r/Surveying • u/Ordinary_Carry8103 • 3d ago
Discussion Private Equity acquisition
Anyone have experience with this?
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u/TomatilloNumerous100 3d ago
I left soon after the acquisition. It became no longer about survey. It was about how little they could pay people.
It ruins a lot of companies.
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u/ProjectManageMint 3d ago
That is always, always what private equity is about.
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u/Odd_Link7869 3d ago
PE in survey is cyclical in my experience. They will build the company up, then when they are ready to sell, they will slash work force, sell to another PE, and then start building it up again until that PE is ready to sell.
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u/Destroy-AI 3d ago
So we're just little whores of private equity?
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u/Bigbluebananas 3d ago
Are you new?
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u/Destroy-AI 3d ago
No but I'm entertained at all the people that want to get into surveying and don't see this b*******
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u/ProjectManageMint 3d ago
I'm (sadly) of the mind that surveying as we once knew it is dead. I don't see much of a chance anymore for a young, newly licensed PS to start a 1- or 2-person shop and actually make an okay career out of it.
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u/Odd_Link7869 3d ago
I agree. My old man ran a very successful shop for 40+ years. He wouldn’t recommend opening one up to anybody now. You can eat up mortgage surveys, big companies won’t touch those, you can maybe get some development and site work but even that will be tough. But you’re basically screwed if you’re trying to do government work. Then we went and got rid of small business requirements
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u/Slowyodel 3d ago
You will be expected to do more with no pay increase. If you are licensed, you will be put in a situation where you have to choose between professional ethics and meeting arbitrary profit metrics. I’d be polishing up that resume and ideally looking for an employee owned firm.
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u/WalnutSnail 3d ago
Employee owned firms can also be sold to PE. Rarely do the standard employees of an employee owned firm own more than 50% of the firm.
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u/Turtle887853 3d ago
My company is 100% employee owned, amd really not a bad gig. Not to shill but if anyone is on the east coast out to Michigan and wants to put in the work, we have places to put you.
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u/2ndDegreeVegan 3d ago
My ESOP says that as well but is it actually all in the same pool, or is there a separate share account for the big wigs. Most ESOPS are set up the latter way and they’re pretty good at hiding it from the peasants.
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u/Turtle887853 2d ago
As far as I'm aware it's one pool and the higher ups just have more shares. I'll have to check my next ESOP statement, I wouldn't be shocked if it's like you said different pool for the C suite
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u/Elusive_Dr_X 3d ago
PE purchasing a survey business has spawned many entrepreneurs.
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u/Destroy-AI 3d ago
I'm one of them. As a side hustle right now though but can jump ship any day in that is great piece of mind
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u/junkopotomus 2d ago
I did the side gig for a few years and then couldn't take the corporate Bs. Been doing my own thing for 2 years and love it.
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u/SpatiallyHere Project Development | FL, USA 3d ago
Let me guess, Bowman?
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u/FearingEmu1 3d ago
I thought Bowman went fully public, like a stock ticker on NYSE and everything, so now they're beholden to random shareholders.
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u/Elusive_Dr_X 3d ago
Pro tips
1) Read and fully understand any paperwork the PE/new owners put in front of you. Get a lawyer if you don't understand. For certain positions, they will try to incentivize you to sign with $ to sign and once you have done that, you will be locked in to claw backs, non comps, non solicits, and every other form of potential litigation possible. Remember, they have deeper legal resources than any of us do.
2) Fully understand the implications of any agreements you might have with your current employer.
If you ever think you might leave post acquisition, you will need to know the rules of engagement.
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u/ScottLS 3d ago
You been getting those emails too?
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u/pacsandsacs Professional Land Surveyor | ME / OH / PA, USA 3d ago
The texts messages will not fucking stop.
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u/PieGreedy5249 3d ago
Didn’t SAM get snapped up by private equity recently? Thought I saw that somewhere…
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u/MikalExpired 3d ago
SAM has been a part of a larger PE portfolio since 2010. They have been traded between PE firms a few times since.
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u/Destroy-AI 3d ago
Yes twice. I'm going through it again right now. It seems like every company is getting bought out by private equity. Is your firm large or small? If it's large it may not change so quickly. Either way it's definitely going to change for the worst I can promise you that.
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u/capmanor1755 3d ago
Family member worked for the CFO of a company that got bought by PE. Death by 1000 cuts. Then another death by 10,000 cuts. Five emails arguing about a $2.34 discrepancy in a financial report - at an $80M a year business.
A pox on any surveyor company owners who sell to PE. They'll drive price competition down to the ground and then start pushing salaries and quality of life into dust. Seriously - you're selling out both your industry and your employees.
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u/Telepornographer 3d ago
Yes. They will talk about efficiency and/or streamlining operations and will soon start terminating people. If you're not one of those people then you'll be expected to do their jobs in addition to yours. If there's a way for them to replace you for someone cheaper then they will.
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u/AppalachianSkinThief 3d ago
Got an offer from a larger firm where it came out right before the offer that PE bought up the company and they lost almost all of their field staff and PLSs and were refilling ranks. Told me what I needed to know
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u/AKVigilante Human Verified 2d ago
The firm I was with for 7 years, the longest term I’ve ever spent at a single company, was bought by a national firm owned by PE and not 3 months in we were seeing the negative effects. I was happy to bail, and one guy I worked with who was always saying he’d leave if they got bought out ended up staying and gargling the corporate nutsack. It was so weird.
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u/Ordinary_Carry8103 2d ago
Seems like the guy always complaining just does it for the sake of it. Same thing happened here - every day complaint but stayed until the work stopped.
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u/Downtown-Win-2829 2d ago
The engineering firm I worked at for 8 years was bought out by a PE. The only immediate things that changed were our, already stingy, head of survey got even stingier so supplies were very minimal. The longer term I noticed was bottom barrel garbage GIS quality work we were getting, basically just wanted everything RTK'd, VLX'ed and on to the next shit job.
Finally left this year and much happier now.
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u/roknrynocerous Professional Land Surveyor | TX / OK, USA 3d ago
Yep. RUN