I just went through this same scenario over the last few months. My company was aquired by the competition, so everyone got a bad vibe from the start, but we had to wait months for the deal to be finalized and done. Nervous types and over-achievers didn' t wait, they started bailing as soon as the initial announcement was made about the pending aquisition.

Over the months, the office thinned out. As the date of aquisition approached, half of the knowledge bank of my department was gone. By this I mean that the most senior and experienced people who had grown with the company had already left---the soul of the company was gone. We had been gutted by attrition.

When the deal was sealed, we all got notices on our severance deals. Some were let go immediately. Others were to be around for different lengths of time to assist in the ramping down of operations. So the choice was there: Find work immediately, or stay till the lights went out and take a short vacation on severance before starting the job search.

I think it split about 50/50. Half found jobs and left before their time was up, or had jobs waiting before their last day. The rest (like me) used the time to put their lives in order, relax and enjoy a slow-paced month of employment, or did job-hunting and research very casually to be aware of the market.

One thing greatly influenced my decision---I had already mapped out my summer schedule. Vacation, holidays, family reunions were all set in stone for the next 3 months. If I got a new job I' d be asking for weeks of time of immediately, and I didn' t want to do that. My job ended in the middle of my trip schedule, so I was free to travel, and spent the rest of the time on the job hunt every day.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have been looking for new work on Day-01 like the nervous types. I knew there would be little work, and some dull days during the countdown to closing, that didn' t bother me because I had vacations peppered through those weeks. What I did not anticipate was the general malaise employees began to feel after a few weeks....just like being on ship that' s sinking in slow-motion. But since we were betting on the severance, we were chained to the sinking boat, and THAT generated feelings I was not prepared to handle. It was quite plainly a bummer. The kind of feeling you have when your car runs out of gas. Knowing that you could have done something earlier to prevent running out, but decided to chance it. My advice is to take the job if it' s a good one. Otherwise, you' re going "all in" in a poker match. Do you want to do that with your job? With your career?

The point here is to take care of yourself, don' t count on the company to do it. They already cut you once by going out of business and taking your job away. Don' t stand there and get hurt by inaction.