All hail the new corporate overlords!

[dr4b]

GE Healthcare to Acquire IDX Systems Corporation

Whee, the company I work at is being bought out by General Electric. There's an all-hands meeting a little later today to talk about it. I'm surprisingly calm about the whole deal; perhaps that's because I've only worked here for a couple months anyway.

Or maybe it's because I think that "General Electric" sounds sort of like the lead guitarist and stage commander for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Can you picture that?

Comments

[mh75.livejournal.com]

heh. I have friends that worked for a company that was bought by GE. All in all it seems like having GE come in wasn't a bad thing.

On the other hand, GE did buy that company from Enron, so....

Hope it works out for you.

[theonlymegumegu.livejournal.com]

"Or maybe it's because I think that "General Electric" sounds sort of like the lead guitarist and stage commander for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Can you picture that?"

Dammit, you almost made me spew my water =PP

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

So now you'll get an electric office chair?

[mightyflorist.livejournal.com]

I know I'm not the only person that read that as IIDX.

Hmm. Didn't we do that joke before though?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Corporate overlordship seems all the rage nowadays.

[dr4b]

Don't think this means you're excused from my "Move to Seattle, dammit" diatribe.

[oren.livejournal.com]

Nah, lots of small good companies out there still.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The better they are, the sooner they're acquired. :)

[oren.livejournal.com]

Unless they're owned by someone really really rich.

Also there are people who just quit jobs after they get aquired to keep working at small places.

[tg2k.livejournal.com]

A word of caution: If I'm recalling correctly, I've been told that GE is a serious "burn and turn" company...hopefully I'm wrong, or it won't affect your company, but be wary of sudden increases in performance expectations.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

fwiw, i don't think this is the experience my friends had with GE. But, who knows. They both left that company shortly after that for personal reasons, so its hard to know how things would have worked out.

[ohhim.livejournal.com]

Here is the lowdown on GE:
1) They are frequently cited in Merger & Acquisiton literature as having a very organized post-acquisition integration team. So you probably won't be left hanging on the communication and they should be able to transform you over to a more corporate GE office within a year.
2) They are well known for promoting lots of internal education - their former CEO (Jack Welch) spent about 30% of his time teaching in corporate education programs
3) They do force-rank employees annually, trim the bottom 10%, and accellerate/promote the top 10%
4) They try to be first or second in every market they enter, otherwise they divest an organization. If you aren't already there, they'll have a plan in place to rapidly scale you to that position (likely cross-selling your services to existing customers), so there should be plenty of fast growth and corresponding opportunities to move up/around if you are looking for that.

Also, if they have an existing similar business, they'll probably just keep the technology development work (your stuff) and scrap the rest and integrate into their existing infrastructure (killing sales, distribution, and to a lesser extent marketing).

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Where can I get more information on this?

[ohhim.livejournal.com]

There was a good Harvard Business Review mini-book ($13) with a chapter called "Making the Deal Real: How GE Capital Integrates Acquisitions" that covered how their M&A group works. See: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1578515556/qid=1128117701/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7297588-4247334?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 for the book.

For the GE Up or Out force rank stuff and philosophy there are a bunch of books covering the company and their successes, (some directly written by Jack Welch - their former CEO). Probably the biggest is:
Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0070581045/qid=1128117909/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-7297588-4247334?v=glance&s=books

I've been doing M&A integration work for the past two years, and have been looking through quite a bit of this stuff and other materials to help my current client with both the strategy (what gets kept/killed/augmented) and implementation end of things stuff.

[ohsochewy.livejournal.com]

Interesting. So all this time you've been meuryc's competition!

[dr4b]

* Janthina looks confused.

[ohsochewy.livejournal.com]

He works for Cerner, I used to work for Epic. GE and IDX were/are competitors to both in the healthcare software market.