Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Instagram Wasn’t An Acqui-Hire
Instagram wasn’t an acqui-hire, no it wasn't!
Top talent is worth it’s weight in gold & at the moment top software engineers and systems developers are sought after because technologies need software and people want faster, better, superior technology immediately.
So companies make Acqui-hires as these are easier to do than to source each candidate individually.
In March the blogging platform Posterous was bought up by Twitter for 36 of its most talented employees, an obvious acqui-hire.
Previously Google bought Frid.ge to improve Google+.. you can see the message left behind on the Fridge website “Fridge is closing up shop, while the product and team are folded into Google+.” Google tends to buy talent to work on existing projects but it also uses their products to catch up with Facebook.
It is common knowledge that Facebook buys up companies for their talent ( acqui-hires) and Mark Zuckerberg has stated that
“ We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people. In order to have a really entrepreneurial culture one of the key things is to make sure we’re recruiting the best people. One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders.”
So far it’s paying off, Carl Sjogreen of Nextstop had a huge role in developing Facebook’s platform. Lucy Zhang, Jonathan Perlow and Ben Davenport of Beluga built Facebook messenger. Bret Taylor from FriendFeed is now chief technology officer whilst Sam Lessin of Drop.io created Timeline, after telling Zuckerberg that the the profile page design sucked! Plus the many many more coders and designers that have been aqui-hired from the likes of Gowalla, Tagtile and Strobe
Facebook has done many acqui hires, however the latest acquisition Instagram isn't one of them. Facebook has said it plans to keep Instagram running independently.
So who’s going to get Acqui-hired next? Well if you’re talented in the mobile market and you’ve got a good start up don’t be suprised if one of the big players come knocking at your door.
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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk
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