Yes. I’ve worked at a couple of companies now where this has happened. It’s really hard for founders to let go of their “baby” and as such, there’s a lot of rat

Yes. I’ve worked at a couple of companies now where this has happened. It’s really hard for founders to let go of their “baby” and as such, there’s a lot of rationalization that goes into the decision when they sell the company or go public. One of the common ones is that they will have a large enough say to keep the culture of the small company intact and often say things like “we’re just going to continue being ourselves but with more funding or resources or XYZ so it’s really great!” In the end, they don’t accept the fact that the larger company’s values/culture is their company now and they can try to enact change as much as they want but they are no longer the key decision maker for the company overall. For a public company at scale, it’s incredibly hard to 1.) grow exponentially or greatly and 2.) keep the hiring bar high enough to maintain your culture. There’s a trade-off made there that you’re public & you cannot slow growth at the risk of upsetting shareholders but it’s a catch-22 cause you can’t also let your salaries go out of control to hire the right talent for your culture cause you have to explain that cost increase to your stakeholders.