Zynga Buys NaturalMotion For $527M
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Much like Sauron's tower in Mordor that collapsed once the foe was vanquished, you kinda expected Zynga to implode once Pincus was ousted.
Pincus still retains voting control over the company (much like Zuckerberg retains control over Facebook). Any changing of the guard that took place had to take place on his initiative.
Now, there's no doubt that he felt pressure to leave from the stock market. But that's not an ouster.
HN would greatly benefit from a regional filter -- as in, a filter of which comments I read, not who can post them. WTF do I care what some guy in Australia thinks of a very prominent Bay Area employer? He doesn't have friends and neighbors who work there, we do. Geographic community still means something, and much of the news on HN happens in our locale.
(Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously, but that's a different discussion.)
Second, up/down voting is conflated with "makes me feel good/not good" -- a better system would allow feedback to be more nuanced: agree/disagree, insightful, well-researched, funny etc. So we could have filters on discussions for what's actually insightful, not just what gives people the fuzzy comfort of knowing their preconceptions can remain safe and unchallenged for one more day, because the world has made low someone who has actual accomplishments (and mistakes)
The whole POINT of YCombinator is that the Bay Area ecosystem is going to be open to people flying in for it.
So, turn off speech but let people enjoy the geographic bubble. Anyone who would go to the trouble of a Bay Area VPN is practically renting there already so they could be allowed in, small loss.
I would support. As long as anyone can view the discussion without participation.
That's lovely. People outside your precious bay area don't have any sort of interesting insight (It's a Jeep thing; you wouldn't understand)? Your whole rant is pretty hilarious in this context.
...in fact just outright insulting whole people and companies...
Yes, by all means. Attack the person you're replying to right before you dismiss all developers outside of your little geographical echo chamber as inferior.
Finally, I'd like to apologize on behalf of all the stupid foreigners (read: non-Bay-Area-ites) who are offending you so badly with our deplorable misuse of the voting system. You're right; we're simply afraid that you're cutting down our sad little misconceptions about the big, scary world (which, of course, comprises solely the place where you live, as nothing else really matters).
I'm not sure if you understand it, but your attitude is a big part of the reason some of us would never, ever move there. I'm sure you find this just peachy, which would also be your own failure.
B) I'm not saying that all outside programmers are inferior. I'm saying that, given a uniformly random sample of Bay Area vs. outside programmer, I would expect the Bay Area programmer to be "better" for some set of objective measures.
If you don't think that, then you also have to disagree with basic market dynamics. Good programmers can earn more money here, and expose themselves to significant upside opportunities -- both social and financial -- which simply cannot be offered in the same quantity elsewhere. So if you show me a programmer who doesn't live in a place where they are exposed to those opportunities, I have to conclude one of only a few options:
1) not a good enough programmer to work at a company where they would be exposed to those opportunities
2) too risk-adverse or pessimistic to believe that they could leverage those opportunities, such that the cost of living here would be outweighed by the potential benefits -- which, if that is what this person believes about themselves, then perhaps #1 also applies
3) extreme aversion to city or suburban living? Or severe miscalculation of the cost-benefit of living here.
Certainly there are some cases where people who don't live here -- the center of the universe as far as technology careers are concerned -- are actually very highly skilled and leveraging those skills in their own communities. John Carmack doesn't live here, nor does Matz.
But I think you have to admit that those are exceptional cases. The average case is that you have an average programmer -- how else do you interpret the decision not to live in a place which affords objectively superior upside scenarios?
I'm not sure if you understand it, but your attitude is a big part of the reason some of us would never, ever move there. I'm sure you find this just peachy, which would also be your own failure.
Yeah I get it and I'm sorry for offending you. But I think there are certainly some realities at play, and one of them is that not all places attract talent equally. Nobody bats an eye if I said "community theater in Peoria does not attract the best acting talent," somehow that's an obvious statement -- of course if one was truly talented they'd have found a more rewarding stage.
Why is the same principle upsetting when applied to your own profession? Talented developers will find their way to the place which best rewards them. The biggest rewards tend to be available in the SF Bay Area. Ergo, to the extent that talent and compensation, opportunity etc are correlated -- the better talent is found here.
Finally, I'd like to apologize on behalf of all the stupid foreigners...
This is an unnecessary reaction. I think you must know what I'm saying here is that the voting seems to have a tendency to indicate popular sentiment, and not thoughtfulness, or insight. Consequently, it tends to punish provocative or controversial statements.
Your blanket statement is equally valid when applied to every country on earth.
Honestly, every response you've written on this thread makes me cringe.
Imagine you're a lumberjack. Now imagine that everywhere you go, every day, all you hear about is trees, chain saws and axes. Most of your friend's social lives seem to revolve completely around lumberjacking. And there are no girls.
