It is common, in fact, painfully common. As for whether or not it is "bad" that depends on who you are. If you need a bunch of innovative engineers and you are

It is common, in fact, painfully common. As for whether or not it is "bad" that depends on who you are. If you need a bunch of innovative engineers and you are the current darling of the technical world (i.e. great people applying to your company), then your only solution is to buy out companies who have proven innovative engineering acumen. If you are Microsoft, or even Google for that matter, talent acquisitions might be your best avenue for getting great people working for you. There were some posts to HN about the estimated value of an engineer during an acquisition. I believe one of the folks from PowerSet or FareCast (both acquired by Microsoft) was talking about it in a blog post. The effect on valuation was roughly 1 million USD per engineer at the startup. hmmm... my meatware memory is failing and I can't find a link, but I'm pretty sure it was PowerSet.