Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 144 posts

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#51

Post by blizkreeg »

31reasons wrote: post #47
blizkreeg wrote: post #41

I've found most acquihire situations unfair to existing employees. It seems that those coming in from the acquihire have a higher reward/payout that talented employees already at the company can never negotiate. Are the incoming acquihired engineers that much more worth than the ones you already have? There are certainly exceptions but by and large I can't imagine this being the case.

But in the end if you look at the opportunity cost the Acquihired engineers paid brings them to the same level of compensation as others. e.g Working 2 or more years at low pay.

That's not the acquiring company's problem. Certainly engineers at the acquiring co don't care about this. They took that risk fully knowing and willingly.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#52

Post by nostrademons »

blizkreeg wrote: post #41

I've found most acquihire situations unfair to existing employees. It seems that those coming in from the acquihire have a higher reward/payout that talented employees already at the company can never negotiate. Are the incoming acquihired engineers that much more worth than the ones you already have? There are certainly exceptions but by and large I can't imagine this being the case.

I've seen $1M+/engineer compensation (over a 4-year vesting period) given to ordinary employees at big companies. It's actually not that out of the ordinary. One of the things that surprised me about working for a big company is that the compensation structure is not quite as lopsided (in favor of acquisitions) as I thought.

There do need to be two conditions met to bring in the big bucks though: 1) you need to perform, such that your value to the employer is > $1M, and 2) they need to be afraid of losing you. Many employees fail on one or both conditions. They either slack off or don't work on the right things (so they're not actually worth that much), or they're "company men" who will unquestioningly stay with the company regardless of whether they're compensated fairly.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#53

Post by blizkreeg »

nostrademons wrote: post #52
blizkreeg wrote: post #41

I've found most acquihire situations unfair to existing employees. It seems that those coming in from the acquihire have a higher reward/payout that talented employees already at the company can never negotiate. Are the incoming acquihired engineers that much more worth than the ones you already have? There are certainly exceptions but by and large I can't imagine this being the case.

I've seen $1M+/engineer compensation (over a 4-year vesting period) given to ordinary employees at big companies. It's actually not that out of the ordinary. One of the things that surprised me about working for a big company is that the compensation structure is not quite as lopsided (in favor of acquisitions) as I thought. There do need to be two conditions met to bring in the big bucks though: 1) you need to perfo…

Are you saying that acquired engineers have a $1M value to the acquirer? From what I've seen, most are simply waiting for the handcuff to cash out and exit.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#54

Post by brightball »

ng12 wrote: post #43
huac wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They faced legal trouble for the anonymity.

I don't think that's true, could you provide a source?

I don't know about legal challenges, but they basically created an anonymous area broadcast. There's a lot of complications that come along with that.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#55

Post by billyhoffman »

frogstomp19 wrote: post #27
sdflkd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.

Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…

> only unicorn Kabbage

Uhhh Let me introduce you to a little company called Internet Security Systems. $1.3B+ acquisition by IBM.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#56

Post by nostrademons »

blizkreeg wrote: post #53
nostrademons wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen $1M+/engineer compensation (over a 4-year vesting period) given to ordinary employees at big companies. It's actually not that out of the ordinary. One of the things that surprised me about working for a big company is that the compensation structure is not quite as lopsided (in favor of acquisitions) as I thought. There do need to be two conditions met to bring in the big bucks though: 1) you need to perfo…

Are you saying that acquired engineers have a $1M value to the acquirer? From what I've seen, most are simply waiting for the handcuff to cash out and exit.

The acquirer certainly is betting that on average, they do.

Definitely a lot of employees do sorta check out while their stock options vest, but not all. From what I've seen, maybe 50% of the employees in an acquisition aren't going to be worth it. But the 50% that do continue to work hard and assimilate well into the acquirer's culture tend to add a lot of value - many of the best coworkers I knew in my last job were there through an acquisition. I could easily believe that they're adding > $2M value amongst the 50% who continue working hard.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#57

Post by alistproducer2 »

sdflkd wrote: post #20
alistproducer2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've heard that the Atlanta tech scene is dominated by business types... In ATL, can confirm. That's not to say there aren't good engineers here.

Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.

From my experience going to meetups and seeing the kind of job postings that get thrown up out here, there's just more of an "enterprise" mindset here. A lot less "hard" tech being pursued. I think it's because there's not a lot of VC money (relative to the west coast and Boston/N.Y) so startups need to be more focused on generating revenue sooner. No long runways out here (for the most part).

This seems to select for business that find cash generating opportunities as opposed to chasing "changing the world."

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#58

Post by charlescearl »

frogstomp19 wrote: post #27
sdflkd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.

Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…

Mailchimp?

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#59

Post by alistproducer2 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #31

Pity, mainly because there seems to be a market for local anonymous communications, but a relatively small, and very vocal subset of users can ruin it for everyone. I wonder if some sort of anonymous reputation system could have saved them from making product decisions that were counter to the reasons for using the app in the first place.

whisper is a much superior, still alive platform that does the same thing.

Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak

#60

Post by posguy »

ynniv wrote: post #14

Square has an Atlanta office in Atlantic Station, which is ~ 15 minutes from where Yik Yak is located in Buckhead. This same Square office previously picked up the Google Web Toolkit team after Google closed their local office.

Huh, well Square seems to be in the right place at the right time to make this acquisition of talent. I still don't get how Square intends to retain/gain customers at the price point their at, Mercury, Heartland, etc are eating their lunch.
Post reply on HN