Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe GitHub is different enough? I know FAANG acquisitions are mostly different (but not always[0]), but it seems GitHub started a new focus on features around the time Microsoft was in talks for an acquisition[1]. Even if this you attribute this feature focus to the increased downtime, the features probably outweigh the downtime in terms of value provided to their cloud/enterprise customers. Also, they've kept thei…
I think it would be a giant embarrassment if MS were to fuck up Github. GH is too big to fail (also, LinkedIn, Blizzard (soon)) etc.
Watching an acquirer ruin your company
41–50 of 347 posts
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, and while it's become fashionable to trash on "agile", this sort of thing is why I still prefer it to alternatives. Basically "what do you want next?".
Problem is not the agile, but useless sinecure managers trying to rebrand "agile" as something in which projects don't need planning, can be completely chaotic and any requirements can be changed at anytime without affecting the deadline. "Hey we don't really need to make any decision ever or even know what we are doing. That's the great thing about agile!"
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#43> 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…
Dealing with exactly 1 & 2 right now. #3 doesn't really apply in my case because 80% of the devs are budget staffing agency hires. But on that note, I'd add a 4th point: Management panics when they realize they won't make the self imposed deadline and start throwing bodies at the problem. In our case, we went from 2 teams to 8 over night. The very few engineers who actually were capable of shipping features became sw…
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#44There used to be a category of software called "electronic design automation". It presented an interactive editor where you could enter the schematic diagram of an integrated circuit, and also enter a chip layout, and it would ensure that they matched. It was big business. But "silicon compilers" that needed only the schematic, and generated the chip layout, threatened that business.
So, in the mid-to-late '80s the biggest EDA company set about buying up early-stage silicon compiler companies and shutting them down. That was doomed, but bought them several years during which silicon compilers were (therefore) not available for people to use. The company is still in business today, but sells very different things.
General Motors bought up more carmakers to, effectively, shut down than probably any other.
Sometimes a company can be bought for less than it would cost to hire as many staff as they have. So, they are bought and shut down, and the employees are put to work on various other projects. Google's hiring system is so Byzantine that buying companies, bypassing it, might be their main recruiting method.
One might even buy a company because its product has a name they want to use for their own product. The momentary importance of domain names in the late '90s caused a fair bit of that.
None of these contradict one another. A company might be bought for any or all reasons at the same time.
So when your company is bought, expecting its product to come out the other side is naïve.
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#45I’ve seen this twice. First time the PE firm installed their CEO who came in and immediately started talking about cleaning house. A bunch of developers left fearing a layoff. That was bad enough, but what he really meant was sales. He gutted the sales team and brought in his guys. Sales tanked, company growth stopped, hard. Features dwindled and bugs grew. This clown and his cronies were gone after two years and the…
Reminds me a a company I worked at, I can't say it's name, let's just say it rhymes with Dewlett Dackard. 1) Start with a $55 billion dollar company... 2) Hire a new CEO and cronies that are going to make miracles happen with with a very expensive acquisition of another company. 3) 18 months later the miracles have not happened. CEO and cronies are invited to leave with very generous golden parachutes. 4) Start with…
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be a giant embarrassment if MS were to fuck up Github. GH is too big to fail (also, LinkedIn, Blizzard (soon)) etc.
It’s embarrassing that they can’t figure out code search.
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, and while it's become fashionable to trash on "agile", this sort of thing is why I still prefer it to alternatives. Basically "what do you want next?".
Problem is not the agile, but useless sinecure managers trying to rebrand "agile" as something in which projects don't need planning, can be completely chaotic and any requirements can be changed at anytime without affecting the deadline. "Hey we don't really need to make any decision ever or even know what we are doing. That's the great thing about agile!"
This might be a controversial take but if you have an actual deadline -- "product must cross the threshold of not shippable to shippable" as opposed to a cutoff date "product is at all times shippable but we need a date to say we're done refining" then agile is probably not the way to go.
I've always structured projects like this as waterfall to your MVP then switch to agile. You have to get your PMs to agree to an (externally) unchanging design and feature set until you have something working to talk about and then you can ask what they want next.
Even without a deadline I still try to follow this model but define the "MVP" as a "hello world" app but with functioning prod-ready infrastructure and ci/cd. So then I can go to the design meeting and say, "I have a blank canvas, what do you want on it?"
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#48Maybe founders should stipulate that if the project ever gets discontinued, they get all rights back to the original product.
If you look at the film industry, they are masters of this. Buying scripts and sitting on them etc. A company could buy your widget startup and say they are still selling it, but mail order telephone sales only.
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#49Honest question, does anyone have some examples of an acquired company thriving post-acquisition? It seems like they just all burn out or stop doing cool things. I’m thinking of examples like Nest and Tumblr, but I haven’t noticed any where I think “wow, they’re really doing amazing things now after being acquired”. I get that many are acqui-hires or done for the IP portfolio, or as favors to founders or other invest…
Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company
#50> 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…
Dealing with exactly 1 & 2 right now. #3 doesn't really apply in my case because 80% of the devs are budget staffing agency hires. But on that note, I'd add a 4th point: Management panics when they realize they won't make the self imposed deadline and start throwing bodies at the problem. In our case, we went from 2 teams to 8 over night. The very few engineers who actually were capable of shipping features became sw…