Anyone who worked at a startup then got acquired by a big company?

I was working in a startup, but I left only after a couple of years. 😅 That startup got acquired by a big company some years after I left. My co-workers who stayed till the acquisition, their life changed in two ways at acquisition: 1. Each of them got USD $1 million cash in exchange for the e-sops / equity they owned 2. On acquisition, their salaries immediately got doubled by the acquiring company, in line with the company's salary bands So there, that's how lives change on acquisition. 😄

Yeah, but don’t expect much. I have never heard any employees making a huge sum from this. It’s usually the founding engineers who gets privileges to convert their Esops.

I was working with a startup that got funded in Dec 2019. Few months later COVID started. Our funds lasted till Oct 2020. Then our whole team was acquired by our biggest client. They created a dept for us in their company. Initially it felt like switch from Lamborghini to Maruti 800 workwise. At startup, everything happens so quickly. But at a full fledged IT company, i was shocked with the "raise a ticket" culture. Even small permission requires tickets. Everything slowed down. Small things took days. This eventually affected my work. I got tardy and couldn't work for more than 1 hr continuously as compared to hours at startup.

How did it change lives? Dude brace for impact, role can be declared as 'redundant'. Start running!

I have 3 acquisition experiences: 1. ESOPs liquidated. Some people made crores and some made lakhs. 2. Salaries matched to existing employees + all benefits 3. Slow down due to processes & approvals 4. Consolidation of teams & applications which might make you redundant over 1.5-2 years.