I can completely understand a founder's choice to live there. As an employee, it's not my cup of tea.
I have as many non-tech friends as engineers -- only a small percentage of the population work in this field here. There are also plenty of girls, many of whom are attractive, both within and outside the field. I mean, that latter point you can just verify by going on something like okcupid.
I would lump your response into pessimistic, based on insufficient information. Fundamentally it's one of the few I listed. The only other reason I can think of, which I may not have mentioned, is perhaps someone values very strongly living where their family is, and they are willing to suffer the opportunity cost of doing so.
Yes, there are girls. I dated a few. But the ratio is pretty bad and most of them are tired of ubiquitous tech guys. I sometimes felt embarrassed to even mention that I work in tech. Maybe that's my problem.
Accordingly, competition and selectivity will naturally go up -- you'll have to be creative!
Having a great job in a great city with warm weather is nice and all, but that's a fragile little bubble. To my sensibilities, the U.S. society, government, media, and military is a crazy disaster.
At present, I don't even know if I should be personally offended or not -- I technically work in Silicon Valley, but I live on the other coast, where the cost of living is dramatically lower.
That isn't to say his remarks weren't offensive either way, because basing a programmer's quality on something as arbitrary as where someone happens to live seems pretty naive.
Where would you open your office and why? Do you think the location of your family would be an important factor in determining the likelihood of success? Sure, you might be happier there -- are you going to be able to fill the 20 most important roles in your with high quality people?
There are probably a small few fields where it makes sense to not be over here. The rest, you're probably going to have a difficult time rationalizing not picking SF/SV.
He forgot a million other options too
I forgot maybe two important, distinct reasons which don't fold into the ones mentioned. Valuing family time higher than financial opportunities being one of them.
See 37 Signals and Art & Logic.
I'll grant that SV probably has the most favourable funding environment.
Case in point: recently I've been looking at art talent, and the difference in quality between paying market rates for Disney-quality talent vs. hitting up my professional network and friends is just astounding.
And I only count as work: consumer applications, enterprise software, data storage and processing, law enforcement, intelligence, defense, robotics, aerospace, electric cars, manufacturing, real estate and some other fluff.
What do you guys work on over there? How are you rewarded?
And I'd expect that given a uniformly random sample of say.... Seattle vs Bay Area programmers I would expect the seattle programmer to be "better". But then again, both of our expectations are meaningless without real data.
> If you don't think that, then you also have to disagree with basic market dynamics. Good programmers can earn more money here, and expose themselves to significant upside opportunities -- both social and financial
And then you clearly do not understand that market dynamics don't exist in a vacuum considering salary alone. And are really only meaningful when considering salary in terms of buying power. And considering the cost of living in the bay area, there are many places where a programmer can make more "buying power" thus giving them the actual significant upside opportunities you suggest.
That sentence neatly encapsulates my main reasons for choosing to leave the Bay Area.
Regional filter == segregation. Segregation does not help communities. Especially communities that are so similar. What if Python programmers never talked to Ruby programmers and Ruby programmers never talked to Lisp programmers? If they stayed in their own regions just because of a PERCEIVED lack of depth of knowledge of the goings-on, a lot of things wouldn't get built.
Geographic community may mean something, but in a world with data that is freely available (nevermind the fact that just because he is in Australia does NOT preclude him from knowing more about the SV scene than you do -- you may be able to name buildings on streets, but may not know the players that he does), geographic community means less and less, and it should be that way. Knowledge (of non-geographic things) is not bound by geography.
It looks like you're asking for slashdot -- maybe you should check it out if you haven't already. Up/down voting IS vague, and at best, any attempts to characterize upvotes/downvotes (as you've suggested) is largely ineffective in absolute terms. Only people who have researched a subject well have the right to put something like "well-researched", if you think everyone does that, you're going to have a hard time on the internet. People like to think they are rational, but we are highly irrational.
Not trying to flame you, but maybe you shouldn't be so quick to go to righteous indignation.
Such a blanket statement certainly bears more nuance. I think some segregation can be effective -- I'd like to hear thoughtful comments about people who have a stake in the matter. Not glib, off-hand retorts from the peanut gallery. Why is that harmful, to prioritize the comments of people who have an incentive to be thoughtful?
However, geographical segregation (I take this to mean separating AND isolating, which might be my mistake -- segregating does not necessarily entail mutual isolation though I took it to mean that based on what was said) does not achieve this result (assuming the only people who know about SV live in SV), but it DOES exclude people who know a lot about relevant parts of SV life/culture/business that do not live in SV.
