Firing Nemo: Endeca, Oracle, and the cultural aftershocks of an acquisition

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

A former Endeca exec told me the story last month about what had happened to the company's mascot, Puffer, after their Cambridge software company was acquired by Oracle Corp. for $1.1 billion. Basically, the pufferfish was laid off, the victim not of an inflated salary or a redundant role, but of a no-animals-in-the-office policy at Oracle.

It seemed like a pretty good symbol of the way big acquirers sometimes stomp on the culture of what they have acquired, to the point where the talent starts walking out the door. (At this point, I know far more ex-Endeca employees than I do people who've stuck around. And I've written about some of the new startups they've been forming.) When I heard the story, I knew I had to write about Puffer.

Here's the opening of Sunday's column about Endeca, Oracle, and Puffer. Afterward is the farewell e-mail that Puffer "wrote" to her colleagues at Endeca on her last day, along with a video of Puffer in her saltwater tank.

This is the story of Puffer, a sprightly little pufferfish who lived in an office building in Cambridge. Puffer was the mascot of a company called Endeca. Every day, when the software developers would show up for work on the 15th floor, the first thing they would see when they got off the elevator was Puffer, swimming happily in her tank.

All the employees loved Puffer. They put her picture on posters that promoted companywide parties. And when she puffed up — which was not very often — people took pictures and e-mailed them to their co-workers. The employees who helped take care of Puffer, feeding her krill and algae, loved her even more. She would follow them whenever they walked past her tank, sometimes bonking into the glass.

But one day in 2011, one of the richest men in the world decided to buy Endeca. He paid more than $1 billion for the company, which created software to help businesses analyze their operations or organize the products sold on their websites. And that’s when things changed for Puffer and her friends.

This is the story of Puffer, but it’s also the story of those thousand tiny changes that big companies often make when they acquire smaller ones. And about how those changes often lead to the loss of the very same talent the big company hoped to bring on as part of the deal.

(Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Lin, a former Endecan who helped take care of Puffer.)