The LM Buyout

I was worried.

But things have turned out almost better than planned.

I thought - Oh no, here comes the big company that's going to come in slash and burn and work us to the bone. Am I going to lose my job? Are we all going to?

But here I sit, almost 15 days in to the buyout and I feel like I've got job security. And on top of that, it seems like things are better under Liberty Mutual than they were previously.

The sad thing was, literally a week before the buyout I was looking at our stock and saying, "You know, it's getting awfully cheap - like down to levels it hadn't seen for years". I almost pulled the trigger on picking up just 100 shares...and come to find out by the end of the week the announcement had been made. So here I sit, working for a company that is now a division of another company.

Pros

-I switch from a vacation system where I had basically 4 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of sick time to one with "Flexible Time Off". This means that instead of distinguishing between "sick" and "vacation" I pull it from all one bank. Under the Safeco plan I got up to 19 days of vacation and 10 days of sick time. Under LM I've got 29 days of whenever time. Remind me to check how many days I can roll over to next year because I think I'm going to only need at most 19 of those...

-Tuition reimbursement has more than doubled. I believe the Safeco rate was at $2500 - which definitely would've been alright...if I was planning on going to undergrad for a quarter. LM's upped the ante to $6000. Still not full tuition reimbursement but I'll take whatever I can get.

-Merit based pay structure. My manager just informed me last week that LM is built more on a structure of pay for performance. This is different because although no one would ever admit it, Safeco was a good old company which paid for years of service and seniority, although those that may have been with the company for 10, 15 or even 25 years longer than I have might have been just an unproductive dinosaur waiting for that golden handshake. I'm interested to see my next few yearly reviews to say the least.

-Investments! Yes. Insurance and investments. I feel like this is my calling. I want to handle OPM (Other People's Money). I want to be responsible for making them (and in turn myself) money. Safeco had a Life Insurance and Investment side which it sold years ago to a company called Symmetra. Now I'm back in a company that has those opportunities, albeit in Boston. Regardless I went from a company without a visible ladder for me to climb to one where I could possibly enjoy the ascent.

-Private company. This means we don't answer to the street. We make our own decisions and don't base them off of what our shareholders and board wants of us. Being now in the top 5 insurance companies basically puts us in a position where it would be hard to even buy us out.

Cons

-I can't really think of any. The only one I could possibly complain about is that with my FTO we move to a system where we accrue the time. So by the end of the year I'll have my 29 days off. They gave us 5 to start and I've already accrued another day at this point so I've got enough time just in case I come down with some nasty virus.

-They aren't headquartered locally. This means if I were to become anything starting with a "C"...CEO, CFO, COO, CIO I'd probably have to become a Red Sox fan. Ugh.

-We're still in the very early stages of the "transition". Ask me my opinion next year and I'll let you know if anything's changed.

Summary

Things are looking up. While everyone else is cutting back I seem to be fine company wise. Here's hoping it stays that way.