RSSSame Job, New Company, But Better
Jul 01
Work aquire, Austin, bankruptcy, benefits, contract, job, Texas, Work No Comments
I thought it was time to write something up about my job situation. You may have read about the trial and tribulations I’ve had in the past few months here.
So how this all played out. My old company went bankrupt, filed Chapter 11, and while in bankruptcy decided to sell off all of it’s assets even though they didn’t file Chapter 7. In the process of doing all of this they lost the bid on the 10 year contract we were working on. That sort of wraps up the basics leading up to now.
At this point we were pretty much in limbo as to how things were going to turn out. Were we going to have positions? How long would we have them? How would we find new jobs in this economy? Would they start scaling back immediately? These are all questions that were running through all of our heads, plus many more. Our competitor on the rebid process ultimately became the lone company vying for that contract. Draw your own conclusion there.
So the fire sale at my old company continued. Our Public Services group, which includes all Federal, State, and Local Government contracts was sold to a large auditing and consulting firm. Hugely complex deal because there hadn’t been a company like ours go into bankruptcy before. So a lot of how things transpired in Bankruptcy court were happening for the first time for everyone. There are still some issues that need to be resolved with PTO, but that’s a completely different rant. Long story short the auditing/consulting firm that bought Public Services had audit conflicts with our particular contract. They weren’t allowed to own it. So they went shopping for a bidder for this contract.
What makes sense for a company about to win a 10 year contract with the remainder of the contract up for sale? Well of course you snatch up that contract and get the ball rolling to make a good impression to the clients you are about to be servicing. At this point the competitor in the rebid process buys the remainder of our contract. The problem with that is that there was a lot of negotiating between the audit/consulting firm and the buyer about who owns what Intellectual property, how to do charge backs, who’s going to work for who, etc. etc. The one thing that I left out was the the audit/consulting firm was also a subcontracting consulting for pieces of the rebid effort. Plain and simple that just made things complicated. It’s almost like a chicken and the egg scenario. A huge problem for myself and coworkers was that during this 4-6 process there was next to nothing being communicated to us. Everyone was pretty panicked, so they all went out and were looking for jobs. In the end everything was worked out for the two companies, at least theoretically. Nothing ever turns out to be the same in reality or logistically like it’s supposed to.
Neither company were obligated legally to hire the people that were working on the contracts, but it made sense for both of them to hire most of the current staff to work on it again. There were definitely some cuts made, but they were fairly limited and strategic from my point of view. Then again, I wasn’t the one getting laid off this time. Of course there were a few selections that I question and I think they would have been really valuable for the company. So as it turns out, I got my offer to work for the new company, same title and salary. They will more than likely be the winner of the new contract for the state portal. (again not official yet) They own the remainder of the current contract for the state portal (ends at the end of the year). Things are looking pretty rosy, I’ve still got a job.
During our on boarding meeting we found out a lot of information about the new company and how they operate. There’s no other way to describe their benefits other than “killer”. They are paying for out parking up to $150/mo., our insurance (health, dental, vision, life) for employee and dependents, and to top it off they put in free soft drinks and snacks in the break room. This almost sounds like the dot com days. I mean who wouldn’t want those benefits. So I essentially got a $5000 raise without doing anything. SWEET!!!
Granted there are a few growing pains involved. I had to give up my window view of down town Austin, and I’m now in the loudest part of the building. We will be moving again for a short duration to another floor in the building due to some bankruptcy issues with office lease still being owned by former company. Long term we will be moving yet again to another building that hopefully isn’t so drab. It’s still being worked out so we’ll see soon enough how it pans out.
Work wise, I’m doing exactly the same things I was doing before. I’m actually getting to work on some projects that I wanted to work on. I’ve got some upcoming projects now that I’m really excited about working on. I’m going to get to use some new technology that’s applicable to other job situations that I may encounter over my career. I’m still working with a great development team. All in all this has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It’s only been a month under the new company, but I hope that it lasts.