Not my kind of Company, Episode I

I recently came across the following memo from a CEO of a software corporation:

To: The Hard-Hitting Executives
From: Chief Hard-Hitting Executive Officer
Subject: The Problem with Acquisitions

There are some gems here to use against company X, in addition I sent you information about X closing their office in ...... This was the [office of the company Y they acquired recently]. Facts: when X bought Y they had 22 engineers, they cut the work force to 5 now they have 1, Uno, ONE, person left. Would you trust your ... platform to a company who does this to key technologies?

Hit these X guys hard, we can beat them every time we meet them in the market place.

The irony is that apparently the aforementioned CEO was presiding over a corporation that had made all the mistakes mentioned in the article The Trouble with Acquisitions.

His company had acquired another company that had little or no product synergy other than they both had common buzzword in their marketing literature. They had paid a price that was way over what it was worth (think two to three times as much), had failed to achieve any significant integration between the products in over a year, and furthermore had cut the engineering team to the point where 0, Nada, ZERO persons were left sustaining the product.

If I was that CEO I'd go to the Executive Bathroom, take a good look in the mirror and hit myself hard.