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Comment by humbledrone | Hacker News Reader

Acquihires do often have employee upside, in the form of large stock-based compensation grants or bonus payouts, typically spread over a vesting period of several years. There's no point in the acquihire if you don't retain the employees, and relative to the cost to acquire the company these payouts aren't huge.

You're right that often people do have to interview to remain employed (and thus to receive these benefits).

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> do have to interview to remain employed

Would that be a full-on interview as if they were applying for a job, or just some kind of "cultural fit" screening?

It seems contradictory to me: if the hire is important enough to spend a lot of money on (even via an earn-out) then why alienate them with uncertainty about the offer?

I guess the assumption is they don't have a better offer?

But if a few key employees get together then don't they have the ability to scuttle the whole deal? "Keep doing this thing that Apple was willing to buy, but on better terms, and look for a new buyer" sounds like a pretty good alternative to "take Apple's earn-out on Apple's terms with nonzero risk of getting nothing."

It varies between no interview at all, and a full interview exactly like a new hire. Both are done. Interviews are more common these days, because if they're skipped, existing employees may resent the acquihire folks for not having to jump through the same hoops.

This is another reason for the vesting payouts for employees. If there wasn't some reward, and you had to do a full interview, why not just interview somewhere else?

Regarding your last question, it is true that a cabal of disgruntled employees could cause problems for an acquihire. I have seen cases where the acquisition was contingent on a certain number of engineers passing the interviews. Another good reason for a big financial incentive.

I don't think that would lead to better terms in a new deal. The next buyer is likely to learn that the company's employees boned the interviews, which is going to look bad.

> existing employees may resent the acquihire folks for not having to jump through the same hoops

I guess that makes sense, but it’s also a reason to view the hoops as less of tech screen and more of a hazing ritual.

I appreciate that having to whiteboard a recursive permutation generator is a rite-of-passage for most of us, it gets old, quick. One's ability to do well in a whiteboard interview is not the best indicator of one's ability to deliver value to the organisation. If I were a hiring-manager I'd prefer to go-over the candidate's portfolio of work rather than grill them over the computational complexity of a logic puzzle.

If some new people from an acquired company were to join and I heard they skipped the third-year CS undergrad oral finals simulation step I'd be glad that there's some progress being made - I wouldn't feel resentful at all.

"I had it bad when I was younger, therefore you should too" is amongst the worst our instinctive behavioral tropes.

In my experience with most acquihires, your “upside” is basically a new hire package at the mid-high end (sometimes I see low) of external offers + a potentially expedited interview process.

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