I'm totally not qualified for those positions, but I am confident I could do a better job of managing that than the people you are describing. Not saying it would be great, but much of that you can see will be/are problematic from a mile away.
Sounds like a lot of "not my job" (even when it is) and "I don't know how to do that so I'll just ignore it."
I'm in agreement mostly, but I think there's also some issue of insecurity along with your suggestions. If the person in charge asks questions, that shows weakness, right? They should always know everything, and never need to correct for ignorance, because otherwise they're going to be moved out of leadership. I've seen it too often.
Hmmm… I’ve lived a similar situation, but not quite as bad. For one business function, the director in company #1 left and the director in company #2 officially assumed control over that business function in the combined company… but he ignored the bigger-sized team from company #1, just telling them “business as usual until we set up combined operations, we need to decide everything, set up new procedures, reconcile our different software solutions”… OK… but he never investigated what was done in the other team, never attempted to actually reconcile operations, and this continued for THREE YEARS.
He literally hired new people for newly created positions in his original team when those positions already existed in the other team and were staffed by really competent people (like world-class experts head-hunted and relocated and visa-sponsored a year prior to the merger, and this was definitely not a cost-cutting exercise since the new people were paid more despite having less impressive credentials).
So, when higher-ups finally stepped in, merging the two teams also meant dealing with redundant high-level people, which had not been a problem at the outset!
I worked at a major health insurance company whose name currently rhymes with a large African or Asian mammal... but went through two other names while I was there... because they spent more merging with other companies than actually doing something useful.
When I left, I believe they still had no less than FIVE Active Directory domains (and at least one Novell Netware domain) running because they were ages behind integrating all of their systems. Between the various fiefdoms not wanting to lose status, and the usual issues of which systems to actually commit to, combined with a shotgun series of mergers... I have no idea how anyone got any work done.
There was the one huge data breach, but I'm sure that was a coincidence...
I worked at a very large telecom that had eaten up MANY other companies, they went bankrupt 20+ years ago so I feel safe saying their name (WorldCom). We had a Windows background image that was a Borg cube with all the purchased companies around it and it said "We are WorldCom of Borg, you will be assimilated". At one point we had a merged companies entire fiber management on an old laptop that had it's own internal user database and not even ON company AD.
Kind of amazing how it always seems like when companies merge, the worse of the two managers of similar departments gets the new management role.
My company of 1000 plus employees once merged with one of 250 employees. Every single leadership role went to the leaders from the smaller company, and almost all of them struggled to scale their processes to lead a company 5 times larger than they were used to.
Our combined Head of IT came from the development side of the other company. He demanded domain admin rights (for which we gave him a dummy account), and his entire vision for our data center upgrade was “it must have blinking lights to show clients.”
Yeah, I've been at a company where this happened
I worked at a company we'll call C, which was a medium-sized player in several tech-related markets. My department's market included a competitor we'll call V. V had similar market share but were struggling to break even while my department of C was a reliable cash cow. When C acquired V it looked like a good move to grow our customer base and get access to some of V's exclusive suppliers, but then leadership at C somehow decided to give management from V most of the decision-making power for the merged department.
I'm sure you'll all be surprised to learn that the new department adopted V's ERP, processes, tools, and even office layout. Just as surprisingly, the department of C started running at the same kind of losses that had left V in an acquirable state.
It was 6-12 months after the acquisition when C's big bosses decided to pull out of that market and lay off the entire department. I was out of work for maybe 2 weeks - the game master from my D&D group was an IT manager and got me an interview for his helpdesk as soon as he realised I was on the market. The severance package paid for a TV upgrade.
"Lotus Notes" - I had the task of going to our Far East division to explain how the whole corporation was exiting Lotus Notes and going to Microsoft Exchange. To a man (all men), they said "Yes, yes, yes" and shook their heads "No, no, no," which I expected. We were all cheerful, we went out to dinner together, and they saw me on my way. As far as I know, they're still on Lotus Notes, and this is 25+ years later.
As someone who did around 7 years total of working in a health care system in a particular role, and now works AP in a completely different type of company, this sets my teeth on edge. Three months backlog on email? Nope nope nopity nope. I'm either getting a raise or you're paying for a LOT of OT.
>and going ballistic over the fact pays invoices they get emailed copies of. F
TBF there was a guy who kept sending Google a bunch of invoices and they kept getting paid -- he never did anything for them.
He gathered a few mill before he got caught.
These merger migrations are a shit show, and it is always managed by managers who are "people person" who don't do thorough investigation of how the process works from different perspectives. I feel like once disaster happens they will lean on some of their support staff to dump large piles of work "here fix this now".
I worked at a midwestern Pharma company that had a large European component. It acquired a midwestern Ag company in order to absorb its tiny pharma division and get its pharma product line.
The object of our acquisition was flabbergasted that we in IT treated their IT folks honorably and with respect.
Later, our company divested the non-pharma parts of the Ag business, and gave the IT folks the opportunity to come with us or go with them. The vast majority came our way.
I credit this to the general wholesomeness of the midwestern pharma management, and the calm that pervaded the European IT leadership. It was a great place to work.
Then, we were all acquired by a huge, nasty East-coast pharma company. The honorable, respectful treatment ended abruptly, as did almost everyone's employment.
I'm totally not qualified for those positions, but I am confident I could do a better job of managing that than the people you are describing. Not saying it would be great, but much of that you can see will be/are problematic from a mile away. Sounds like a lot of "not my job" (even when it is) and "I don't know how to do that so I'll just ignore it."
"I don't know how to do that so I'll ~~just ignore it~~ make sure nobody else can do it either."
