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. 😄

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.

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.

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.