Negotiating a retention bonus
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I haven't spent enough time with the new boss for him to know me and my work ethic or for me to know what kind of boss he is and how he deals with wages. I will be meeting with him and their team at least weekly so I'm hoping that he has time to see the value I bring. Can they survive without me? Absolutely, nobody is unreplaceable. My knowledge of our network and systems is more what they need to get through the merger, then after that, who knows. When they get me something in writing I guess I will start the negotiations.
I have my resume out there and have one very interesting job I'm hoping to get a call back on soon. I guess I will get more ambitious in searching. I'm willing to travel, work remote, and possibly move (myself, not my family) for the right price.
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@lhatsynot said:
My knowledge of our network and systems is more what they need to get through the merger, then after that, who knows. When they get me something in writing I guess I will start the negotiations.
From an employer side there is something very large as well - the known versus the unknown.
When you are first hired you are a risk, a big one. A huge one. The company has no idea if you can do the work nor do they know if you will do the work. They take a massive gamble on your and your salary reflects this.
Now you are negotiating fresh but you are no longer an unknown. The value that you bring might not be more than someone else that they could get for a similar salary. But what they can't do is know what they are going to get. So even if you had someone just as good as you in every way, they still can't know that and there is a big risk. So today you are worth a lot more to them than you were when they first hired you because now that risk is gone. So you bring something to the table that no one else can bring. You are unique and worth more than basically anyone else in that case. They should be paying you a lot more than they would pay someone equal but unknown.
Also, there is a huge cost to hiring someone. It takes time, effort and money. Companies face massive churn penalties and that is something that they need to think about when they decline to pony up and pay you something reasonable.
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Thanks Scott. This is my first merger or acquisition that we aren't the surviving managing entity so it's all new to me. It's going to be a long stressful 5+ months if I stick this out.
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@lhatsynot said:
Thanks Scott. This is my first merger or acquisition that we aren't the surviving managing entity so it's all new to me. It's going to be a long stressful 5+ months if I stick this out.
Mergers are rarely fun for the entity being consumed. Generally you want to bail if possible unless the merger is for the purpose of acquiring you personally (NTG has bought companies to acquire staff, but it is a rare thing.) Being the lingering person from a disappearing company rarely plays out well in the long run.
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They've acquired quite a number of other banks (that's how they've grown so fast in their 15 years of existence) and they retain staff if possible, even in the IT department.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@lhatsynot said:
Thanks Scott. This is my first merger or acquisition that we aren't the surviving managing entity so it's all new to me. It's going to be a long stressful 5+ months if I stick this out.
Mergers are rarely fun for the entity being consumed. Generally you want to bail if possible unless the merger is for the purpose of acquiring you personally (NTG has bought companies to acquire staff, but it is a rare thing.) Being the lingering person from a disappearing company rarely plays out well in the long run.
I can speak to experience about this. What was even worse, the company that bought us had zero MS people on staff as consultants, and they still failed and ended up letting us go. Funny thing, 6 months later we had old customers (some had become customers of us directly) contacted us asking if we were waiting on paychecks from the old consulting company. the reason for the question was that the old company was 6+ months behind in billing for our services.. and were claiming that we were waiting to be paid until the customers paid - which was a load of BS, we were salary with the consulting company.
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@lhatsynot said:
They've acquired quite a number of other banks (that's how they've grown so fast in their 15 years of existence) and they retain staff if possible, even in the IT department.
hmm.. they retain the staff? Makes me wonder if you want to be there even more so. If they aren't shedding redundant staff sounds like they are possible wasting money.
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@Dashrender They retain staff if possible before hiring new people is what I meant. Naturally there are people who dont want to make the transition or relocate so the over staffing kind of takes care of itself. They've just about doubled in size with each acquisition with our merger being no different.
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@lhatsynot why doubling? That seems like you're not getting the best bang for your IT buck unless the number of servers is going up many fold with each acquisition?
