It was unusually frank, and I did get a strong “I’m leaving too” vibe. I think our corporate overlords haven’t quite gotten that so many of us are thinking of leaving, so for me the most unstable part is that I have no idea what they’ll do once they do realize it. Although - the move to reorganize might be initiated by someone high up the chain deciding it was a mistake to acquire us, so perhaps they dgaf. There’s an all hands update on this early next week, so I’m very curious what the message will be then.
The minute an organization is big enough to start thinking quarter-to-quarter, they cease to be able to contemplate anything further than two quarters out. Your worry is not someone thinking about remaindering the company they acquired two years previously, your worry is some MBA with a hard-on knowing he's more likely to get an end-of-year bonus if he can juice the numbers. PlayNetwork didn't intend to lose $23m. They just lacked the planning horizon to go 'what happens when we lack the institutional expertise to support a system more complicated than a clock radio." Especially as their modus operandi was to let Sales promise the moon for functionality, give the systems away for nearly free and then book the recurrent monthly revenue out past the heat death of the universe. When there's only one guy on staff who can turn a $70 DVD player into an $1800 DVD player through judicious application of $190 relay modules and $30 thermostats, and when you have 2200 restaurants expecting $1800 DVD player performance, that sweet, sweet $100k/mo RMR goes away when you have to spend $6m fixing the systems your troglodytes spec'd. But the guys who decided to let me go didn't even bother to look up whether or not we'd sold Jack in the Box a $4500 AV system for $700, let alone investigate the shenanigans necessary to fake it, so out the door I went.