In the first year of the pandemic our company was bought by Harris Computer, part of Novum, and a subsidiary of the super massive Canadian Constellation Solutions. From start-up to Borg assimilation. It was clear from the outset that Harris would let key employees, some of them in leadership positions, leave the company and not hire replacements. Leadership vacuums are horrible and are the biggest cause of most of our pain. Harris is a money-driven, bottom-line company, with upper management baldly stating during an all-hands meeting that they'd lay people off before they'd lose money. Innovation at our business unit is no longer a thing, and the idea people have seen that Harris is never going to invest in that sort of forward thinking and have left the company. It is now just a daily slog to keep the product running and the clients happy. It feels like the beginning of a downward spiral, or maybe the middle? In addition, at the time of the acquisition a few key layoffs were made, and several people who were the "meat" of the company were let go while a lot of dead weight employees were retained. This led to a lot more work for those actually doing the work, and a severe morale hit watching the dead weight sit around doing the absolute minimum with exactly zero evidence that management was engaged enough to do anything about it. Remote work has allowed people to exploit the situation. That issue has stagnated for almost three years now leading to employees openly ridiculing management behind their backs. The even bigger problem now is that there is no real leadership over our business unit. A Harris employee came in to "run" the business unit, but it seems to be a part time job, and hit or miss whether he shows up for key meetings, decisions, etc. (He's leaving for another job within the massive corporate structure so it will be interesting to see who replaces him, if anyone). There has been a massive project critical to Harris' goal of reducing costs that has suffered greatly from lack of coherent management. The buck has been passed around to various people as the project misses date after date, and the ultimately has ended up being managed by an ad-hoc committee of well-intentioned technical folks, but with no oversight from upper management to see the reality of the situation, and where the project is at risk. Those in the trenches see it every day. The most puzzling thing about the current situation is that Harris spent a lot of money to acquire our company, and said (at the time) that we were their largest acquisition to date. Do you invest that kind of money in an asset and then watch it wither and die? I guess so as long as it makes a profit today.
