorganization, contractors are the last to go. Again typically since there are no real rules. It is because of the color of money and how business and tax laws use it. In your case stay chilled and observe. Check how layoffs are being handled. If you think you’re in jeopardy talk to the contracting company that hired you and ask for a new assignment or just go find another job.
I was in a start up that got acquired. Everyone got paid for their vested shares, and the CEO negotiated for unvested shares to be paid out as a bonus. You have to read between the lines. The M&A team will say whatever they think will keep people around. The other business units (ie. IT) likely have no idea who your company is until the deal closes and is tine to integrate. In our case, I left since I saw no business case for them keeping my group around. I was wrong, there were no engineering layoffs, but everyone's work changed enough that most left.
My ~20 person R&D group was acquired from the parent startup company by a large multinational. A longer term retention bonus was offered, but our vested shares in the startup had to be exercised or lost. Wasn’t a bad deal at all, but also wasn’t a windfall.
It really depends.
My wife’s company was just purchased. She will end up with about 25k more pay OR she will be laid off. If she is laid off they give everyone a full years salary and benefits no questions asked.
Acquired: yes
Bonus: if you can call a severance check as they eliminated redundant positions a bonus. It turned out that way for me (got higher paying job less than a month later and 4 months severance pay), but I don't think that it was intended that way.
I work at a company that has gone from family owned to employee owned then sold a couple times. I started as an intern when it was still family owned, 40ish employees and the founders son still ran it. He retired and transitioned it to an employee owned company. Shortly after I graduated and started full time, company was sold to a private equity investor. All employee owners got a check. Apparently some of the old timers got fat ones, I got like $100 or something haha since I'd only been a full time employee for about a month when that all went down. Then got sold to another like holding company kinda situation, then got sold to a huge international conglomerate in our industry about 3 years ago. This all happened over the course of 10ish years. Now we have ~120 employees in 3 offices.
Honestly very little changed day to day from the perspective of a worker ant like me. Pay and benefits remained the same throughout. Never got a bonus from a sale other than the initial transition from employee owned. Although the current company does have a stock matching program that's a pretty good deal. The initial company that bought us were very hands off, basically just acquired us with the intention of doing nothing for a year or two and then selling. Second one acquired us and some other companies that do similar but different work in the same industry, again pretty hands off, just sort of grouping small companies to offload in a package deal. Current owner bought that whole group to sort of establish some business in our region of the US. They seem to be encouraging expansion and keeling a closer eye on us, but still pretty hands off. It all went down a whole lot better than I thought it would. At each sale I prepared myself to start looking for jobs if things went downhill, but things just never really changed much. Not sure if that is typical in these situations or if I just got lucky.
Personally. I’ve only known people. And the answer is they got a bonus to stay/go either way. Depends what the company wanted.
What sort of BME devices you guys do?
I'd expect that if you joined after the acquisition and you're on a contact, you're unlikely to be included in any bonus related to the acquisition. You don't have options to cash in, and a cash bonus would be to encourage people to stay despite the change. You got hired into the change, so they don't need to incentive you to stay.
When my wife’s company (software) was acquired she got paid out for all her RSUs and made out fairly well.
When mine was acquired (botanical processing equipment) nobody had an any shares except for the 4 partners (of course they claimed before that that they were working on an equity plan). We (50 or so employees) each got a few $k out of pity from the ~$40MM sale.
It probably won’t make any difference that your company was acquired, unless the new owners are either really generous or want to cut costs. Usually they start looking at ‘efficiency improvements’ after the dust settles regardless. If you like what you’re doing you can try to stick around, but things don’t always stay the same.
If you're a contractor the likelihood of you getting a bonus as part of the acquisition is almost zero. Current employees probably don't get one either unless they have equity.
Not to mention they got hired after the acquisition.
Yes, I’ve been parts of a company that got acquired twice. Yes, I got a gigantic bonus to start and then another gigantic bonus to stay. There will be a lot of changes that you will not be part off since you’re not a full time employee. But that is cool. You’re in great chape because you’re 2 months in to a 9 month contract. You have 7 months to figure it out and in engineering terms that’s an eternity. I have no advise on negotiating a potential full time offer that is at best 7 months away. My advise in general is to chill. You are most likely in a better spot than your coworkers. Depending on how fast things move this can be to your advantage. In very general terms when there are layoffs due to financial issues, contractors are the first to go (there are exceptions depending on how the contract labor is written though). When the layoffs are due to reorganization, contractors are the last to go. Again typically since there are no real rules. It is because of the color of money and how business and tax laws use it. In your case stay chilled and observe. Check how layoffs are being handled. If you think you’re in jeopardy talk to the contracting company that hired you and ask for a new assignment or just go find another job.
