This trend started a few years ago. Typically, the goal of the acquiring company is to make the startup an "honors' college" that evolves into an R&D lab. Stapl

This trend started a few years ago. Typically, the goal of the acquiring company is to make the startup an "honors' college" that evolves into an R&D lab. Staples Innovation Lab is one example that's highly visible in the Clojure community. This can be politically messy because it leaves open questions about extension of corporate policies (do people used to having 5+ weeks of vacation end up on 3? how do transfers work?) and division of labor, but I think it's a good thing that's generally done with the right intentions. Ultimately, large companies have finally realized that the best way to get top talent is to revive R&D. If you don't have the R&D culture that top talent demands, you get eaten by software instead of participating in the eating. One could just pay people more, but the costs of this are exponential (20-30% raises each year to keep people happy, as opposed to 5-10% when they enjoy their work) and only finance can afford that for senior people. I'm glad to see it. The honors colleges, as they become more numerous, are going to provide young talent with much better places to start their careers than VC-funded startups or traditional large companies. I think we'll see it become possible again for the entry-level programmer to have a solid 5-year start with increasing scope of responsibility, instead of having to job hop and play politics to get real projects in the way that most of us did when we were at that point. (Or maybe I'm being unrealistically hopeful.)