I once had a contract working with the division of a big company formed after the acquisition of a startup. From my vantage point most of the negative things al

I once had a contract working with the division of a big company formed after the acquisition of a startup. From my vantage point most of the negative things already mentioned were valid for the founders, so I'll mention what I consider the "perks." The good points seemed to be: the founders were now VPs of something or other, so in addition to their immediate cashout, they also received VP level salaries, and bonuses. They had the freedom to say "I'm only coming in for meetings." The rest of the time they "worked" at home - i.e. they didn't do any work, they hired contractors like me to do it for them. They had the freedom to be complete assholes in meetings and interactions with staff they deemed stupid. The guys who had it hardest were the non-founders who worked at the original startup. They had to stick around for four years to receive their 300 grand or whatever it was, but couldn't be assholes or just not show up four out of every five days. They had to put up with all the weird political bullshit that happens in a big company, which was made worse because the founders were busy making everyone at the big company angry. This seemed doubly hard to take, because most startup employees take jobs at startups partially to avoid big company politics and bullshit. Founders, throw your employees a bone and make sure they have an accelerated vesting schedule upon acquisition clause written into their contract.