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Watching an acquirer ruin your company

startupwin.kelsus.com

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Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#291

Post by skeeter2020 »

cr__ wrote: post #107
lovich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know which business school teaches people to say “ah can you smell that fresh mountain air” while they have their hands wrapped tightly around your neck … It’s all of them and the higher you get into management the more apparent it is. They sell a system of meritocracy where those who work the hardest get the rewards. Then you get into management and working side by side with people whose first job out of c…

> Software engineers have been tricked into thinking they are part of the in club because they are paid well enough to have the lifestyle that the middle class had between ww2 and the 80s This, and additionally we've been tricked into feeling guilty about it as well.

If you think thatthe lifestyle of a software developer with a few years of professional experience is only as good as the middle class between the late 40's and 80's you're either vastly revising history or weren't there. And before you trot out home ownership remember that all those tiny post-war bungalows housed families bigger than yours and were not located in the handful of big centers were housing is so expensive.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#292

Post by skeeter2020 »

datavirtue wrote: post #255
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t need to unionize but I’m pro-union. I think software should have a guild like the actors guild, that enforced minimum standards. when Kickstarter ran its unionizing campaign it turns out one of their demands was no productivity tracking software! I would love to know as a member of such a hypothetical guild I have collective clout to ensure I’ll never have to deal with a bullshit metric tracker again.

This and maybe not getting corralled into working ticket after ticket and sprint after sprint...endlessly. I have had numerous jobs in IT, and software development is by far the worst. Ticket grinding bullshit. The sad part is that developers think this is how software development is so they can't even demand better. Clueless.

Lots of developers apparently WANT to do this though, when they belittle all the "soft skills and politics" that they feel are inferior to writing code. The irony is when the machines take over they'll start with executing the carefully defined instructions on all these tickets, while the last humans around will be the ones defining the requirements and hasing out the intent.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#293

Post by hef19898 »

jacksnipe wrote: post #273
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…

In general it blows my mind that people don’t understand that: 1) losing a critical mass of developers is the beginning of a death spiral 2) the critical mass is smaller than you think 3) you lose the developer months before you know you’ve lost the developer

Regarding three, one dead accurate indicator is, IMHO, when people that voiced their opinions and were higjly engaged start to become quiet. This absence of "distracting noise" is sometimes even seen as a sign of improvement, in reality it is the beginning of the end. And so hard to catch, since us humans are bad at realizing things aren't there anymore.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#294

Post by skeeter2020 »

dasil003 wrote: post #287
willcipriano wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get used to it. After a while if you become good at interviewing and going through the motions you are probably more secure than someone who has "job security", no matter how hard it is to fire someone a company can still go bankrupt. If I got fired tomorrow it would result in a vacation, probably followed by a raise. When you get to that place it isn't scary at all.

I'm guessing you are American and under 35 because there's a whole generation of you that considers an 13-year tech bull run with massive stock appreciation as normal, and the hardest problem is passing leetcode interviews. It's a very different story looking for a job in a real downturn like 2000 or 2008.

If you keep looking for the same job as you get older, yes. I'm well above your age guess and starting a new job soon, but it's definitely not the same role or expectations as 20 years ago. I've found that if you work to differentiate yourself as an individual the substitution cost is very high, so you can find work even in the most challenging environments. I think this would be a much harder strategy in a heavily unionized environment.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#295

Post by skeeter2020 »

b20000 wrote: post #285
mm007emko wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, question is which part of the world you live in, of course. But I don't need to unionize. If I am not satisfied in my job I can switch. Each consecutive job hop past 15 years got me better pay, better benefits and sometimes a better job (sometimes it was equaly shitty as the prevous one but for better money). This does not happen for unionized workers. Maybe in the future we will have to unionize. Definitely no…

i don’t think you understand what unions are for also, for every engineer, there is one who will claim to be able to do the job cheaper. that is why we need unions. that, and to get rid of leetcode. people already went to college and that should be enough.

>> that, on to get rid of leetcode. people already went to college and that should be enough.

I don't like or do LC interviews, but even if (a big IF) college prepared you for programming, a LOT of professionals don't study development or even attend college. How would they get into the industry? Take 2 years off later in life and attend college?

