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

Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 207 posts

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#161

Post by winter_blue »

potatolicious wrote: post #122
Aco- wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With leadership responsibilities. Say a medium-to-small sized team, less than 10 people. One could say the position would be either; Senior Software Engineer or Technical Lead.

Making a lot of assumptions about the job and yourself, obviously, but that strikes me as a $150K position, if not higher. I've seen a few roles like that go for $180-200K total comp in the NYC area. It may a little bit of negotiation finesse (or more realistically, holding several offers in hand at once and willing to play them against each other).

Hmm... that sounds sky-high. Couple of my friends are working for startups in the NYC area, and making $60k (they're all recent graduates). They're really smart and really good at what they do.

A lot of my acquaintances are working at those various Wall Street firms earning about $85k.

Finally, I have a friend who switched to Google NYC after about 9 months at a Wall Street firm (at $85k). Google started him off at $150k. But um, that's Google...

I didn't know people made so much in NYC. I thoughts these $200k jobs were only found in the Californian wonderland of Silicon Valley :-/

I even have a friend who did Computer Engineering (not CS) at college, and found a job involving low-level assembly/C programming for embedded systems. The company said they'd pay him $18/hour for the first few months; and if they liked him, they'd hire him for real at $60k. Phew. (This company is actually in Long Island.)

I'm always bemused by the sky-high consulting rates & salaries I hear on HN. I'm not sure if I live on the same planet...

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#162

Post by alexmorse »

yesplorer wrote: post #8

I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I can't think of any reason why someone will even think of building a public company on top of it. You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model. I don't have anything wrong against Z…

Ex-zyngite here.

To your questions above, my opinions. I'm no expert, just have some experience there.

1) The massive staff is due to massive success initially, then massive management mistakes continually, from the top down the chain. That's not to say there aren't great people fighting the good fight; There are many intelligent and capable people, but there's also a great deal misalignment of interests throughout the organization.

2) I think most of the games are pretty lame as well. I don't understand why Zynga customers pay for the games in most cases, but they do. Millions of them do. Zynga is very good at catering to their audience and giving them what they want but...

2.5) Typically what happens is a studio will operate trying to make the most profit in the shortest time, burning out its users with cheap grabs because that's what the higher ups demand. A lot of people in the trenches love games, and want to make great games, but get mired in the moment and vague demands from on high.

I don't think social games are a fundamentally flawed model. Some of Zynga's own games had massive retention and monetization per user, but didn't scale. I think it's an equation no one has fully down yet.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#163

Post by superkamiguru »

therobot24 wrote: post #127
sdoowpilihp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially at a company like Zynga, that at least as far as I know, had a fairly rigorous interview process. It's a chance to get a pre-screened engineer, possibly on the cheap.

understandably a company would want to pay less for higher quality work, but at the same time if the process was rigorous and assuming many tech recruiters are also trying to poach the employees - i would think 'on the cheap' wouldn't really apply given supply/demand here

It is on the cheap in the sense that they wouldn't expect to screen such people as much. It obviously isn't free, costs more than hiring from within, but cheaper versus trying to gauge recent graduates and the like.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#164

Post by potatolicious »

winter_blue wrote: post #161
potatolicious wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a lot of assumptions about the job and yourself, obviously, but that strikes me as a $150K position, if not higher. I've seen a few roles like that go for $180-200K total comp in the NYC area. It may a little bit of negotiation finesse (or more realistically, holding several offers in hand at once and willing to play them against each other).

Hmm... that sounds sky-high. Couple of my friends are working for startups in the NYC area, and making $60k (they're all recent graduates). They're really smart and really good at what they do. A lot of my acquaintances are working at those various Wall Street firms earning about $85k. Finally, I have a friend who switched to Google NYC after about 9 months at a Wall Street firm (at $85k). Google started him off at $…

Tell your friends to dust off their resumes ;)

Seriously though, $60K in NYC is extremely below market for almost any type of programming work. The only scenario I can imagine that happening is if you're writing VB6 Excel macros. Hell, even that in NYC is probably more than $60K.

$85K is also very below market. In fact, unless you're working in a niche that's extremely under-demanded, anything below six-figures I'd consider very suspect. If you have experience with something in demand (web, mobile, data, etc) hitting six figures should be a matter of course, and anyone giving that type of work for below $100K in NYC is ripping you off (or giving you an oil tanker of equity).

Embedded is a different ball game - demand for that type of work is pretty low in the NYC area. If you are proficient in standard enterprisey stacks (.NET, Java, etc) or "Valley" stacks (Rails, Node, etc) you can make quite a bit of money here.

