Pros
Flexible hours, you get to work from home. If Aurea retains you after your company is acquired, you will get a 10% raise.
Cons
Aurea works like this, they buy struggling companies at a discount, fire 80% of the employees including sales, development, QA, and HR; and offshore everything they can’t totally eliminate (operations, IT operations, key software support roles). Of the 20% of employees that are retained, about half will leave within a few months for better opportunities. Those that stay behind can look forward to doing the work that used to be handled by all of your former coworkers, and are left to deal with the offshore resources, which frankly are lacking in technical and English communication skills. Aurea closes the physical location of your company and everyone is forced to work from home 100% of the time. This can be a pro if that’s your thing. However, dealing with your coworkers and new offshore resources solely through Skype and email can be frustrating. It can also be difficult to manage client expectations when you are lacking in resources. A little over a year after you are kept, once things stabilize some and they don't have to worry about you quitting, you will be forced to become a contract worker. The Aurea executives will talk big about innovation and throw around names like “Amazon” and “Google” frequently during their speeches. They even go as far as blatantly copying them such as a naming a program "Aurea Prime" (read: Amazon Prime) etc. However, unlike these companies, Aurea has no record of actually innovating or creating anything. All they have done so far is buy meh middleware from unsuccessful business units that were sold off by other companies. This isn't really a software company, its just another vulture capitalist firm masquerading as a software company. They constantly change strategies, and your management and role changes every month it seems. They will say that they are being flexible and responding quickly to changing conditions, but the truth is they purchase companies without fully knowing what they are getting into, and their business model/strategy is not effective outside of the middleware market. If your company is being acquired by Aurea, it would be wise to immediately start looking for employment elsewhere. There is at least an 80% chance that you will be let go, and if you get to stay, your life is going to suck anyways when you are stuck with the mother-load of work. Also, Aurea doesn't do a 401K match, effectively negating most your 10% raise.
