The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs, a story about working for a good small company that gets bought by a shit, large company

Once upon a time there was an egg corporation, Egg Corp, who wanted to make golden eggs, because market research told them that the goldsmiths would buy golden eggs.

The market research team brainstormed what a golden egg could look like and consulted with two people who no grasp of the concepts “golden” or “egg” and spent two financial years knocking up a wireframe demo of what a golden egg could look like. Sadly, the CEO, Eggy McEggface, saw that the wireframe looked more like a poop emoji than a golden egg.

The CEO assigned an engineering task force to develop golden eggs by the end of the financial quarter, to be spearheaded by a salesman.

Determined not to let down their CEO, the salesman directed the engineering team to knock up something that looked enough like a golden egg to launch the product, while they figured out how to really make golden eggs.

The corporation had a great launch campaign and the market analysts were amazed — there really was a golden egg. They weren’t allowed to hold it or touch it, but they all immediately wrote editorials about how golden eggs would change the world, and how Eggy McEggface was a visionary leader.

Sadly, the demonstration egg was still just a normal egg painted gold. And after several months of being shown off in demonstrations, it was starting to smell rotten. (Everyone had assumed the real product would have been developed by now, so no-one had considered boiling the egg before painting it — it was just a prototype!)

Finally, a sale was made — a goldsmith wanted to buy a golden egg to see what all the fuss was about. Despite the engineers’ pleas, prices were agreed, contracts were signed, verbal commitments were made on the golf course, even though they still had no idea how to make a real golden egg.

In another part of the kingdom, a farmer discovered that one of his geese was laying golden eggs. Real, solid gold, shaped like a goose egg.

EggCorp heard about this amazing goose, and asked the farmer if he would sell it.

This farmer wisely calculated how much each egg weighed, the current price of gold, trends in gold prices, and referred to actuarial tables for geese, to work out how much the goose was likely to be worth to him before it died. He also factored in the value of the farm.

He then tripled that value, and asked for it.

EggCorp was so desperate to deliver their first golden egg to the goldsmith, that they immediately agreed to pay him in cash and took ownership of the farm.

All the market analysts heard about this and decided it was the most sensible acquisition anyone in the egg industry had ever done, and yet again hailed Eggy McEggface as a continuing innovator in the disruptive and burgeoning golden egg market.

The farmer retired, and used the money wisely, spreading happiness and joy to his family, friends and community. Sadly, that's not the end of the story.

EggCorp delivered their first golden egg to the goldsmith, who complained that it was too big. The goldsmith had built his gold-melting crucible assuming chicken-sized golden eggs.

EggCorp built an golden egg customisation process to shave the eggs down from goose-sized to chicken-sized. The valuable gold shavings generated were thrown away as this egg-shaving team’s only KPIs were how many chicken-sized eggs they produced per day, and MTTS (mean time to shave).

The goldsmith was delighted with his golden eggs, as EggCorp had been so desperate to establish themselves in the golden egg market that they had priced the golden eggs below market value of the gold in each egg. The goldsmith immediately placed orders for more eggs than the goose could possibly lay in its lifetime.

When the goose couldn’t keep up with demand for golden eggs, EggCorp called in management consultants to help figure out why the goose was being so unproductive.

The consultants recommended giving the goose KPIs. When the goose failed to meet its new “10 eggs per day” KPI for the first week, a team of consultants was assigned to follow the goose around all day to see if they could find ways to make the goose more efficient.

They consultants would tell the goose not to walk around so much, and they moved the goose from it’s large private farmyard to a small cubicle to stop it wasting time moving around. They arranged for the goose to commute two hours each day from the farmyard to the egg-laying office and two hours back again every night.

They noticed that the goose was still freeloading on healthy food laying around like fruit, vegetables and water, so they stopped the free food and put in a vending machine full of candy bars and soda, so they could make more money out of the goose.

They noticed that the goose spent a lot of pooping instead of laying eggs, so they told the goose it could only have one toilet break per day.

The goose seemed to spend a lot of time not doing anything that looked like work as they knew it, so the management consultants arranged meetings, all day, every day for the goose to attend, for it to hear about how wonderful it would be if the goose could lay more eggs. And workshops about how platinum or diamond eggs would be even more valuable.

The goose slowly gave up and stopped laying eggs at all.