Resistance is futile.

When your company has been acquired it’s a lot like being assimilated by the Borg. You hear rumors for months about some acquisition “boogeyman” who is lurking just around every corner. But then one day BOOM, an email drops and you have been taken over by this other corporate Borg cube which demands you conform to their ways and become one of them.

Acquisitions are not a quick and painless process. They are a long, drawn out and PAINFUL operation where the acquired company is taken apart bit by bit and rebuild in the image of the “Borg Corp.” With our recent acquisition we’ve gone through a rebranding of the companies fusing both of us under one flag with a name that sounds like an erectile disfunction medication, and a logo drawn by a third grader. We’ve have been sung the praises of our new collective in an infomercial style town hall where one of our presenters hawked their book at the end. We’ve been given the company rule book and have been to become obsessed with the company “values”. At another company I worked I was told to live and breathe our corporate “values” which left a pit in my stomach the size of a bowling ball. I don’t think I would ever want to meet someone who was obsessed or lived and breathed those “values”. If I was left alone in a room with that person one of two things would happen. Either they would “Stepford Wife” me to death with fake pleasantries and never-ending surface joy or they would straight up stab me in the back whispering, “One less person to get in my way.” Neither has a happy ending.

Along with the assimilation comes new (or old) technology. Depending on the evolution of the “Borg Corp.” you could either take a giant leap forward into the future of software development, QA and automation. Or you could be handed abacuses and told you have a major project due in two sprints. We were a smaller company, so we were easily swallowed up by “Borg Corp.” where they have begun the slithering their technology into our daily digital lives as soon as they could. One way they’ve done this is by giving us “new” laptops. I’m not quite sure where “Borg Corp.” buys their equipment but in the case of these laptops it’s pretty obvious they raided IBM’s garage sale. I don’t think I’ve seen a red dot in the middle of the keyboard since the late nineties. I’m waiting for the day the laptop says, “I’m sorry Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that” when I try to run a SQL query. I know, I know I’m mixing my space genres but hey these are ridiculous times.

All in all, with any acquisition it’s a game of “wait and see”. You never know what’s going to happen really and you’ll drive yourself nuts trying to predict the future. Like the Borg, the larger company assimilates as many as they can wearing them down until they’re useless drones who can recite the “Borg Corp.” “values” like the alphabet and then they discard what they don’t need like refuse out of a starship. At this point in our assimilation, it’s anyone’s guess what might happen. All I can say is, “Resistance is futile.”