There are many tough things about working for a living. You have to show up someplace every day, even when you don’t want to. You have to wear the uniform, even when it might not suit you, and there really is very little difference between a three-piece suit or a Burger King cap when you get right down to that. You have to work on your birthday. You have to wake and sleep, even, according to the job’s Circadean rhythms, not your own.
But all that pales in comparison to the toughest of situations for any working person: not knowing if your department, your company, your senior management will survive. We give a lot to become part of an organization, and it doesn’t matter if that means a gigantic corporation or a convenience store in a strip mall. It’s our place of work. Our demented and insufficient home away from home. And we like to know what’s what, what’s up and what’s down, who’s in and who’s out, who to kiss up to and who to kick when they’re down.
A merger/sale/acquisition changes all that. Suddenly, he or she who was strong appears vulnerable, weak. Hated competitors abruptly morph into welcome conquerors. It’s not easy. Yesterday’s jerk from Company B is now your esteemed department head. For a while, everything is in play before it settles in.
That’s bad enough. But how much worse is it to be in play with no end in sight.
This brings us to the great people of Yahoo (YHOO). What a ride it’s been for them recently! First here comes the bouncing Ballmer (MSFT) with his bid. Management strikes back. The big bald wolf fades from the door. Then who shows up but the grim reaper himself, the Icahn (CARL) of destruction, always in the name of shareholder value but really just in business for himself, a force of nature that arrives, bumps the stock price a little, or a lot, reaps the harvest of his machinations, and then fades, leaving nothing but twisted wreckage behind. He’s still in the weeds right now, lurking quite noisily, if one may lurk noisily.
Then, to add to the mix, here comes MSFT again with another foray, with the supposed white knights of GOOG waiting in the sky, hovering, looking for a chance to throw their thunderbolts… a case where the cure, in the end, may be worse than the disease for smaller and less durable life forms.
What does all this add up to? Confusion. The unraveling of all that once appeared solid and reliable. A feeling in every worker from the most high to the most fungible that each day on the this particular job could be the last.
So you can look at the macro trends, the market forces, the financial implications. But me, I just feel sorry for the people who have to work on the plains where this particular battle is being waged. Whoever wins, a lot of terrain is going to get trampled. Good luck to anything that has the misfortune to be living on it when the whole big deal goes down.