If economy of scale hasn't kicked in already to allow for the reduction in staffing, when will it?
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Not doubling IT staff... doubling in assets, branches, total users, and computers. Servers aren't necessarily doubling but migration to more robust software and hardware is.
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@Dashrender said:
@lhatsynot said:
They've acquired quite a number of other banks (that's how they've grown so fast in their 15 years of existence) and they retain staff if possible, even in the IT department.
hmm.. they retain the staff? Makes me wonder if you want to be there even more so. If they aren't shedding redundant staff sounds like they are possible wasting money.
Yeah, it is a big concern regardless of what they do.
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@lhatsynot said:
@Dashrender They retain staff if possible before hiring new people is what I meant. Naturally there are people who dont want to make the transition or relocate so the over staffing kind of takes care of itself. They've just about doubled in size with each acquisition with our merger being no different.
But presumably the merger would mean doubling staff already. But the value to bigger companies is increased efficiency. A company of 200 people only needs ~10% more IT than a company of 100 people. If you run a company of 100 with three people, they can probably double in size without adding a single additional person. At most, they might need one more. Not jump to twelve.
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@lhatsynot said:
Not doubling IT staff... doubling in assets, branches, total users, and computers. Servers aren't necessarily doubling but migration to more robust software and hardware is.
But they are acquiring double staff. If they aren't shedding excess staff, they must be over staffed dramatically.
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No, they are not doubling staff. They currently have 7 on their team and we have 4. They are willing to keep all 4 of us but in reality they will end up with 2 if I stay (maybe 3). We organized our department differently than they do and they have systems that we "outsourced" to our datacenter that they have in house so the staffing levels makes sense.
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That's still doubling, it is just that some of your staff is consultants or outsourced. Still basically doubling. If they already have seven people to do the same workload that you guys are doing why would they want to keep more than one of you, if even that many? Other than transitioning over and having someone who knows the background during that period, it seems totally redundant.
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I dont get your math (and were getting off topic a bit).
They have 7. We have 4 + our data center takes care of some systems so you say that were essentially at 7 too.
Our two banks merge effectively doubling assets ($1.2 B + $1 B = $2.2 B ), users (250ish + 200ish (after we drop about 50 operational staff that aren't needed) = 450ish), and devices (500ish + 500ish = 1000ish) to support except for servers because we will really move onto their systems but they will need to be expanded to handle the more users. Take their 7 and add in our 2 or 3 that are being kept and you end up with 9 or 10 IT staff. Am I understanding it wrong?
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@lhatsynot said:
Take their 7 and add in our 2 or 3 that are being kept and you end up with 9 or 10 IT staff.
Well you are counting on your seven being reduced to three to make this work, which still seems like a bit of overstaffing - if 7 is adequate for 250, 8 seems like plenty for 450. But having your full staff which is 4 + the DC (which we are estimating is roughly 6-7 people but we don't really know how much the DC is doing) reduced to two or three doesn't seem like retention, it sounds like they are reducing people either by scaring them off or by cancelling contracts. How do you get down to two or three when they are attempting to retain all of you? Where are the others going?
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One will not make the move or commute. One will move. My boss will probably retire early after sticking around for a while since his title is already taken so he will no longer be my boss. Then me who will not move but
I am willing (just not happy about it) to commute. -
What happens to the data center staff?
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I'm assuming they won't retain the DC people - so that's the equivalent of loosing 3 (I think Tony said it was three people equivalent) So that's three people released/downsized/fired/etc.
Your other 4, well you've stated that at least 2 will stay, and a third if you stay. So that takes their department from 7 to 9 or 10.
Perhaps all three of you are needed at the new company to handle the extra load, but it really seems like it should be unlikely that they would need you all. the 1000 end user devices should be being taken care of by bench personal, not IT personal (much lower pay). But if you are including that type of work in this as well, OK I can see keeping all three people.
