Most of the points are only applicable to smaller companies. At larger companies the typical employee is far removed from the actions of executives.
Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#22I had a nearly same experience with you when my company was acquired by Tencent. Most of employees don't know what's going on, but there are some strangers around in the office, actually another separate office. Only HR and finance people deal with those people from acquirer, they reviewed company contracts and some other legal paperworks. I saw there are lots of paper in their dedicated office. We engineers are the last one knows.
My supervisor called me to a meeting room, he let me first sign a non-disclosure agreement, or he can't tell me nothing. I had to sign that paper. Then he told me that the company was acquired, and you have choice to either leave or work for Tencent. If you want work for Tencent, you had to go over their interview and only talented people will get offer.
But actually 95% of my colleagues get offer, including me.
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#23The article mentions needing to sign some paperwork about equity in passing, but I think being asked to sign new paperwork (a new IP agreement, etc.) is a sign all on its own. Like the focus on security, it is suspicious if it happens without any other motivating reason.
And the response, 100% of the time when asked to sign contracts unexpectedly, is “sure, I’ll get this right over to my lawyer!”
Always, always. If it’s legit, the CEO will ask you to do that and then get back ASAP. Anyone who objects to you doing this is trying to screw you.
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#24The article mentions needing to sign some paperwork about equity in passing, but I think being asked to sign new paperwork (a new IP agreement, etc.) is a sign all on its own. Like the focus on security, it is suspicious if it happens without any other motivating reason.
One should be careful not to confuse an unknown reason with the non-existence of a reason. One of my prior companies suddenly became a target for digital espionage and I only knew about it happening at all because I worked closely with our security team. Others in the company had no idea except that security policies were suddenly changing.
The security team let y’all know afterward, right? Right?
(I was a CISO. I absolutely would have told the company afterward so that they knew what happened and what to watch out for next time.)
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#25I woke up one day and saw the founder tweet - "Adobe."
Figma?
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the problem that’s specific to container images? It’s no different than distributing software binaries that include FOSS.
Sometimes the lower layers of the image fs can have binaries in there that are not used or even accessible to the running container.
They're still accessible by inspect and hash (maybe start with "docker history".) You may find it easier to use that to get enough info to build your own images from scratch, so you have control of what's going in (since you already have responsibility.) "mmdebstrap | docker import" gets you surprisingly far.
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are those people leaving before the acquisition? Shouldn't they expect to have some kind of upside in a change of control event?
There are a few types of acquisition: - everyone gets rich (including employees with equity) - founders and investors get rich, nobody else gets shit - investors get good return, founders get a bit, nobody else gets shit - investors make mediocre return based on liquidation pref, nobody else gets shit - nobody gets shit (but people keep their jobs in the acquirer) In all but the first situation, you as an employee (e…
Even in the latter cases the acquirer don't want to buy an empty she'll of a company = an IP without any people to service it.
So the acquirer will offer some golden handcuffs, usually some stock options with delayed vesting to motivate the acquired to stay.
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#28What would you even do with the information?
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#29Have been acquired/acquihired a few times. Universal. Some holding company you've never heard of but probably have spent quality alone time on their primary website. Activision. General Electric. Accenture.
The distractedness of the executives is spot on. But it always seems to be in hindsight that we look back and go "huh, funny..." I am sure we could write an inference bot that monitors the calendars of people in the organization and estimates that an acquisition is imminent.
And the security/bug fixing. "Yeah, that bug has been there for three years, nobody has time to fix it." Well, all of a sudden, we are fixing it. And more besides. And the licensing of software and source code. Getting a full run down of every open source license, and I mean _every_ license, and then going back and checking them again. A sudden drive to document everything.
I've also seen the ugly side of acquisition too. An equity claw back that happened to me many years ago that I am still sore about. Sudden acceleration of equity grants and a "re-interpretation of what 'it' means" or extreme scrutiny of whether you actually qualify for the equity in your contract. I've seen a few good people suddenly not get anything because there was a missing signature on a document even though the person had been at the company three years.
Large amounts of acquisition money does strange things to people.
Re: Signs you're about to be acquired (2020)
#30The author mentions a bunch of signs, but he misses the most important one in my opinion. There is really one sign that is the telltale sign of all signs with a much higher degree of accuracy than any of the author's mentioned signs. One person is the indicator. It's not the CEO. It is the CFO. Why? When an acquisition is about the happen, the CFO is sent scrambling to ask the founders, accounting, lawyers, and all others involved for many pieces of information about the company's financials. The acquiring company is doing due diligence during this period and needs this information from the company being acquired. The CFO gets put into a mad scurry and a fire is lit under his ass to get everything done on time, accurately. If you see your CFO is more anxious and much busier than usual, asking everyone who has information for information, there is usually something going on.