Please take this advice: always be ready to jump ship

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Oh, yeah. Never let the ink on your resume get dry.

I worked for a large corporation that was acquired by an even larger one. Right then and there we knew we'd better be prepared for anything. The HR people gathered us all and told us we needed to fill out a "survey" to determine what the "best fit" for everyone would be in the new company. It soon became obvious that we were being required to re-apply for our existing jobs because some people were going to be let go (a fact they refused to admit for a very long time). Curiously, none of the equivalent employees of the acquiring company had to do this. Eventually it was announced that a significant number of our employee group were "excess," and each sub-department had to decide who would get the axe. Even for those who survived, morale sucked worse every day.

Our new bosses told us that our (significantly reduced) department would stay as it was and there were no plans to move it to the company's headquarters (800 miles away). Except that less than a year later we learned that they would be moving our department to the headquarters city. And we found this out on the news - they hadn't bothered to tell us directly. They offered anyone who might be eligible for early retirement a severance package. I was one of those fortunate folks, so I took the money and ran. Almost everybody else finally quit rather than transfer. I suspect that was the plan all along.

Don't ever believe what the corporate bosses tell you.