4 ms·
"I know many of these folks personally, including at the company's underwriters, and like and respect them. I think the last thing they would intentionally do i
by larrys 14y ago
"I know many of these folks personally, including at the company's underwriters, and like and respect them. I think the last thing they would intentionally do is unload stock when they thought it was about to crash--especially when the amount they made in the sale, though huge, is still relative chicken-feed for them.
Also, all of these folks only sold a fraction of their holdings, so they've been hammered along with the rest of Zynga shareholders by the subsequent collapse."
The above is of course what is "below the fold" and the "to be sure" statement that is supposed to inoculate against accusations of being misleading.
But above the fold of course is the link bait title that draws you in and makes you think that something terribly wrong has happened with this cash out.[1] Missing of course is the amount of other stock or what their losses were.
An alternative piece that could have been equally good bait would have been perhaps "Zynga insiders who took a bath when the stock crashed" with the "to be sure" as "they also cashed out a small percentage of their holdings ..."
[1] Edit: I'm not making a judgement on whether what was done was wrong by the way I am only presenting my opinion on how this was written and an alternative version.
- Evbn 14y agoIf it wer chicken feed, why would they bother selling? Note that their wealth that is tied up in zynga stock is not wealth if it destined to be worthless before liquidation.
- samstave 14y agoNo matter what anyone says, to me, zynga is silicon valleys groupon. The worst company in the valley. I like seeing them fail.
- hkmurakami 14y agoThe company does have honest employees, including designers and engineers (I know a few personally). Yes, it can be argued, "It's their fault for working at an evil company in the first place", but it's tough for me to see the 'regular folk' suffer as well :(
- user49598 14y agoAll companies, positive or negative, have some honest employees.
- vtry 14y agoThey are guilty for working for a evil company. Ignorance of the crime does not make you innocent.
- hkmurakami 14y agoWhat if your company was acquired by them and you're in vesting period? Are engineers of the acquired company guilty of a career move that they had nothing to do with? (this is the exact situation my friends are in)
- famousactress 14y agoYes. You choose who you work for (before the acquisition and after), and stock options are a an understood risk. Let's not pretend otherwise.
- jmount 14y agoGiven Zynga's history they likely won't vest anyway (clawbacks).
- samstave 14y agoLook how well that worked out for OMGPOPs CEO who came out in public making horrible statements of some of his employees. He deserved to be acquired by Pinchs and it showed his true colors. The day OMGPOP was acquired, I deleted draw something. I've played games my whole life, computer games are what got me into computers as my career, but I have never played a Zynga game and never will. I boycott everything the company does as a personal preference. I don't think all the employees are bad, but anyone who is blatantly working to do Pincus' theft of others' work certainly KNOW they are doing it and that's pretty shitty.
- vtry 14y agoThose vesting options are going to be worthless. Sorry.
- larrys 14y ago"I like seeing them fail." PG was just talking the other day about HN'ers who have feelings like that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4293786 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4293786 I'd be curious if you get a chance of your comments to that thread (particularly what I said I felt was a possible reason and PG's response). Of course no matter which way you slice it it does make interesting watching. As they say in news "if it bleeds it leads". People love a good train wreck.
- mattmaroon 14y agoI'm not sure the comment you're replying to views all startups as a con like PG was talking about. A lot of people just dislike Zynga because of their early shady business practices, and the fact that their games are seen as a dumbing down of the industry. Zynga is sort of the Nickelback of the startup world.
- adharmad 14y agoNot to mention their recent move of asking employees to return unvested options.
- captaintacos 14y agoNot to mention the shameless cloning of games from smaller indie companies such as NimbleBit's Tiny Tower http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399380,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399380,00.asp
- Goronmon 14y agoThat comment was in the context of startups in general. As a gamer, I consider the game development practices of Zynga disgusting and if I hope that they fail, it's so that other companies are wary of trying to replicate their game designs in the future.
- larrys 14y ago"As a gamer" Thanks for your perspective. I'm not a gamer and don't follow the inside story about zynga to understand it from that point of view (ask me about certain domain registrars though and I will have plenty to say along the same lines). Correct me if I'm wrong (can't find any links) but I think Pincus was the one that fired some employees for not pulling their weight prior to the IPO or something like that. That gave me a distaste for him although I also noted that Fred Wilson defended him personally on his blog. Here's a link but not the most relevant on the matter: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/01/fred_wilson_say.php http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/01/fred...
- trance 14y agoNaw, I like Henry's version better.
- sajid 14y agoIt seems to me that insiders only dumped a fraction of their holdings because that's all they could get away with. If they could have dumped more, they would have.
- zzzeek 14y ago> Missing of course is the amount of other stock or what their losses were. why on earth would that matter ? How much money did Martha Stewart go to jail for ? If they recouped 1% of their losses via insider trading, that's...insider trading !