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#296

Post by skeeter2020 »

mm007emko wrote: post #219
closewith wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t clear. Pilots absolutely have strong unions (which is partly responsible for their levels of pay). I was contesting that pilots are paid more than developers. If you have data that supports that, please share. It seems like an absurd claim.

Well, depends on the country you live in. My country: https://www.platy.cz/platy/doprava-spedice-logistika/pilot https://www.platy.cz/platy/informacni-technologie/programato... Average is CZK per calendar month gross (which is some 25-30% higher than net). Pilots 38k - 132k Programmers 36k - 86k as employees. If you work as a freelancer programmer (i.e. you have your own trade license) you can easily earn twice as mu…

It's pretty disingenuous to equate a RyanAir pilot with a student, which speaks to the misleading nature of comparing these statistics straight up; go look at what it takes in terms of training, experience and seniority to get to one of those higher paid pilot jobs. Now compare it to software development. 36k is less than minimum wage in Canada ( < $2K CAD / month); junior developers are easily making 3x that in their first role.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#297

Post by coredog64 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #294
dasil003 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you are American and under 35 because there's a whole generation of you that considers an 13-year tech bull run with massive stock appreciation as normal, and the hardest problem is passing leetcode interviews. It's a very different story looking for a job in a real downturn like 2000 or 2008.

If you keep looking for the same job as you get older, yes. I'm well above your age guess and starting a new job soon, but it's definitely not the same role or expectations as 20 years ago. I've found that if you work to differentiate yourself as an individual the substitution cost is very high, so you can find work even in the most challenging environments. I think this would be a much harder strategy in a heavily u…

Something to consider is pension lock. Your pension is tied to a specific employer, and leaving means losing everything. I hear this all the time from school teachers, but it also happened to my mom: Budget cuts were coming and while she had enough seniority to stay employed, she didn’t have enough juice for choice of location. She was going to have to accept a job that required an additional hour of commute that she couldn’t do for health reasons. So she had to leave 2 years shy of a pension. She got nothing, and she also doesn’t qualify for Social Security.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#298

Post by [deleted] »

dasil003 wrote: post #287
willcipriano wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get used to it. After a while if you become good at interviewing and going through the motions you are probably more secure than someone who has "job security", no matter how hard it is to fire someone a company can still go bankrupt. If I got fired tomorrow it would result in a vacation, probably followed by a raise. When you get to that place it isn't scary at all.

I'm guessing you are American and under 35 because there's a whole generation of you that considers an 13-year tech bull run with massive stock appreciation as normal, and the hardest problem is passing leetcode interviews. It's a very different story looking for a job in a real downturn like 2000 or 2008.

[deleted]

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#299

Post by b20000 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #295
b20000 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t think you understand what unions are for also, for every engineer, there is one who will claim to be able to do the job cheaper. that is why we need unions. that, and to get rid of leetcode. people already went to college and that should be enough.

>> that, on to get rid of leetcode. people already went to college and that should be enough. I don't like or do LC interviews, but even if (a big IF) college prepared you for programming, a LOT of professionals don't study development or even attend college. How would they get into the industry? Take 2 years off later in life and attend college?

if you did not go through college but picked up programming that’s cool. this should not put requirements like ridiculous leetcode interviews onto those that did go through college.

any good college will require significant programming work, so by the time you graduate 4 years later you not only have CS theory subjects down but are able to write software and can pick up any language in a few days.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#300

Post by carapace »

dahart wrote: post #263
jka wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether there has ever been an attempt to calculate the loss-in-value caused by acquisition-as-shutdown-mechanism. They probably frequently lead to competitive benefits (and increased market share / revenue) for the acquirer, but the discontinuation of products presumably leads to lost time, effort, and potentially money as the former customers of the product look for alternatives (in a diminished market). I…

> open source software can mitigate some of the risks Have you seen this work in practice, do you have any examples to share? It’s hard to take seriously at face value for two reasons: 1- generally speaking it might undermine the acquisition in the first place since acquirers and investors and boards tend to like private potentially patentable IP, or at the very least proprietary code. 2- More importantly using your…

> > open source software can mitigate some of the risks

> Have you seen this work in practice, do you have any examples to share?

Blender? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)

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