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> Upon your exit, your contributions, actions, decisions, opinions and presence most likely will have affected the trajectories of the people and the world arou

> Upon your exit, your contributions, actions, decisions, opinions and presence most likely will have affected the trajectories of the people and the world around you, in obvious and less obvious ways. Oh I wouldn't be too sure. The company that had acquired us some years earlier for millions of dollars then proceeded to can our entire division, sunset our product, and laid, more or less, everyone involved off. I cannot fathom what the point of the acquisition was: our wings were clipped before we even had a chance to fail; to date our acquisition is the largest unforced financial error I have seen made in my career, and it will be quite hard to top. We left no mark on the industry, the IP, if it still exists, will collect dust for all eternity. The company is no longer in the market, and I doubt ever will be again. I was fond of the product, and while the tech had the inevitable layers of PM-driven tech debt layered upon it, it wasn't the worst? The only lesson I can learn there is that caring will bring nothing but disappointment, and that's continued to be driven in by subsequent employers. Today's corporate zeitgeist does not want nor produce, IMO, history-changing labor². (I think the ones listed are products of earlier zeitgeists that could produce such.) Employers do not value retention, so experience is not built within the company. The PMs driven desperate desire to push new features out and bugfix never do not make good products. The inability of today's "agile" to handle uncertainty¹ and dependencies means little to no planning is done (and bad tools like JIRA do not help here). As for getting my name carved into the annals of history … screw that? Unless that's life's secret to joy and happiness (and I rather doubt it), I think the advice I was once given is sound here: walk around a graveyard and note what is written upon the stones: "loving mother" "caring father" — what you don't see is "excellent <occupation>". I have a nephew, and I've probably left a larger mark on him and his life (I hope for the better) than anything I've done in my career, despite my career being longer than his life. ¹Yes, I've read the manifesto, yes, I feel the irony in this statement. ²To some extent, at least two companies in FAANG I know do things that do make for a good atmosphere … I partly think this is why they became part of "FAANG". I wish we could emulate some of their less boneheaded decisions (and ignore the boneheaded ones). Perhaps that would someday snowball into another letter in that acronym.

ransackdev 3y ago
Most businesses fail. Most acquisitions get shitcanned, because statistically most of them are acquisitions of failing businesses. Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. Or it could have been because they needed to get funds moved, and that company was used to empty the bank, so they could ask VCs for another round, with the added bonus of that purchase raising the valuation. I’m sure there are a million other reasons but I know that every company eventually starts to gobble up other companies so it’s some “tie it up”, “use up the surplus”, or “dodge taxes” reason
- deathanatos 3y ago
  > Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. At their own expense, then, since they lacked a competing product. (And still do, and AFAICT, forever will, since I think this company has declared publicly they're out of that market.) > other reasons Yeah, sorry, none of these apply or make sense. Occam's Razor applies: it was a bad 9 figure mistake, that's all there is to it.
  - ransackdev 3y ago
    If we are applying Occam’s razor then the reason that they are letting the IP rot unused must be because there’s more value in doing so than there is to use it. Business don’t burn 9 figures by mistake usually and the fact they haven’t sold it off to recoup their losses tells me they didn’t make a mistake and the IP rotting unused is exactly where they want it to be and that it was worth the cost to get it. Companies will sell off losses to use the funds elsewhere. They don’t sit on assets that are worthless to them.

ransackdev 3y ago

Most businesses fail. Most acquisitions get shitcanned, because statistically most of them are acquisitions of failing businesses. Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. Or it could have been because they needed to get funds moved, and that company was used to empty the bank, so they could ask VCs for another round, with the added bonus of that purchase raising the valuation. I’m sure there are a million other reasons but I know that every company eventually starts to gobble up other companies so it’s some “tie it up”, “use up the surplus”, or “dodge taxes” reason

deathanatos 3y ago
> Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. At their own expense, then, since they lacked a competing product. (And still do, and AFAICT, forever will, since I think this company has declared publicly they're out of that market.) > other reasons Yeah, sorry, none of these apply or make sense. Occam's Razor applies: it was a bad 9 figure mistake, that's all there is to it.
- ransackdev 3y ago
  If we are applying Occam’s razor then the reason that they are letting the IP rot unused must be because there’s more value in doing so than there is to use it. Business don’t burn 9 figures by mistake usually and the fact they haven’t sold it off to recoup their losses tells me they didn’t make a mistake and the IP rotting unused is exactly where they want it to be and that it was worth the cost to get it. Companies will sell off losses to use the funds elsewhere. They don’t sit on assets that are worthless to them.