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Comment by sukilot | Hacker News Reader

Investors get their money back, employees get their wages, and Amazon gets their non depreciated capital goods and work product

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Employees do get their wages, but most were probably working on depressed wages in lieu of equity compensation -- which will now be zero. Further, if anyone left/laidoff, and they forcibly exercised options due to windows, they are underwater.

I'm hoping there will be a market shift where startups stop over hyping the value of stock options. Things like exercise windows and sparse liquidation events make stock options a raw deal.

IIRC, Zoox was out fundraising. From the employee perspective, a guaranteed gig at Amazon is better than being laid off. Equity value was probably a sunk cost at this point.

I'm assuming that Amazon is offering retention packages to the employees, otherwise, why would they bother acquiring the company?

Early employees who were dreaming of a windfall aren't going to get one I guess, and anyone who left the company or was fired and exercised is totally screwed.

Right, but how great are those packages gonna be when Amazon (renowned for their stunning committment to worker's rights and freedoms, /s) knows that anyone who doesn't take their offer will join the ranks of the 'totally screwed'?

The typical result of M&As is, by and large, that the workers lose.

If you're buying an established business, then yeah most likely it's not gonna go well for the employees, since your whole thesis is that you can extract more profit post acquisition then pre acquisition.

That's not what's happening here, though - Zoox's assets are worthless without their employees, so its in Amazon's interest to not screw them over completely.

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