Indeed. If former employee startups were the major concern, they wouldn't pay so much. It's financial independence from working at faang that enables lots of devs to leave to start or join startups.

Agree, wasn’t Yahoo’s fate truly sealed once it settled with Google over Overture patents in 2004?

Then why do all agreements prevent you from working on your side projects or take ip from them if there was no fear?

no reasonable fear doesn't mean they are not abusing their labor market position, also doesn't mean legal is not zealous about this (which is okay at that scale)

At the same time, it's definitely the case that SV was built on Shockley's "traitorous eight" and its generational successors. Big waves of change erupt in the wake of past layoffs and signs point to the same occurring this time. I think it can be the case both that the big firms don't take startups seriously but also soak up talent that would otherwise form those startups, simply because other competitive dynamics motivate doing so, and the talent in question ends up with a paycheck that diminishes personal motivation.

I think another big component is you can't sell a growth story to Wall St. with a skeleton crew keeping the lights on. You have to have plenty of engineers working on the next big thing.

WhatsApp might need a word with these Wall St types.

You need a large and growing segment of a large and growing market. If you can pull it off with a crew of 50, the better.

What has the what's app team made other than the what's app app?

Why didn't they release the innovations on chat that openai has come up with?

The question isn't can it be done with a small team, it's "what have you done for me lately?" Yesterday's growth has already been factored into the stock price, what's the thing that will double it next?

How much money did WhatsApp make before it was acquired by Facebook?