Ask HN: The company I work for feels like it's collapsing post-merger. What do?
Hey HN,

I find myself at a crossroads in my life and I would like some unbiased feedback to help me make better decisions.

I have been working at CompanyA for a little over three years as a Sr. Eng/Team Lead/Eng. Mgr. Things were going great. Our entire organization felt like a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders. Everyone challenged everyone to be their best and everyone grew to meet those expectations. Revenue was growing 150% YoY, we were bootstrapped and had been profitable for several years. I thought we were likely to IPO soon and really believed in our product.

Surprisingly, instead of an IPO, we were purchased by CompanyB earlier this year. I received a decent payout, but 2/3 of it was locked into a retention bonus set to pay out over a couple years.

Since the acquisition, we've had nothing but losses. One of the founders of CompanyA was fired within weeks due to how vocal he was about dysfunctional org practices. Our other founder held on for a few months before quitting out of exasperation. 70% of CompanyA's marketing/product/engineering have resigned in the past six months which has put us into a position where all of the institutional knowledge has left. Everyone quit due to the perceived incompetency of those who purchased us and a lack of clarity regarding who was in charge. Our hiring pipeline collapsed because HR chose to not renew our Greenhouse subscription, but their hiring tools are antiquated and have failed to entice engineers to apply to us in this increasingly demanding, remote hiring environment.

We've been in active communication with the executive suite regarding the losses and the impact they were having. Previously, it felt like it was falling on deaf ears. It felt like executives thought they were "delegating" the solutions to these problems back to those informing them of the issues. This wasn't a constructive approach. It's my impression that this week our losses started to grow so large that executives lost the ability to pretend things were OK or that their reports could resolve the issues. I have little-to-no confidence that they know how to get us out of this spiral. I have some trust that my direct boss can lead us through it because he has successfully done it at a previous company and has incredibly strong leadership abilities. He is now failing upwards into a pseudo-executive role, but is anticipating ~40+ reports in a company of <150 with ~10 executives. We have a very dysfunctional org structure all of a sudden.

WTF do I do now? My team poured their heart and soul into refactoring this code and making it good enough to stick it out for the long haul - and succeeded. We've consistently been lauded as the best performing team at the company. Now, we're ready to quickly deliver value in the area we know well, but nobody knows what we own or is prepared to help us identify what valuable work to do next. Some of the people who report to me are still quite happy in this environment because they have been sheltered from the lack of certainty in direction. I feel disingenuous when I try to grit my teeth and pretend things are OK as a means of keeping them motivated long enough to make it to larger retention bonus payouts. That said, I don't think someone needs to be frustrated just because I am and I think it's reasonable for me to try and keep my emotions from leaking unmitigated to my reports.

When I leave this job I will be taking a multi-month break and reflecting on startups, but before I do that I wanted to tap the infinite knowledge of HN and see if I'm not considering anything important. My plan at the moment is to lay low, get my team through another six months without undue friction, depart, and then mourn what should've been a much more successful product.

Have you found yourself in a similar position? What was your approach and how did it pan out? Would you have done anything differently if you did it all over again?

Thanks for your time.