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Comment by rotoole | Hacker News Reader

Lord why? 40M for engineers who will quit as soon as possible? What is the point?

《Edit》honestly I read the whole article, please explain how this makes sense from a fitbit perspective.

Typically, key engineers from the acquired company will have some sort of bonus tied to staying for a length of time. When LG bought the webOS group from HP, many got bonuses payable after one year, for example. That gives them time to maybe convince some to stay, and to get the value needed for their own internal teams to take over the technology.

I imagine everyone with stock is quite pissed after losing out on the Citizen deal. A promise of a bonus can't compare to that.

I think the Pebble brand has decent value. It is positioned as the "first" smartwatch for a niche of users that you can build around. No idea how valuable exactly the brand is as figuring that out seems like witchcraft to me.

is there data or statistics about this topic? i'm sure someone with access to this data could determine if market impact and recruitment costs would make it worthwhile

Anecdote from a recent acquisition experience:

~60 engineers and managers retained as part of acquisition. 1 left before acquisition was final. ~15 left before 1 year cliff. ~30 left within 6 months after the cliff. ~15 are still there after 2 years.

There was a company wide layoff a few months after the 1 year cliff. The acquired teams weren't hit as hard, because it was understood that people would leave on their own.

seems like the majority of money isn't going to the engineers but other outstanding expenses, they are just taking a salaried job at Fitbit

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