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I think he makes a particularly strong point about Zynga's unwillingness to change their standard contract to let him keep control of his iPhone app. If a comp

I think he makes a particularly strong point about Zynga's unwillingness to change their standard contract to let him keep control of his iPhone app. If a company's not willing to be flexible about something like this, then it is the last place you want to be working. It makes Zynga look arrogant, inflexible and downright mean.

perlgeek 15y ago
I don't have any experience with acquisations, so I'd like to ask how common this is. If a big company buys a small company, how common is it do contract negotations with the employees of the small company? or is the "take it or leave" approach the norm?
- dfxm12 15y ago
  In all honesty, from Zynga's point of view, in this specific case, it wasn't worth the headache of dealing with a non-standard contract. Sometimes, acquisitions are for talent reasons, sometimes it is for product reasons. In the former, you buy a company specifically to acquire a person (or people). Those people are aware of this & have some negotiating power. Similarly, in the latter, the acquiring company might want to keep the product team in tact (at least for a short while), so they might have some power, but in both cases, the other people are more or less on their own with a "take it or leave it" type of offer with very minimal room for negotiation. There will be examples counter to this, but this is in my experience (mostly from the "big company" POV).
  - terziev 15y ago
    Exactly - it makes zero sense for Zynga to accept all kinds of special requests and addendums so that everyone is on board. Big companies do bend but only in cases when there's no alternatives.
    - evolve2k 15y ago
      I call bullshit. A contact is always between separate parties and is always able to be adjusted and changed. Their 'you don't matter enough for us to take your needs into account' approach is totally reflective of their culture of behaving badly, if they valued the team as people not just numbers there is no way the few dollars it would have cost a lawyer to clarify the intent of the wording of a single section of a single contract would not have been totally reasonable.
      - andrewem 15y ago
        I'd also say that the expected cost of recruiting a new programmer to replace him - assuming they want to do so - is likely to be significantly more expensive in both money and elapsed time than negotiating the contract addendum. Of course, refusing to negotiate has the effect of establishing a particular kind of power relationship with the potential employee, which could be one of their goals.
      - terziev 15y ago
        That's the problem. They just didn't care enough to accommodate the change. If they really wanted the guy they would have said ok. But I guess he was just a number for Zynga and not a human being and valuable team member. While I understand why it doesn't make sense for a big company to be flexible in such negotiations I still find it sad that companies don't value enough the talent that comes their way.
    - Impossible 15y ago
      Every company that has given me an offer has been willing to modify my contract to some extent, and I don't think I'm special. This includes big game development start ups, established independent studios and developers owned by large publishers. Having a list of exclusions, especially for preexisting work, is standard in the game industry afaik and doesn't require special requests in most cases.
      - terziev 15y ago
        I means they wanted you on the team. We also do the same and accept custom requests because we want the people to join our company. We are not indifferent to people. Fo some companies, though, especially those more focused on financial engineering than creating customer value prefer the my way or the highway approach. As I said in another comment for hem you are just a number.
- protomyth 15y ago
  It probably would have gone differently if he was a developer on the game that was the target of the takeover. Since he wasn't (according to the article), they don't want to bother with it. Sad, but takeovers are never really clean.
nabeelo 15y ago
To do this would make acquisitions all but impossible, if every last whim was adhered to. No company does that, not zynga, FB, google, no one. Especially in Zynga's case, when they are quite used to people having side projects. What the author didn't mention was that Z has a standard Prior Inventions addendum. I should know, our company was acquired by Zynga, and 100% of the offer letters were accepted. Several of us had prior works and side projects, including my cofounder, and we simply listed them. What he wanted sounds like some specific addendum that called out his app and maybe made some forward looking promises about it... Or... Something.

perlgeek 15y ago

I don't have any experience with acquisations, so I'd like to ask how common this is. If a big company buys a small company, how common is it do contract negotations with the employees of the small company? or is the "take it or leave" approach the norm?

dfxm12 15y ago
In all honesty, from Zynga's point of view, in this specific case, it wasn't worth the headache of dealing with a non-standard contract. Sometimes, acquisitions are for talent reasons, sometimes it is for product reasons. In the former, you buy a company specifically to acquire a person (or people). Those people are aware of this & have some negotiating power. Similarly, in the latter, the acquiring company might want to keep the product team in tact (at least for a short while), so they might have some power, but in both cases, the other people are more or less on their own with a "take it or leave it" type of offer with very minimal room for negotiation. There will be examples counter to this, but this is in my experience (mostly from the "big company" POV).
- terziev 15y ago
  Exactly - it makes zero sense for Zynga to accept all kinds of special requests and addendums so that everyone is on board. Big companies do bend but only in cases when there's no alternatives.
  - evolve2k 15y ago
    I call bullshit. A contact is always between separate parties and is always able to be adjusted and changed. Their 'you don't matter enough for us to take your needs into account' approach is totally reflective of their culture of behaving badly, if they valued the team as people not just numbers there is no way the few dollars it would have cost a lawyer to clarify the intent of the wording of a single section of a single contract would not have been totally reasonable.
    - andrewem 15y ago
      I'd also say that the expected cost of recruiting a new programmer to replace him - assuming they want to do so - is likely to be significantly more expensive in both money and elapsed time than negotiating the contract addendum. Of course, refusing to negotiate has the effect of establishing a particular kind of power relationship with the potential employee, which could be one of their goals.
    - terziev 15y ago
      That's the problem. They just didn't care enough to accommodate the change. If they really wanted the guy they would have said ok. But I guess he was just a number for Zynga and not a human being and valuable team member. While I understand why it doesn't make sense for a big company to be flexible in such negotiations I still find it sad that companies don't value enough the talent that comes their way.
  - Impossible 15y ago
    Every company that has given me an offer has been willing to modify my contract to some extent, and I don't think I'm special. This includes big game development start ups, established independent studios and developers owned by large publishers. Having a list of exclusions, especially for preexisting work, is standard in the game industry afaik and doesn't require special requests in most cases.
    - terziev 15y ago
      I means they wanted you on the team. We also do the same and accept custom requests because we want the people to join our company. We are not indifferent to people. Fo some companies, though, especially those more focused on financial engineering than creating customer value prefer the my way or the highway approach. As I said in another comment for hem you are just a number.
protomyth 15y ago
It probably would have gone differently if he was a developer on the game that was the target of the takeover. Since he wasn't (according to the article), they don't want to bother with it. Sad, but takeovers are never really clean.

nabeelo 15y ago

To do this would make acquisitions all but impossible, if every last whim was adhered to. No company does that, not zynga, FB, google, no one. Especially in Zynga's case, when they are quite used to people having side projects. What the author didn't mention was that Z has a standard Prior Inventions addendum. I should know, our company was acquired by Zynga, and 100% of the offer letters were accepted. Several of us had prior works and side projects, including my cofounder, and we simply listed them. What he wanted sounds like some specific addendum that called out his app and maybe made some forward looking promises about it... Or... Something.