Abandoned Tech Partners and Strategic Neglect

iRobot and Amazon have abandoned the planned acquisition of the robo-vacuum company after it became clear regulatory approval wouldn’t happen. iRobot immediately announced layoffs of about 31% of staff, ~350 people, and a major restructure to cut costs. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about it, but Amazon isn’t (yet) the only company on Earth that could buy iRobot. Or iRobot could make products that people want to buy at a price they want to pay.

Dell has terminated its VMware resale agreement. In part, this is just the expected procedural steps from a competitor after a major acquisition. However, Dell EMC likes to sell servers to companies that run VMware on site. Larger businesses like bundled deals, so I suspect this business will move to the handful of major reseller partners that Broadcom is trying to arrange. More concentration, less competition, bigger margins for the few players allowed to remain, higher prices for customers. Who could have predicted this? Will regulators come to regret approving this acquisition?

Apparently Dell is also going to tell its staff to come into the office or your career at Dell will suffer. I agree with those quoted in the article that this is just stealth firing people, especially more expensive older workers with families. Better to have young, cheap cogs that don’t know what a union is while you replace your customers with AI.