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I don't know if I agree with the authors position based on the examples he gives. I'm willing to bet the Google engineer who allegedly was offered the $3.5M in

by YooLi 16y ago

I don't know if I agree with the authors position based on the examples he gives. I'm willing to bet the Google engineer who allegedly was offered the $3.5M in stock to stay was a very key engineer. Google doesn't offer everyone millions in stock not to quit. And as many of the readers of HN know, every startup is not being acquired for talent grabs. Just because we hear of a few (or even what might seem a lot), the percent in comparison to the number of startups is miniscule. I hear about someone winning the Lotto every week; that doesn't mean everyone is winning.

jtb99 16y ago
Hi, I'm the author, I appreciate your comment. You're demonstrating that you still have some rational perspective here; my thesis is that many people have lost that perspective. I am an ex-Googler, and I am seeing more and more talented engineers leave Google to start a "company" with the express goal of getting acquired for talent, sometimes even hoping to get acquired back by Google. When people see a valuation in the marketplace (eg, a talent acquisition that makes everyone extremely wealthy) and assume they can achieve the same kind of returns with minimal effort, that is the hallmark of a bubble. The same thing happened with day traders and real estate speculation.
- sbov 16y ago
  Googlers and ex-Googlers may be living in a bubble. That doesn't mean that the wider engineering talent pool is. From what I could find on the bls.gov site, in 2008 there were about 900,000 jobs in software engineering and 75,000 jobs in computer engineering. From what I can tell from searching, Google has 20,000 employees, but not all of them are necessarily engineers. Even if all google employees were engineers, and they were going out and trying to create startups in order to be bought, that would be 2.0% of the US-wide engineer pool.

by YooLi 16y ago

jtb99 16y ago

Hi, I'm the author, I appreciate your comment. You're demonstrating that you still have some rational perspective here; my thesis is that many people have lost that perspective. I am an ex-Googler, and I am seeing more and more talented engineers leave Google to start a "company" with the express goal of getting acquired for talent, sometimes even hoping to get acquired back by Google. When people see a valuation in the marketplace (eg, a talent acquisition that makes everyone extremely wealthy) and assume they can achieve the same kind of returns with minimal effort, that is the hallmark of a bubble. The same thing happened with day traders and real estate speculation.

sbov 16y ago
Googlers and ex-Googlers may be living in a bubble. That doesn't mean that the wider engineering talent pool is. From what I could find on the bls.gov site, in 2008 there were about 900,000 jobs in software engineering and 75,000 jobs in computer engineering. From what I can tell from searching, Google has 20,000 employees, but not all of them are necessarily engineers. Even if all google employees were engineers, and they were going out and trying to create startups in order to be bought, that would be 2.0% of the US-wide engineer pool.