Exit Tarantell – enter Making Waves

So, the company I currently work for; Tarantell was bought by Making Waves last week.

That made me realize that nothing is forever and keeping ones own blog can be a good idea :) Not that I’ve been producing a ton of articles, but I have a few more blogposts at Blogandtell (Tarantell blog) than shown here. I will now try to be a bit more faithful to my own blog. This post will be about my personal view on the merger.

I’ve been working in Tarantell since April 2001 and it has been a great place to work, but I welcome the friendly takeover by Making Waves for many reasons:

• The new company will be a major player in the Norwegian marketplace with about 200 employees (160 in Norway and 40 in Poland).
• Tarantell and MW are very similar in philosophy and focus, but has different customer bases: Tarantell has many projects in bank and finance sector while Making Waves has many public sector projects so together this will be complementary reference lists and experiences to build upon ;) Both firms seek to create great user experiences and ROI for our customers.
• We met our new colleagues at MW over pizza and beer last Thursday . I have to admit that Tarantell won the after party, but our first social meeting was a nice experience.
• I think that our new CEO is right when he claims that this merger is really 1+1=3. I think our customers will get a broader offering and maybe even more capacity to deliver great experiences.

BUT the next few months will be exiting times. MW has their offices near Akerselva, but that office space is too small for 200 people. Tarantell has also too small office space for both firms (room for about 100?). Management is working to solve that issue and that will probably lead to relocation of both firms. I vote for the “Barcode offices” in Bjørvika ;)

My main concern for the next few months is who’s going to leave because of the changes. It’s a known fact that nobody really likes change, but some are more affected by change than others… There will probably be structural changes within the two companies since there is not room for 2 sets of management so someone has to change their work description. That could affect both the managers and the employees that will get a new manager they may not know.

It’s easy to listen to offers that comes along when you don’t quite know what you get… I hope that all my Tarantell colleagues will stay and give the new company a fair chance.

For my own part I will stay until the dust settles if I can continue my focus on usability and user behavior studies  in the new company in a proper way. Our competition should be afraid, be very afraid ;)

Exciting times!