I've been on both sides of this very important scenario that truly does matter for this industry (the failure rate of acquisitions is hardly as well known as start-up failures when the amount of dollars wasted - oftentimes publicly traded - is probably larger on these sunk costs), and the VAST MAJORITY of acquisitions result in the larger company overriding the smaller with basically just existing customers sticking around out of little choice and almost everyone disappearing (Palm and HP, anyone?). Do you think a company of 4 being acquired would be able to as dramatically affect a company of 200 engineers? How about 2000? What if the engineers aren't even in charge of the platforms they're required to use? (It's literally defined by what your customers want, for example, in a hosted software shipping company)
I am not doubting that your scenario happens, but the possibility of changing a team of 100 (likely pretty jaded) engineers while certainly difficult is not necessarily what people think of when we're thinking acqui-hire. In fact, I'm barely entering my second decade as an engineer and I'm starting to think that surviving an acquisition intact and with career advancement somehow is probably far more lucky than hitting a start-up lottery jackpot in the first place.
There's gotta be a sort of trend of engineers that have gotten acquired so many times that their specialty now is to be able to scale / re-focus technology stacks and integrate and operationalize them better for other companies. Start-up companies typically want to see engineers that have a history of building stuff fast, growing rapidly, and the usual stuff that people get glory for as engineers. Established companies really aren't as picky. There's so many companies getting acquired you'd think that there's a niche for transitioning software over by now at least as contracting gigs.
I am not doubting that your scenario happens, but the possibility of changing a team of 100 (likely pretty jaded) engineers while certainly difficult is not necessarily what people think of when we're thinking acqui-hire. In fact, I'm barely entering my second decade as an engineer and I'm starting to think that surviving an acquisition intact and with career advancement somehow is probably far more lucky than hitting a start-up lottery jackpot in the first place.
There's gotta be a sort of trend of engineers that have gotten acquired so many times that their specialty now is to be able to scale / re-focus technology stacks and integrate and operationalize them better for other companies. Start-up companies typically want to see engineers that have a history of building stuff fast, growing rapidly, and the usual stuff that people get glory for as engineers. Established companies really aren't as picky. There's so many companies getting acquired you'd think that there's a niche for transitioning software over by now at least as contracting gigs.