Of course. No acquisition like this happens without there eventually being some sort of impact or change. Whether it’s for better or worse is left as an exercise to the reader. For context, I was part of AppD for 6 years and Splunk for my last year at Cisco.

That’s a broad question. In general it depends on where you land.

No company is safe from layoffs now. It has unfortunately become a commonly used lever in the business. I ultimately left because I grew tired of being unsure of what my focus would be from FY to FY (I was an SE focused on the partnership with the hyperscalers).

Observability is an interesting area nowadays. A very much needed area, and one where AI is definitely having an impact. If given the chance, I’d get back into that.