In the general case, it is not strictly impossible (nor even improbably, I would argue) that someone OUTSIDE of your geographical area (especially if you consider that people move around) does not hold important knowledge on anything related to your geographical area (and even more-so with super generic areas like "business" and "startups" and "venture capital"). If the possibility exists that someone with such knowlege exists outside of your geographical community, the geographical community will experience (I use that word liberally, you don't know what you don't know) a loss in potential knowledge -- in short, the person who COULD have contributed knowledge cannot, since they are excluded.
So what if annoying people drown out the voices of the insightful ones, or even cause people to leave? I think this is relatively difficult, without a pretty large out-pouring of annoying. They would have to be annoying enough to drive away people abroad (all potentially gained due to inclusion) AND at least one local person. I don't think HN is at that point yet, and I think it's really hard for any medium to get THAT noisy, and be obviously too noisy to be any good.
(oh also -- I didn't downvote you, actually upvoted, I just want to debate the point, since I have thought that before)
(also -- definitely, I should have qualified "community" with "community that seeks to grow knowledge, membership, involvement, etc"
If you're seeking knowledge, truth, or science, the notion that segregation will help you get there is indeed a very flawed notion.
I'm having a difficult time seeing how those objectives aren't furthered by -- in this matter -- excluding people who gleefully cheer the collapse of a multi-billion dollar company for apparently no other reason than "I don't like them." And in this case, those people can be filtered out by limiting comments from people who would be neither positively nor negatively impacted by such an event.
For what it's worth, I'm betting you dollars to doughnuts that there are people in Silicon Valley cheering on the demise of Zynga as well, so the notion you put forth that only those bay-area haoles are the ones contributing to such blasé discussion is also likely flawed, leaving me with the (admittedly incomplete) idea that what you really want is a Hacker News populated with people who agree with you, which I'd surmise as ill-advised at the least, and unhealthy at most.
Aside: not sure how you're using haole? I've only heard that applied to (unwelcome) white people by Hawaiian natives.
As for haole, that is exactly how I was using it. The direct literal translation is 'foreigner', to my understanding, and whites just happen to have caught the slur because they were foreign to Hawaii, and annexed the place by force, not without a bit of hard feelings.
2. We don't KNOW absolutely that Australia guy doesn't like Zynga because of group-think, or because of unreasonable bias -- He may very well not think Zynga had the money to do this because he is a remote accountant that they have hired and just saw the books (however unlikely that is -- but with all this SaaS going about, why not)
also, you are crazy if you only take developers in the Bay Area seriously. I live here now, but that attitude completely blinds you to the vast majority of programming knowledge that exists on the planet.
Really? So no serious devs at Amazon? None working for MS or MSR? Or any company anywhere else in the world? It seems a laughable proposition that everyone "serious" in programming must must live in a small, overpriced area? It's okay but not fantastic.
If you include in your scope some much less exceptional companies, however, I think you'll see that a more useful interpretation of my statement is that the average level of talent in those areas is lower than our average
It's almost never the case that the information you have is just "lives in Bay Area or does not", and almost always the case you'll know something vastly more informative than geographic location. As you put it, "FFS of course MS...". You'd probably repeat that for several areas, like around Boston perhaps?
Being able to randomly pick a better developer from the general population doesn't really help in any practical case I can think of.
No. I'm saying that, of course, some companies in other areas have been able to attract highly talented folks -- it does not follow, therefore, that the region as a whole has been able to do so.
Being able to randomly pick a better developer from the general population doesn't really help in any practical case I can think of.
The quality of the distribution determine your pool when recruiting. If the middle of the distribution skews toward lower talent, with a low sigma, then it says something about your likelihood to even find someone toward the upper end of the scale. Let alone begin vetting them on other factors, such as accomplishments, interpersonal dynamics, expected compensation etc.
At any rate, I don't see how a highly intelligent person, who works for Google in NYC, should somehow be filtered out of HN, nor how you can arrive at such a ludicrous statement. In addition, your new argument seems to be "some companies" may attract such talent, but the Bay Area itself somehow attracts talent without companies? As if without the high-tech firms, there would still be some high concentration of talent? Or are you stating, in an incredibly obtuse way "companies that do a certain thing very well hire people to do that thing very well and since of lot of those companies are here then a lot of those people are here too"?
As far as the top level comment, I suppose the irony is that cletus works for Google, and a quick Google search would reveal Zynga's financial situation.
Whatever else you think that comment was about, disabuse yourself of those notions. It has nothing to do with how likely or not a Zynga bankruptcy is, and whatever the latest financial news may be. It has everything to do with the irrelevance of a drive-by, senseless expression of contempt for a company which is a major employer in this area, and the how/why it has floated to the top of this thread.
