I'm not sure. It was a long time ago and I wasn't really involved in the process, I am a coder.
I think he had tried to sell his business and failed, but the company that wanted to buy his told him where he was going wrong. Then once his business was restructured and sold he got a job buying and chopping up businesses, restructuring them and selling them on.
He told us that we had a weird hierarchy and gave us some ballpark figures for new hires. So we needed 5 plebs to one middle manager, 4 or 5 middle managers to one senior manager and then a good board of directors. So we hired middle managers. Split the workforce between them. Hired some people to fill the board of directors, some were there in name only (people with PHDs) (cheap) and some with a lot of experience who actually advised and were more expensive to run. I seem to remember they were on the board of directors of a few local companies, so although they were expensive hires they did generate a lot of extra work. Like, good contracts with good margins.
At the end of it they had a company that ticked the right boxes for an acquisition, n coders, n/5 middle managers, etc etc, shove all that in a fancy powerpoint... what happened next was a mystery to me. But they did get purchased and made the owner multi-millionaires. The rest of us? Not so much. We had the choice to move 200 miles to our new offices or quit. :(
I think he had tried to sell his business and failed, but the company that wanted to buy his told him where he was going wrong. Then once his business was restructured and sold he got a job buying and chopping up businesses, restructuring them and selling them on.
He told us that we had a weird hierarchy and gave us some ballpark figures for new hires. So we needed 5 plebs to one middle manager, 4 or 5 middle managers to one senior manager and then a good board of directors. So we hired middle managers. Split the workforce between them. Hired some people to fill the board of directors, some were there in name only (people with PHDs) (cheap) and some with a lot of experience who actually advised and were more expensive to run. I seem to remember they were on the board of directors of a few local companies, so although they were expensive hires they did generate a lot of extra work. Like, good contracts with good margins.
At the end of it they had a company that ticked the right boxes for an acquisition, n coders, n/5 middle managers, etc etc, shove all that in a fancy powerpoint... what happened next was a mystery to me. But they did get purchased and made the owner multi-millionaires. The rest of us? Not so much. We had the choice to move 200 miles to our new offices or quit. :(