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What's the benefit for an average software engineer in going along with the acquihire rather than looking for a completely new job?

prepend 7y ago
It’s a job. I worked for a startup that was burning out and got acquihired. I just left and got a new job, but a few friends stayed because they wanted some form of stability. They got a pretty minimal retention bonus to stay on for at least six months, I think it was under $5k.
- shantly 7y ago
  Mine was a Friday "hey we got bought, it was just enough to pay off our debts basically so no your stock is not worth anything, the good news is you're all hired by the acquiring company so show up at X on Monday for your new job, have a nice weekend!" so of course I showed up at X, signed their shitty employment contract, did whatever they asked, and spent the rest of the time reading novels in my terminal and finding another job that wasn't a huge open-floorplan low-wall-cube office hellhole.
ankut04 7y ago
Benefits are for the founders. For employees, its just another day. No need to go for job hunting immediately.
- justinator 7y ago
  Well just another day, perhaps with a different corporate culture that you may not fit well in. So that's another minus for employees.
- Traster 7y ago
  It's almost never going to be just another day. For a start, the acquiring company is almost certainly going to immediately stuff fucking with your benefits. Your projects are incredibly unlikely to survive- so if you care about what you're working on, forget it. If your project does survive be ready for a massive influx of new people all of whom have their own ideas of why the acquisition happened and what your project was for. Oh and because acquihires almost always happen where the acquiring company is a behemoth you're going to subsumed into a massive bureaucracy that is clearly not what you signed up for in your original job.
twic 7y ago
Does it count as a liquidity event? So if you have options and hang around through the acquihire, you get to exercise them?
- harryh 7y ago
  It can depend, but it's pretty rare for common stock to be worth anything under an acquihire.
kaushikb9 7y ago
I have been part of an acquihire. As an early stage startup employee you work really hard for years, take salary cuts and hope that some day all the hard work will pay off. All of it will be for nothing if there isn't some kind of success/validation. In this case Digg was fairly well known but you don't get much credibility in the job market if the startup was never in the news. So if there is any form of acquisition, you get some of that brand exposure. In my case, even though we had built a great product, I rarely got inbound calls or interest in public forums. Now people reach out to me even when I haven't spent much time in the new company

prepend 7y ago

It’s a job. I worked for a startup that was burning out and got acquihired. I just left and got a new job, but a few friends stayed because they wanted some form of stability. They got a pretty minimal retention bonus to stay on for at least six months, I think it was under $5k.

shantly 7y ago
Mine was a Friday "hey we got bought, it was just enough to pay off our debts basically so no your stock is not worth anything, the good news is you're all hired by the acquiring company so show up at X on Monday for your new job, have a nice weekend!" so of course I showed up at X, signed their shitty employment contract, did whatever they asked, and spent the rest of the time reading novels in my terminal and finding another job that wasn't a huge open-floorplan low-wall-cube office hellhole.

ankut04 7y ago

Benefits are for the founders. For employees, its just another day. No need to go for job hunting immediately.

justinator 7y ago
Well just another day, perhaps with a different corporate culture that you may not fit well in. So that's another minus for employees.
Traster 7y ago
It's almost never going to be just another day. For a start, the acquiring company is almost certainly going to immediately stuff fucking with your benefits. Your projects are incredibly unlikely to survive- so if you care about what you're working on, forget it. If your project does survive be ready for a massive influx of new people all of whom have their own ideas of why the acquisition happened and what your project was for. Oh and because acquihires almost always happen where the acquiring company is a behemoth you're going to subsumed into a massive bureaucracy that is clearly not what you signed up for in your original job.

twic 7y ago

Does it count as a liquidity event? So if you have options and hang around through the acquihire, you get to exercise them?

harryh 7y ago
It can depend, but it's pretty rare for common stock to be worth anything under an acquihire.

kaushikb9 7y ago

I have been part of an acquihire. As an early stage startup employee you work really hard for years, take salary cuts and hope that some day all the hard work will pay off. All of it will be for nothing if there isn't some kind of success/validation. In this case Digg was fairly well known but you don't get much credibility in the job market if the startup was never in the news. So if there is any form of acquisition, you get some of that brand exposure. In my case, even though we had built a great product, I rarely got inbound calls or interest in public forums. Now people reach out to me even when I haven't spent much time in the new company