Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/06/robert-bork-payout.html
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A good tactic for entrepreneurs is to create something in a vulnerable spot for Apple, and spend their investment cash hyping it and paying for PR and “awards” that get press.
Make Apple buy you.
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It seems like many acquisitions get passed off as a form of hiring, now. I wonder if this mainly functions as a euphemism for the monopolizing behavior. It also points to an additional form of it: monopsony labor market power.
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Yes, this.
I work in fintech, and can say absolutely that I’ve heard clearly of numerous buyouts / takeovers where the target is the staff. The developers often get shafted on options etc so their loyalty is actually zilch, but the acquirer either gets rid of a nascent threat technology, or actually does get the devs who keep building it and handing over IP in bucketloads.
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If I am a CS graduate who wants to work for Apple, and I think I have good skills but no charisma, then simply applying for a job there won’t work – out of the 500 applicants, the job would go to the most compelling sociopath since that is how recruitment works. So I create a new window-minimising animation for macOS or whatever, and package it as a standalone “product” and get investors on board, and then Apple buys “the company” and I end up working there, with a better job title than the people I leapfrogged, and a cash signing bonus. This is what people call an “acqui-hire”.
It’s only feasible because proven engineering talent is at such a premium. That’s the same reason Google is so susceptible to pressure from certain of its employees. In that sense, it’s positive in labor terms. But of course, this only covers a very small and very privileged segment of workers. And acqui-hires are probably not great news for the office managers, janitors and other non-equity-having employees at the startups being sold.
ETA not to mention, most people who try to get acqui-hired will just end up as failed entrepreneurs with a bunch of debt and ex-employees who no longer talk to them socially
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… and the world is rapidly filling up with useless twats who can’t develop anything, but have a piece of paper with “RUBY” or “EMBER” or “UNITY” or whatever on it - and entrepreneurs pay them because they don’t know the difference.
It’s a world of little Trumps.
Silicon Valley is getting “more and more competitive” - ie nastier.
But there are still plenty of breakthroughs and applications to achieve. My world preview is littered with them.
Dicks don’t see the obvious, and they’re utterly blind to the apparently esoteric.
Financiers are worse - they seriously do not understand tech, its implications, or how to invest in it. They get suckered again and again, despite their backgrounds and educations. It’s actually pretty funny.
But faced with a chainsaw in a world of handsaws, they say “what the fuck is that?!?! Who’s gonna buy it? Fuck off!”
My advice is that we’re in an era where a lot of the crap will fly by, and people building real businesses with real tech are going to long term really benefit.
I for one a working on an XYZ platform that ignores humans. Totally. Just looks for evidence.
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I don’t know. I’m not that great in the charisma department, and they picked me out of however many applicants, back in 2006, when I was a couple years out of college. I got to walk by Steve Jobs in the cafeteria during lunch! And I turned the job down. 
Perhaps things are different now, but the interview seemed technically difficult, as in I progressed by actually knowing how to write code and how to answer on subject matter stuff having to do with operating systems, etc.
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Sounds as if they’re taking a page from the Microsoft playbook.
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