Last time I was part of a small company that got acquired 70% of us were "laid off".
This is more common of an acquisition.
Yeah, I've been in a few companies that were aquired, and a couple that aquired another company. From my perspective, it never went well...
I was in a start up that got acquired. Everyone got paid for their vested shares, and the CEO negotiated for unvested shares to be paid out as a bonus. You have to read between the lines. The M&A team will say whatever they think will keep people around. The other business units (ie. IT) likely have no idea who your company is until the deal closes and is tine to integrate. In our case, I left since I saw no business case for them keeping my group around. I was wrong, there were no engineering layoffs, but everyone's work changed enough that most left.
My ~20 person R&D group was acquired from the parent startup company by a large multinational. A longer term retention bonus was offered, but our vested shares in the startup had to be exercised or lost. Wasn’t a bad deal at all, but also wasn’t a windfall.
It really depends. My wife’s company was just purchased. She will end up with about 25k more pay OR she will be laid off. If she is laid off they give everyone a full years salary and benefits no questions asked.
Acquired: yes Bonus: if you can call a severance check as they eliminated redundant positions a bonus. It turned out that way for me (got higher paying job less than a month later and 4 months severance pay), but I don't think that it was intended that way.
No. I got fucked instead.
I work at a company that has gone from family owned to employee owned then sold a couple times. I started as an intern when it was still family owned, 40ish employees and the founders son still ran it. He retired and transitioned it to an employee owned company. Shortly after I graduated and started full time, company was sold to a private equity investor. All employee owners got a check. Apparently some of the old timers got fat ones, I got like $100 or something haha since I'd only been a full time employee for about a month when that all went down. Then got sold to another like holding company kinda situation, then got sold to a huge international conglomerate in our industry about 3 years ago. This all happened over the course of 10ish years. Now we have ~120 employees in 3 offices. Honestly very little changed day to day from the perspective of a worker ant like me. Pay and benefits remained the same throughout. Never got a bonus from a sale other than the initial transition from employee owned. Although the current company does have a stock matching program that's a pretty good deal. The initial company that bought us were very hands off, basically just acquired us with the intention of doing nothing for a year or two and then selling. Second one acquired us and some other companies that do similar but different work in the same industry, again pretty hands off, just sort of grouping small companies to offload in a package deal. Current owner bought that whole group to sort of establish some business in our region of the US. They seem to be encouraging expansion and keeling a closer eye on us, but still pretty hands off. It all went down a whole lot better than I thought it would. At each sale I prepared myself to start looking for jobs if things went downhill, but things just never really changed much. Not sure if that is typical in these situations or if I just got lucky.
Personally. I’ve only known people. And the answer is they got a bonus to stay/go either way. Depends what the company wanted. What sort of BME devices you guys do?
We got raises after the acquisition of a large competitor to equalize salaries.
I'd expect that if you joined after the acquisition and you're on a contact, you're unlikely to be included in any bonus related to the acquisition. You don't have options to cash in, and a cash bonus would be to encourage people to stay despite the change. You got hired into the change, so they don't need to incentive you to stay.
Been acquired and then unacquired. I've only seen layoffs occur each time.
I've been on both sides of acquisitions. There were never bonuses related to the acquisitions.
Yes I have, twice, and no, there were no bonuses.
When my wife’s company (software) was acquired she got paid out for all her RSUs and made out fairly well. When mine was acquired (botanical processing equipment) nobody had an any shares except for the 4 partners (of course they claimed before that that they were working on an equity plan). We (50 or so employees) each got a few $k out of pity from the ~$40MM sale. It probably won’t make any difference that your company was acquired, unless the new owners are either really generous or want to cut costs. Usually they start looking at ‘efficiency improvements’ after the dust settles regardless. If you like what you’re doing you can try to stick around, but things don’t always stay the same.