> When it was time to renew our support contract had tripled in price.
Currently in PE hell myself. Company I work for was bought out few years ago when the owner cashed out. Right out of the gate it was a numbers go up game. New sales person was hired and their first order of business was - drum roll please - triple prices! Customers balked. Some walked. In addition, some employee benefits evaporated, vacation time cut drastically, shitty health insurance switch, employee perks like the monthly pizza Fridays were canned as if ~$500/mo in pizza was going to bankrupt the company. Meanwhile, employee morale is at an all time low and quality has faded.
Perhaps there is good PE out there. Somewhere. All I see are vampires.
Yes, that is typical for a certain kind of management. Only costs that are visible and easily measurable are taken into account. Invisible costs or costs that are hard to measure are ignored, even though they may amount to a whole lot, up to the ruin of the company. Employee motivation is one example for the second type of costs, while the 500 bucks per month for pizza were easily seen and cut.
I'd have said ghouls. At least vampires are sexy...