Considering that the AdMob acquisition was announced in early November 2009 and yesterday was the last business day in October, I'm guessing this is a case of 'stick around as long as the acquisition deal requires and not a day longer'.<p>Which makes me wonder, and I hope some of the local greybreads can elucidate this point: In general, how common is it for acquired founders to leave ASAP, and how many instead stick around for the long term?
What I'm <i>very</i> curious to know is how Google employees feel about what the culture there now is like. There have been a fair number of high profile exits in the last year or so and a while a Facebook IPO is probably reason number one there have to be at least a few more complementary reasons.<p>I've met a number of ex-Googler "suits" and have never been impressed by those guys. They don't shy away from boasting about their time there and what they supposedly added to the organization as a whole. The experiences have made me wonder if the business types have started to sour the culture. Any current or former employees care to weigh in?<p>Addendum: Let me add that I have nothing against business people as a whole. I (anecdotally) find that large groups of technically competent people tend to weed out assholes from their ranks somewhat more effectively than large groups of strictly business/management people.
The trouble with the AdMob-like behavior is that acquirers pretty much know founders would flip and go. No rational acquirer these days can expect founders to stick around very long. It may happen - YouTube guys stuck around - but the odds don't favor it.<p>Golden handcuffs and such only go so far, because if a person's mind is not fully engaged, what's the point in him or her showing up?<p>This has the effect of lowering the price acquirers would want to pay. I have seen this dynamic play out. When one of the companies I am involved with acquired a small company (note that most such deals are never publicly announced), they simply told the founders to stick around 3-6 months, hand over the technology and go. There was not even a <i>plan</i> to ask them to stick around. Of course, the price paid reflected that. This is the flip-side of the "talent acquisition" deals we read about - pure tech acquisitions, valued only for the code and the jump-start it gives someone else.
Wave Chief leaves as well, for Facebook: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/rasmussen-facebook-google/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/rasmussen-facebook-google/</a>
"Executives previously have said it is close to being profitable, despite the large costs associated with storing and delivering so much video content."<p>Youtube has yet to be profitable? wow.
Notable that both YouTube founders <i>stayed with Google</i> -- they left YouTube to, according to the article, work on other Google projects. That's pretty impressive on Google's part; it implies that they've built enough of an internal startup culture that these top-notch founders find it more attractive than going outside the company.