101–110 of 173 posts
Oracle acquiring Sun. I know there is a lot of Oracle hate but: MySQL, GraalVM (Java), Sun hardware (both Exa* and SPARC), VirtualBox and many more technologies are better today than prior. The challenge Sun would have had, regardless of Oracle or not, is that they were solidly in the On-Prem business ... and the market has moved to Cloud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pixar movies had an artistic downfall after the Disney acquisition. But sure they are doing fine financially-wise and technology-wise.
That's a very subjective statement. It's difficult to find evidence for, let alone prove.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was there. Nothing destroyed. Just differences in company culture. The alternative for Sun was IBM to buy them. An acquisition by IBM would have been the death of Sun. Sun, under Oracle, still lives on well today.
> Just differences in company culture Which is what this thread is largely about.
Because a # of the examples given are parent companies just leaving the acquired company alone in isolation.
How is that good for either the acquirer or the consumers.
No synergies can be had if the two companies are operating independently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very subjective statement. It's difficult to find evidence for, let alone prove.
IMDB ratings, and even revenue from movies. Pixar used to work on one movie at a time, and each one that came out was technologically ground breaking[1], a huge media event, and an instant classic beloved by adults and children. Now days you have https://www.imdb.com/list/ls020738923/ Some of their movies are good, some are great, some aren't good, but now days they are willing to make cash grab sequels. [1] Siggraph…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but it doesn't answer the OP's question I think it does, otherwise OP's question is ill-posed. That is, if YouTube scaled independently from a scrappy startup to a $170billion behemoth, the changes in corporate governance and culture would have been equally as drastic as being acquired by Google.
Youtube, the product, maybe makes more money. However, Youtube, the community, was much better initially, which I suppose can be expected with most communities as they grow. Bad actors creep in, which creates new rules, which negatively impacts the whole, which causes resentment, which causes more bad actors, which lead to more rules, and before you know it, review-girls don't seem so bad when your feed lands on terr…
So, one thing to keep in mind with all of this is that, if it was a small, fast-growing startup that got acquired, there was zero chance of it staying that way even if it did not get acquired. Being small and fast-growing for very long, is by definition impossible. In many cases, when a smaller company gets acquired by a big one, it's because they have hit the point where the founder of the smaller company realizes t…
I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were in some stale rut for a long time before that.
I agree, but this is a hot take among a lot of free software purists.
However, all jests aside, being a relatively open source person, I haven't seen much in the git product of Github getting any worse after Microsoft acquired them. The social aspect, well, it is what it is, and I don't care for it, but I don't necessarily think my preferences translate well to a quarterly earnings call.
I do personally perceive the downtime to be more frequent now, but maybe only because it's more publicized, I do not have any data to substantiate that personal observation.
It is worth noting that, most of the time, the things that are so wonderful about working at the small company are fun for all the same reasons that they aren't sustainable. Most startups are not cash positive - they don't make money, they just lose money more slowly than they get investment (by selling off bits of the company). So very often, the stuff you want to have continue just can't because it was based on imaginary income. The exit plan always involves the company becoming profitable at some point (maybe after multiple rounds of acquisitions) and that usually means that on each round the company has to become more realistic about how they spend their money, including how they manage their devs.
On the other hand, it's true that a small lifestyle company can keep many of those things, but they do that by not having a plan to sell, which tends to mean you get the spirit and independence but not the throwing-around-cash-like-it-was-free fun times.
When you factor in opportunity-cost, the whole office plays lazer tag on friday is really bloody expensive.
LVMH has purchased a lot of companies that have maintained success, but they are a holding company that runs companies more as independent subsidiaries. If software followed this model it might be alright, but most of the acquisitions by big companies are trying to merge the new company into the old, vs. buying, running and sustaining a company as a continuing business.
The whole episode is brilliant, full of great insights that I think about often. It's well worth a listen.
[1] https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/34646260/collison-grow...