I was part of a smaller acquisition Splunk made. My existing options at the original company were worthless at the time the deal closed. Instead Splunk and our management agreed to pay us out in cash that was lower than the value of what Splunk paid. In turn Splunk slapped on the golden handcuffs for those they wanted to keep and bumped up our salaries and threw the standard four year vesting RSUs at us with everyone starting at day 0. The rumor was our founder took the lion's share of cash on acquisition. Once I was in Splunk it was, unfortunately, what I feared. Beyond a lot of mediocre mid-level management and everyone calling themselves rockstars I asked about how a specific prior acquisition had gone. Most Splunkers were pretty candid about how poorly that had gone (it was their UBA acquisition, I was part of the SOAR acquisition). I saw the writing on the wall within a few months and left money on the table. It just wasn't worth it to me to stick around as I had been in a similar size Valley security company that was equally as bad.

It's unfortunate this is what the landscape has become. On one hand I'm happy for the SignalFX founders to have made it and hit pay dirt. But everyone else... Yeah, they're all going to get swindled on the deal. Sure you'll make some money but not nearly as much as a select few and even then there's a good chance anyone who tries out Splunk internally runs into the same wall myself and a bunch of my peers did. Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, IBM... They're all are done innovating. These companies buy relevancy and then are proud of their accompliments in changing the world. Or that's what they tell their prospects, customers and themselves. So much great technology and brain power are getting locked up in these non-R&D companies who are at a stage of run rate revenue but still think they're a startup that will continue to pull 50% growth YoY. It's absurd.

Splunk isn't good at acquisitions. I've seen it first hand. I'd never go back there willingly. I hope the SignalFX crew ends up better. But at the end of the day you're working at Splunk.