Second, that you would call my comment obtuse, when you have gone to such great lengths to avoid acknowledge the obvious fact that ecosystems exist, in order to make your comment seem as though it possesses a meaningful understanding of the world -- that, in fact, is the irony. Your entire rebuttal is defeated by situating on a map the locations of top MBA programs, CS programs, VC offices, and all sorts of activity which arise from the clustering of highly talented people. The Bay Area indeed has a critical mass of all these factors -- such is not the case in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Austin, LA nor the entire European continent.
(If you are not aware of the precise meaning of the term critical mass, check Wikipedia. It means more than "really big.")
So yes, if you want to phrase it that way -- a lot of those people are here too. Enough that we have perpetuating institutions which further our advantage, and the rate at which our advantage grows, over the rest of the country. In fact, add to your map, arrows showing where the graduates from other top programs go, and even those arrows terminate here in disportionately large measure. To the detriment of those other locations, hence my conclusion that the largest share of talented people are found here because the incentives are just too great.
The obvious question then is, what to conclude from the fact that some programmers are not enjoying those incentives found here? I've given my answer already.
Lastly, this is not "my new argument," as if I have changed the subject somehow. This thread emanates from a parenthetical I made in my original comment, which people such as yourself have chosen to take extremely personally -- mainly because you cannot understand the difference between the statement "most of those programmers are mediocre" and "all of those programmers are mediocre."
Somehow, though, I'd guess that you don't shed so many tears when you read that the average man measures 5'10" in height. Or do you whip out the ruler to let everyone know your objection to this statement, since you are demonstrably at least 6'1" tall?
Want to know why? I can work with average, be quite successful, and enjoy my work.
Ouch, seldom I find myself truly insulted by a needlessly bigoted[1] comment. I wish I could downvote you.
[1] In the dictionary sense of the word, as in "having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others". http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/bigoted
Do you have anything more than personal distaste to rebutt the reasoning I've offered? If not, you're part of the problem -- you vote based on what makes you feel good, not what makes you think.
Actually I guess you haven't even indicated where you live, or why you're insulted.
Nope, nothing else; just my irrational, silly reaction to being dismissed for living in Cambridge MA, of all places. Call me immature, but I think it's only human to want to express my distaste and not want to engage with the merits of your argument, sorry[1].
[1] If you want a thoughtful argument for why there might be regions other than SV brimming with talent, please see: http://paulgraham.com/cities.html
I mean, by this method nobody can rationally discuss if some places are better than others for finding developers, since that might entail a conclusion about exactly how scarce programming quality is in other parts of the country. It might happen that people from those places could stumble upon such a discussion! And then they would feel bad!
Well kudos to you, human. Now hug yourself and eat some chocolate -- may your blood always run high with oxytocin.
>Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously
He's also got over 250k rep on SO, and 15k on HN, so there's more than a few other people who take what he says seriously enough.
Surely with the amount of lines you have typed in this thread, your Bay Area level skills could have been used to whip up something that does exactly what you are asking HN to do on your behalf?
Sorry. That's the end of my appreciation to your bullshit.
(and who the hell are you anyway...)
All this thread is quite amusing and almost a tutorial on trolling. Very bold generalizations somehow insulting almost all the developers on the world. With ideas that are obviously false and are not nearly related to the OP.
And yet you've got an amazing degree of attention and had the dedication and energy to keep the pointless discussion going on for hours.
You are the best troll I have ever seen on HN.
It'll be interesting to see if NaturalMotion is kept as a separate entity to that of Zynga or it is merged with the current company. The 15% Zynga staff cull that just happened I guess is a sign that they're going to be using their new-found employee purchases over at NaturalMotion in place of the 15% they just laid off.
Whether or not this purchase saves Zynga remains to be seen. CSR Racing is a fantastic game, really fantastic and well played. I've been playing it for a while now on the train to work, the mechanics and graphics are stellar for a mobile game.
In my opinion, take a page from the Arthur Anderson / Phillip Morris playbook and rename the entire company. It will make recruiting easier for them and probably please investors by shedding some of Zynga's negative brand halo.
Did this not happen? Or it is overshadowed by the mass spend on this acquisition?
(There is also sad news today, with layoffs for 15 percent of the company’s workforce.)
Still a great outcome for the NaturalMotion guys. Welcome to the Borg.
That article says they'll take a $17M charge this year on the lay off and then save about $33M/year. Discounted at 6% per annum that works out to $533M. See http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-17+%2B+Sum%5B33%2F1.06...
This article says Zynga has "about $1.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand." But a dailyfinance article suggests companies aren't really as cash rich as they seem; their money is locked up in offshore tax havens; they can't repatriate it without paying tax on it: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/25/why-are-rich-companie...
Yes, it appears that this did happen.