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I applied to neon last week and then the news broke about the acquisition. They rejected it this morning — I have never been happier to receive a rejection to a

I applied to neon last week and then the news broke about the acquisition. They rejected it this morning — I have never been happier to receive a rejection to an application. This would’ve been three acquisitions straight for me and… I’m okay, they’re awful. I just want stability. Congrats to the neon team! I use and love neon. Really hope this doesn’t change them too much.

tedivm 1y ago
I got hired at Kenna Security a month before they were acquired by Cisco and it was such a miserable experience that I won't work for any company the Kenna leadership are involved with, nor would I ever consider working at Cisco.
- jhickok 1y ago
  I've been through two now, and for one of them nothing much changed, and the other one I was basically lost in a stack of papers for a year. Can I ask what made the experience miserable for you?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
no_wizard 1y ago
Had personally the opposite experience. Acquisitions being one of the most interesting times to be hired into. In a couple cases I’ve been recruited because I have a history of scaling and integrating acquisitions into companies successfully
- Robdel12 1y ago
  The first acquisition I was apart of wasn’t too bad! But we were still culturally very different. So after 2 years and properly transitioning things, I bounced to another start up. Walking into something like that is tough because the two teams sort of don’t like each other and you’re really “neither”. I’d want to make sure I was interviewed by both teams
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    >you’re really “neither”. IMO, this is where the power of being hired into the situation is. No existing bias for either company and all the baggage that comes with that. Allows a person to see the pros and cons of how things get done on both sides of the fence, and act accordingly
swyx 1y ago
what if you had joined at neon's previous valuation (whatever it was) and got a sudden payday (assuming you had juuuust enough vesting)
- Robdel12 1y ago
  I was a very early employee at the other two start ups that were acquired and even with equity it was not worth it. After all the class A shares were paid out, the rest of us got little. I mean, hindsight 20/20 here, but I would have loved the theoretical money @ 1 billion. But those are so rare and my experience in the past 15 years hasn’t matched those unicorns. Basically I’ve come to the conclusion unless you have serious equity or you’re a founder, acquisition suck. You’re the one doing the work making these two companies come together, while the founders usually bounce or are stripped of any real power to change things.
  - dilyevsky 1y ago
    The 1b is very likely not all cash. Probably significant portion id db illiquid equity
gopalv 1y ago
> Really hope this doesn’t change them too much. My guess is that this team gets rolled into Online Tables tech, which would make product sense. https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/machine-learning/feature-store/online-tables https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/machine-learning/feature-...
- jamesblonde 1y ago
  Yes, that is what i expect, too. They have been paying DynamoDB and CosmosDB for a few years now. However, Neon is not competitive latency/throughput-wise for real-time workloads, needed for high end AI (like personalized recommendations). There are a few others I would have expected like Cockroach, Aerospike, or RonDB.
bicx 1y ago
I've been part of an acquisition as a first-year engineering manager, during which I had to navigate subsequent two rounds of layoffs. I was also a part of the group to help restructure teams and help make calls on who to keep. Morale was terrible, and the cultures also did not gel at all. It led to some serious burnout and I took several months off. I'm now happily working as an IC again.

tedivm 1y ago

I got hired at Kenna Security a month before they were acquired by Cisco and it was such a miserable experience that I won't work for any company the Kenna leadership are involved with, nor would I ever consider working at Cisco.

jhickok 1y ago
I've been through two now, and for one of them nothing much changed, and the other one I was basically lost in a stack of papers for a year. Can I ask what made the experience miserable for you?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

no_wizard 1y ago

Had personally the opposite experience. Acquisitions being one of the most interesting times to be hired into. In a couple cases I’ve been recruited because I have a history of scaling and integrating acquisitions into companies successfully

Robdel12 1y ago
The first acquisition I was apart of wasn’t too bad! But we were still culturally very different. So after 2 years and properly transitioning things, I bounced to another start up. Walking into something like that is tough because the two teams sort of don’t like each other and you’re really “neither”. I’d want to make sure I was interviewed by both teams
- no_wizard 1y ago
  >you’re really “neither”. IMO, this is where the power of being hired into the situation is. No existing bias for either company and all the baggage that comes with that. Allows a person to see the pros and cons of how things get done on both sides of the fence, and act accordingly

swyx 1y ago

what if you had joined at neon's previous valuation (whatever it was) and got a sudden payday (assuming you had juuuust enough vesting)

Robdel12 1y ago
I was a very early employee at the other two start ups that were acquired and even with equity it was not worth it. After all the class A shares were paid out, the rest of us got little. I mean, hindsight 20/20 here, but I would have loved the theoretical money @ 1 billion. But those are so rare and my experience in the past 15 years hasn’t matched those unicorns. Basically I’ve come to the conclusion unless you have serious equity or you’re a founder, acquisition suck. You’re the one doing the work making these two companies come together, while the founders usually bounce or are stripped of any real power to change things.
- dilyevsky 1y ago
  The 1b is very likely not all cash. Probably significant portion id db illiquid equity

gopalv 1y ago

> Really hope this doesn’t change them too much. My guess is that this team gets rolled into Online Tables tech, which would make product sense. https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/machine-learning/feature-store/online-tables https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/machine-learning/feature-...

jamesblonde 1y ago
Yes, that is what i expect, too. They have been paying DynamoDB and CosmosDB for a few years now. However, Neon is not competitive latency/throughput-wise for real-time workloads, needed for high end AI (like personalized recommendations). There are a few others I would have expected like Cockroach, Aerospike, or RonDB.

bicx 1y ago

I've been part of an acquisition as a first-year engineering manager, during which I had to navigate subsequent two rounds of layoffs. I was also a part of the group to help restructure teams and help make calls on who to keep. Morale was terrible, and the cultures also did not gel at all. It led to some serious burnout and I took several months off. I'm now happily working as an IC again.