3 ms·
I was at Netscape at the time of the acquisition. When they offered buy-outs for employees that would volunteer for layoffs I gleefully waved my hand and left.
by fallous 8y ago
I was at Netscape at the time of the acquisition. When they offered buy-outs for employees that would volunteer for layoffs I gleefully waved my hand and left.
- IntelMiner 8y agoWhy would they buy you out to be laid off? Wouldn't they have wanted to keep that kind of talent?
- fallous 8y agoAt the time AOL was planning to shut down the Silicon Valley site and preferred to have everything in Virginia. Additionally they were already in talks with Time Warner (which internally we knew about). There was a lot of redundancy in ops between AOL and Netscape, and AOL's talks with Time Warner made it apparent that their belief was that content and subscriber base was their future, not software... which is where I was at the time.
- skrebbel 8y agoBut then why did they buy Netscape?
- jpalomaki 8y agoProbably for the user base. IIRC Netscape switched from focusing on software to providing portal on the web. The browser became a tool for getting people to their start page.
- fallous 8y agoYep. Remember also that sites were paying browser makers to include their site as either the default homepage or included in the list of bookmarks.
- surge 8y agoRight, this seems dumb as you're going to lose your best people first, since they're the ones knowing they'll have no issues finding something else on the open job market.
- dev_dull 8y agoBest people is irrelevant after a buy out. In fact they are often the best paid so it’s a wash anyway.
- colechristensen 8y agoOn the other hand you also get rid of the people that don't want to be there.