Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by mason55 » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #9

pyre wrote: post #5

| "but most of my team had new jobs lined up | by the time they left the building anyway." I've never experienced this. Does this mean that they were already looking, or that they were able to immediately call someone up and get a job offer on-demand? Edit: To be clear, having 'a job lined up' to me means that they already at least have an offer, rather than just a bunch of emails from recruiters and/or people lookin…

You'd be surprised at how many startups are hiring in NYC: http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc

And, given the 10k users/mo and requirement to display the logo, that list pretty much ignores the B2B market in NYC which might be even bigger.

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

#172

Post by cwh » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

mdm_ wrote: post #11

I never understood this acquisition in the first place. I was surprised to learn that OMGPOP actually did produce more than one game[1], but I had previously only heard of Draw Something, which my wife and her facebook chums had already grown bored of by the time Zynga came knocking last year. Forgive my naivety, but don't these things have to get past a board of shareholders with a public company like Zynga? This is…

Not really sure what your point is here... are you questioning the initial acquisition of OMGPOP by Zynga or what Zynga decided to do with OMGPOP after the acquisition? The former has already been discussed at length and is a dead horse. Now is the time to discuss the latter.

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

#173

Post by Aco- » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #164

winter_blue wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Thanks for being real and talking about figures guys, a lot of people on HN skirt around the actual #s but say things like "You are being paid well below market value" or similar. On a number of occasions I've seen salary ranges posted pertaining to SV but always brushed it off. When I came into the NYC tech field I started out below market value but aggressively negotiated my way up after talking to a few people.

All I can say about those who make 60-90k is good luck, it's harder to work your way up to the rate that you deserve organically starting at that low of a rate.

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

#174

Post by smrtinsert » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

cwh wrote: post #165

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The business by contrast appears to have been a complete failure - but at least they got paid?

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

#175

Post by jmacd » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 9:44 PM UTC

socillion wrote: post #160

trotsky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't checked, but I assume the OMGPOP deal was stock. If your CEO was selling stock like mad and your stock is currently worth a fraction of what it was valued at when you did the deal that is a strong piece of evidence that you never believed you "spent" $200MM. If you recast it as a $40MM deal (based on current valuations, iirc) it puts it in a different light. The instagram deal was similarly artificially inf…

It was $180 million in cash. Page F-32 in https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1439404/000119312512...

Holdbacks are held in stock although booked as cash expenses, so saying $180m in Cash doesn't mean stock was not used.

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

#176

Post by instaheat » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 10:01 PM UTC

It seems like a lot of their employees had the wool pulled over their eyes.

An acquaintance of mine who worked for Zynga up until a few days ago spoke fondly of her position and the company's prospects. I issued her a warning months ago. I think it just goes to show just because you have kids/mortgage/bills, etc you should always evaluate who you are working for.

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

#177

Post by SurfScore » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 10:07 PM UTC

Did any OMGPOP employees have stock options vesting still from the acquisition, or was it all cash?

If they did have stock options, did they immediately vest upon termination or did they lose them?

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

#178

Post by therobot24 » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 10:13 PM UTC

superkamiguru wrote: post #163

therobot24 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ah yea, didn't think that all the way through

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

#179

Post by jonnathanson » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 10:15 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #5

| "but most of my team had new jobs lined up | by the time they left the building anyway." I've never experienced this. Does this mean that they were already looking, or that they were able to immediately call someone up and get a job offer on-demand? Edit: To be clear, having 'a job lined up' to me means that they already at least have an offer, rather than just a bunch of emails from recruiters and/or people lookin…

"It seems really amazing to go from laid off to "have a job offer" in an afternoon."

Really depends on how small the particular world is. When I was in Hollywood, it wasn't uncommon for a high-level exec to be fired from Paramount one morning and walk into work at Warner Bros the next day. Of course, that business is particularly incestuous, everyone knows each other, and the same people trade jobs the way schoolchildren play musical chairs.

Of course, things are probably a little bit more rigorous in this case. There might be a big talent grab in the wake of mass closures or layoffs -- but it seems unlikely that just anybody walks off with a legitimate job offer in supershort order. Known commodities and highest performers? Maybe. Those with great networks and recruiter relationships? Also possible. Anyone else? They'll get some halo and attention from the announcement, but they're not going to auto-convert that attention into an offer in a few hours. I suspect the part about "...had new jobs lined up by the time they left the building" is a slight exaggeration.

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

#180

Post by yesplorer » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 10:28 PM UTC

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…

Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it. However, I also don't think social games are a flawed model. Just that it's a model that I don't believe will survive on the public market and that's why I think they should have just stayed private.