I was thinking exactly the same thing: This is like acquihiring except that it skips the "spend a year on a proof-of-talent product which gets thrown away after the acquisition".
Of course, the downside is that the team interview process isn't likely to be anywhere near as effective a filtering tool as spending a year building a product.
I'd recommend that anyone doing this that they negotiate their salaries very heavily.
I work on tech M&A.
For better or worse, I've seen large companies sometimes acquihire (amongst other reasons) as a way to pay up without killing their salary bands.
> There does seem like some risk though - the team will
> likely succeed or fail as a group.
This is for "group defectors" i.e. engineering coworkers who are unhappy at their current company, complain about it together, and can coordinate their migration. This (potentially) gives them a way to move together as a team.
*(Granted, some startups are 100% engineers, but they could make much more money via an acquihire than this route.)
If a team already works well together, what is their new Stripe manager going to do?
That sounds a bit awkward for said manager. He or she would be in a weak negotiating position with the group.
I'd argue that although Stripe isn't seeking to hire more managers, they are outsourcing management a little bit by allowing these not-yet-hires to form their own teams. It does relieve some burden. I wonder what happens when something goes awry and a correction is needed. Will the group follow the new manager's suggestions? So many things could go right or wrong with this.
Long term I'd love to see stats on this. My intuition is you'd wind up more successful, similar to how referrals make better employees. There does seem like some risk though - the team will likely succeed or fail as a group.