qupada, 1 year ago

Plays out in small tech companies too, albeit in a slightly different way.

Got that carrot dangled in front of me at a past job. Company was past start-up phase; self-supporting and doing ok, but not outrageously well. Promises of riches should the company be "noticed" and bought for an outrageous amount.

Of course none of that accounted for the CEO (founder and 85% shareholder) being an absolute crazy person, who would change the development roadmap into making a vastly different product than the one we (the techies) believed in, TURN DOWN THE OUTRAGEOUS SUM BECAUSE HE THOUGHT HE COULD GET A BETTER OFFER, basically run the company into the ground, and wind up selling it for a pittance (which would have made the employees' share a pittance of a pittance).

I mean most of us had already left by that point, but finding out around 4 years after that he'd turned down about $150M and wound up selling out for $3M, that stung a little.