My company’s buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I’ve worked on for the last year are getting shut down and ripped out this week. (They’re all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it’s dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shut down, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That’s the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever! ✊
Edit: Thanks, everybody so much for the kind words and advice!
Edit: oops. This is old. Hope you’re OK and things improved.
You’re grieving for what you built. It’s good to take pride and push for better. However, you don’t own it. They pay for your time and your expertise. Love your skills and the learning. If the environment stops being right for you, plot your escape at a time that suits. Companies make shit decisions, they have and always will. They sometimes lead you to believe you have influence while it benefits then with your commitment/engagement. When that no longer suits, its the end.
What you feel is valid, it’s good you have standards and care. It’s now time to understand work is generally an exploitative relationship. Protect yourself and understand you’re being used. Find a situation where being used feels good for now and good for your bank balance.
Thanks for the response. I’m doing great now. Got a new job as a sysadmin making about 35% more than my old job, and I get to work on Linux a bunch, and my team is really solid.
Still sucks that I lost all that work, but I was able to get some of the old hardware back for free, so my old servers can live again in my home lab.
That’s great to hear. Congratulations on the pay rise. You’ve clearly got valuable, transferable soils.
It is hard to keep detached, as we never truly own it until it’s ours. Good to hear you got free hardware. It’s my favourite price.
You put lots of time and effort in. Now it will be discarded due to decisions of others.
Sad and/or disappointed feelings are normal.
Take care of yourself.
My job title is “Linux System Administrator”. I’d quit if they tried to make me drop Linux.
I tried to push back, but they are a much larger company and they made it clear that I would be playing by their rules, not mine.
I was thinking of quitting immediately, but at least in my region of the country, the IT market is really rough right now, so I can’t afford to be out of work for months.
I won’t last long here though. They are half owned by a private equity firm, so they run everything based on the bottom line. Their IT team is understaffed, underpaid, and they are always looking for excuses to lay folks off or fire them. Their turnover rate is pretty high, burnout is rife.
Start job hunting now. By the sound of it they are one of those PE firms that zombie walk every acquisition into mediocrity.
I know it’s dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
Sadly, something we all have to get used to. Everything we do is ephemeral and the next guy will likely have better/different ideas on how to do things.
Basically everything I’ve ever built has been torn down or somehow bastardized eventually.
Hoard a copy of your work. Even if your new overlords are gutting and replacing it, ot might be useful elsewhere one day.
Source: Similar situation once upon a time. I am currently using on a daily basis what was once replaced in a different company.
Please be careful when copying anything that could be considered your employer’s intellectual property (almost certainly anything you built as an employee falls into this category) off of that employer’s systems.
And definitely be even more careful about using one employer’s IP for a new employer (neither company would be pleased to discover this).