Google NYC pays on the high end, but they are not a huge outlier. Remember that they are competing for the same talent pool as everyone else who wants capable hackers. I've seen plenty of startups and companies play in the mid-$100Ks range.

My email is in my profile. Feel free to drop me a line and I can put you in touch with a couple of recruiters I trust (and aren't slimy).

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#165

Post by cwh »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #48
mherdeg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't understand your reference. Is the story here that (1) Shay Pierce wrote a column for Gamasutra about why he decided not to work for Zynga after they acquired OMGPOP? And then (I had to dig in the comments) (2) as that column was circulating, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter supposedly sent the Twitter message "What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is jus…

It would be interesting to see if Dan Porter still considers OMGPOP a success under Zynga?! That flippant tweet should have not happened, considering that the sale was pretty much a very successful exit for Dan Porter but not necessarily a great success for any of the OMGPOP people.

The sale was a success for all people at OMGPOP. Dan and all the board members made sure of that. (this is not private knowledge)

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#166

Post by freyr »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #35
pavs wrote: post #12

I want to know what kind of thought process goes on company/individual's mind when they decide to do an acquisition like this, for $200M, which doesn't make enough money to justify it. You would think when you are throwing around that kind of money, they would do some rudimentary research? How much money was omgpop making at the time of the acquisition?

It seems a lot of these companies don't perform proper due diligence. As someone who went through the first dot com bust, I would've thought many of these companies would know better - I guess not.

History repeats itself. It seems like in tech, where things move fast, history repeats itself quickly.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#167

Post by wpietri »

alexmorse wrote: post #162
yesplorer wrote: post #8

I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I can't think of any reason why someone will even think of building a public company on top of it. You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model. I don't have anything wrong against Z…

Ex-zyngite here. To your questions above, my opinions. I'm no expert, just have some experience there. 1) The massive staff is due to massive success initially, then massive management mistakes continually, from the top down the chain. That's not to say there aren't great people fighting the good fight; There are many intelligent and capable people, but there's also a great deal misalignment of interests throughout t…

Hey, you can answer something I've been wondering about.

What portion of people at Zynga genuinely like the games they're making, and what fraction think they're terrible?

I ask because one writer in Hollywood mentioned that she was surprised to discover that the people in charge actually like the dreck they shovel out. Her theory was that having real taste in Hollywood was a handicap to career advancement. I was wondering if Zynga was the same way.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#168

Post by wpietri »

Freestyler_3 wrote: post #16
yesplorer wrote: post #8

I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I can't think of any reason why someone will even think of building a public company on top of it. You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model. I don't have anything wrong against Z…

I am curious too, they can't fix a game in 6 days when it breaks..... The games they deliver are full of bugs and inconveniences (ie. game with quests; each new quests is automatically accepted, and there is a limited amount of quests that can be open, and you cant cancel quests) This is not an entertainment company.

My theory is that's because the people playing aren't seen as customers so much as veal calves. Zynga isn't trying to make things that are fun; they're making things that are lucrative. Quality is useful to them only to the extent that it improves addictive potential.

If you've ever spent time in lower-end casinos, they're pretty seedy. But nobody cares as long as they get their fix. And, of course, "crack house" is not a synonym for a nice environment to consume your quality product.

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#169

Post by carterschonwald »

winter_blue wrote: post #161
potatolicious wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a lot of assumptions about the job and yourself, obviously, but that strikes me as a $150K position, if not higher. I've seen a few roles like that go for $180-200K total comp in the NYC area. It may a little bit of negotiation finesse (or more realistically, holding several offers in hand at once and willing to play them against each other).

Hmm... that sounds sky-high. Couple of my friends are working for startups in the NYC area, and making $60k (they're all recent graduates). They're really smart and really good at what they do. A lot of my acquaintances are working at those various Wall Street firms earning about $85k. Finally, I have a friend who switched to Google NYC after about 9 months at a Wall Street firm (at $85k). Google started him off at $…

potatolicious is absolutely right. EMPHATICALLY so.

let him help you :)

Re: Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

#170

Post by wpietri »

arindone wrote: post #117

There are too many people commenting on Techcrunch that are almost rooting for Zynga to fail and/or finding it amusing -- there are a still good number of people working at Zynga (with families and livelihoods at stake) and I hope they can right the ship and figure this out.

I'm pretty mixed. I have friends working there, but I think Zynga is a blight on humanity. I feel the same way about casinos and tobacco companies: they are essentially exploitative. So I hope that their ships all sink, but that the people working there get in lifeboats and land on some wholesome shore.
Post reply on HN