Acquire Products Not Talent, Then Gut the Org Chart

“Most American high-tech acquisitions vacuum up people with experience in fields the acquirer needs. CA, however, has never targeted talent. Charles looks instead for products to meld into CA’s software line, access to new markets, a customer base. Charles: “You look at the financials, you look at the product, you look at the sales. Then you ask, ‘How’s it all going to fit in to where we're going? How does this part make it all greater than just adding the pieces together? How do we leverage off what they’ve got or what we’ve got?’ If they have a product that I can sell through my sales force, God bless, that’s great, then I have leverage beyond what they have standing alone. If they need one piece for their product to”

“After a while, acquisitions took a predictable form: the new company’s bloated upper management was blown away, its mid- dle management was combed for potential CA types, and these were told to rank the three, five, or hundred best of their own people and dismiss the rest. Ancillary functions, like finance,”