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Comment by allertonm | Hacker News Reader

SAP have a big site downtown (formerly Crystal/Business Objects.) Microsoft have a site downtown (in Crystal's old space, ironically enough.) Apple has a secret site (via their 2005 acquisition of Schemasoft.) Vision Critical has approx 160 people in the old Pivotal building.

Crystal/BOBJ/SAP has acted as an academy company for enterprise BI software in the same way that EA has for gaming. There are a few BI companies started by ex-Crystal people and rumour has it that some companies have opened sites here to soak up some of the post-SAP diaspora (Qliktech for example.)

Don't expect those kind of businesses to get much love here on HN, but there is still plenty of tech employment in this town and I'd say the prospects were getting better not worse.

(FWIW I am a former Crystal/BOBJ/SAP employee and now work at Indicee, a SaaS BI startup.)

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Microsoft here is just a temporary buffer for those who can't get H1-B visas. Once they're approved, MS will ship them to HQ, Redmond.

apike, one of the commenter in this thread, used to work for Apple, he might be able to give more info (and the location of this secret building).

Vision Critical looks promising since they seem to be growing quite rapidly. Another company in the same level with Vision Critical is Elastic Path.

90Degree Software used to provide BI solution as well and has a few ex-BO people (seems most of them came from Sales though). They got bought by MS either last year or this year.

One thing that strikes fear for me is the stability of these local companies. I saw somewhere that Vision Critical did a round of lay-off before. A friend of mine was going to replace my co-op position with 90Degree software couple years ago was met by a "Sorry, we made a mistake in filling our government paperwork thus unable to give any co-op opportunities for this intake". After that, I haven't heard any hiring/co-op placement anymore from 90Degree Software.

I also heard that once BOBJ was acquired by SAP, the culture seem to take a hit. Some people seem unhappy with the new overlord's action (cutting costs across the board). I suppose that's quite normal post-acquisition?

Indicee seems like a promising company a'la Web 2.0 for BI (saw the website, saw your CEO demo-ing the product in front of vicious audiences). When I browsed LinkedIN last time about Indicee, I saw many short-term employees, say 8months to 1.5 years kind of employees plus a view contractors. Care to share stories about that?

Not sure your comment about Microsoft is entirely correct - I know that was the stated intention when MS started the site but I see some evidence that they are hiring locally.

90Degrees was founded by a former colleague of mine, and they definitely hired a lot more than just sales from BOBJ, actually I'd have said it was the opposite - they took a lot of tech guys from my old team at a time when morale got pretty low a year or so after BOBJ took over. Most of those guys relocated to Redmond after MS took over, a few are back at SAP.

Being acquired by a larger company will affect the culture. Most people who date from the days of Crystal look back fondly on that time. Things definitely took a hit after BOBJ took over but if you look back the site thrived under BOBJ. It may have helped that BOBJ was really only 50% bigger than Crystal at the time. SAP is a different story, they were about 10x the size of BOBJ. I left, which tells you something about my morale there.

There has been a bit of turnover at Indicee - there was a period (prior to my arrival) when they were using more contractors etc - but we have a pretty solid full-time team now. We just pushed out a 2.0 of the product which is a substantial reworking.

Microsoft hires locally for MGS BigPark (their game studio). The rest are still waiting for their H1-B. It's not in MS DNA to operate like the way Google does. Microsoft prefers their employees for a product/group to be within the same building. (Knew this cause I used to work there).

I personally would put Indicee at the level of Vision Critical and Elastic Path in terms of the technical, the business, and the market. I hope you guys would do well.

I never understand what Bootup Labs startups do to be honest. I also don't understand what these "Social Media" startups are trying to build. Maybe I'm too young to understand the business models.

I'd prefer to see more startups that deal with serious businesses. But that's just me.

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