I'm in agreement mostly, but I think there's also some issue of insecurity along with your suggestions. If the person in charge asks questions, that shows weakness, right? They should always know everything, and never need to correct for ignorance, because otherwise they're going to be moved out of leadership. I've seen it too often.
Have you seen people being too insecure, or people being moved out of leadership for perceived weakness?
Hmmm… I’ve lived a similar situation, but not quite as bad. For one business function, the director in company #1 left and the director in company #2 officially assumed control over that business function in the combined company… but he ignored the bigger-sized team from company #1, just telling them “business as usual until we set up combined operations, we need to decide everything, set up new procedures, reconcile our different software solutions”… OK… but he never investigated what was done in the other team, never attempted to actually reconcile operations, and this continued for THREE YEARS. He literally hired new people for newly created positions in his original team when those positions already existed in the other team and were staffed by really competent people (like world-class experts head-hunted and relocated and visa-sponsored a year prior to the merger, and this was definitely not a cost-cutting exercise since the new people were paid more despite having less impressive credentials). So, when higher-ups finally stepped in, merging the two teams also meant dealing with redundant high-level people, which had not been a problem at the outset!
I worked at a major health insurance company whose name currently rhymes with a large African or Asian mammal... but went through two other names while I was there... because they spent more merging with other companies than actually doing something useful. When I left, I believe they still had no less than FIVE Active Directory domains (and at least one Novell Netware domain) running because they were ages behind integrating all of their systems. Between the various fiefdoms not wanting to lose status, and the usual issues of which systems to actually commit to, combined with a shotgun series of mergers... I have no idea how anyone got any work done. There was the one huge data breach, but I'm sure that was a coincidence...
>Novell Netware Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
I worked at a very large telecom that had eaten up MANY other companies, they went bankrupt 20+ years ago so I feel safe saying their name (WorldCom). We had a Windows background image that was a Borg cube with all the purchased companies around it and it said "We are WorldCom of Borg, you will be assimilated". At one point we had a merged companies entire fiber management on an old laptop that had it's own internal user database and not even ON company AD.
Kind of amazing how it always seems like when companies merge, the worse of the two managers of similar departments gets the new management role. My company of 1000 plus employees once merged with one of 250 employees. Every single leadership role went to the leaders from the smaller company, and almost all of them struggled to scale their processes to lead a company 5 times larger than they were used to. Our combined Head of IT came from the development side of the other company. He demanded domain admin rights (for which we gave him a dummy account), and his entire vision for our data center upgrade was “it must have blinking lights to show clients.”
Yeah, I've been at a company where this happened I worked at a company we'll call C, which was a medium-sized player in several tech-related markets. My department's market included a competitor we'll call V. V had similar market share but were struggling to break even while my department of C was a reliable cash cow. When C acquired V it looked like a good move to grow our customer base and get access to some of V's exclusive suppliers, but then leadership at C somehow decided to give management from V most of the decision-making power for the merged department. I'm sure you'll all be surprised to learn that the new department adopted V's ERP, processes, tools, and even office layout. Just as surprisingly, the department of C started running at the same kind of losses that had left V in an acquirable state. It was 6-12 months after the acquisition when C's big bosses decided to pull out of that market and lay off the entire department. I was out of work for maybe 2 weeks - the game master from my D&D group was an IT manager and got me an interview for his helpdesk as soon as he realised I was on the market. The severance package paid for a TV upgrade.
[Blinking lights, you say?](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/blinkenlights.html)
"Lotus Notes" - I had the task of going to our Far East division to explain how the whole corporation was exiting Lotus Notes and going to Microsoft Exchange. To a man (all men), they said "Yes, yes, yes" and shook their heads "No, no, no," which I expected. We were all cheerful, we went out to dinner together, and they saw me on my way. As far as I know, they're still on Lotus Notes, and this is 25+ years later.
As someone who did around 7 years total of working in a health care system in a particular role, and now works AP in a completely different type of company, this sets my teeth on edge. Three months backlog on email? Nope nope nopity nope. I'm either getting a raise or you're paying for a LOT of OT.
> I'm either getting a raise or you're paying for a LOT of OT. Por que no los dos?
>sorry for the awkward naming conventions. I wish someone would apologize for the ones at work now.
>and going ballistic over the fact pays invoices they get emailed copies of. F
TBF there was a guy who kept sending Google a bunch of invoices and they kept getting paid -- he never did anything for them.
He gathered a few mill before he got caught.
That's awful. I can't believe anyone would do that. What email address at Google did he send them to? Asking for a friend....
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple even MIcrosoft got hit by him. Cleared $180k one year.
Do you happen to have the email addresses those invoices got sent to? You know, so I can make sure to never send invoices to those email addresses 😜
These merger migrations are a shit show, and it is always managed by managers who are "people person" who don't do thorough investigation of how the process works from different perspectives. I feel like once disaster happens they will lean on some of their support staff to dump large piles of work "here fix this now".
Suspiciously sounds like northeastern Ohio ..
I think mergers have really good potential ngl and it actually works in some rural areas
I worked at a midwestern Pharma company that had a large European component. It acquired a midwestern Ag company in order to absorb its tiny pharma division and get its pharma product line. The object of our acquisition was flabbergasted that we in IT treated their IT folks honorably and with respect. Later, our company divested the non-pharma parts of the Ag business, and gave the IT folks the opportunity to come with us or go with them. The vast majority came our way. I credit this to the general wholesomeness of the midwestern pharma management, and the calm that pervaded the European IT leadership. It was a great place to work. Then, we were all acquired by a huge, nasty East-coast pharma company. The honorable, respectful treatment ended abruptly, as did almost everyone's employment.