With how wearily often this seems to happen nowadays, I feel like if I was working somewhere like this I’d be looking at new work immediately as soon as I knew it was getting taken over.
Ideally, there should be some kind of way to prevent this happening in the first place.
But it’s easy for me to say this kind of thing from my pedestal. The only opinions that matter are from those who are involved. There’s nothing more depressing and scary than to know you could be jobless at a moment’s notice.
Imo work hours should result in equity and a say in how the company is run. Maybe a split like half the votes come from shareholders and half comes from the workers. And if the company does share buybacks, the worker share increases.
Or unionize and make it known that if the company is purchased, the union will walk out or start their own.
A union wouldn’t actually help in this case since MS laid everyone off anyway. They only cared about keeping the IP and wouldn’t have really cared about striking workers. Antitrust laws are supposed to stop industry consolidation due to a large competitor buying a smaller one, but courts have been doing their best to make them unenforceable.
