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A comment on AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B. Parent comment

Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by xp84 on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @04:34PM (#45752670)
This is exactly how European companies do when they acquire American ones, especially "Tech" companies that have well-paid technical staff. You can hire in Eastern Europe for far less, and can hire in Western Europe for still a significant bargain compared to what engineers and associated people make in California - plus, dealing with an 8+ hour time difference is brutal compared to keeping it all in Europe.

A friend I know is going through such an acquisition, funny thing is it's a European company acquiring his, but owned by an American PE firm. The American PE firm knows that cutting-edge tech is developed by expensive engineers on the West Coast, but when it's time to milk a more mature company for cash flow, you want cheaper European staff.

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Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by philipallstar on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @05:06PM (#45753037)
Almost anywhere in America is also cheaper than California.
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Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by pavel_lishin on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @09:55PM (#45755568)
Yep. The NYC area is one exception. I've worked at a company that was acquired, and they laid off quite a few of the NYC-area employees. Rumor had it that some of them were making more than their managers, and their managers' managers.
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Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by consp on Thursday October 30, 2025 @07:19AM (#45758749)
> Rumor had it that some of them were making more than their managers, and their managers' managers.

So on par with actual value created.

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Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by philipwhiuk on Thursday October 30, 2025 @09:46AM (#45759988)
It's pretty wild to describe Italy as 'Eastern Europe'
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Re:AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B by heystefan on Thursday October 30, 2025 @10:51AM (#45760679)
They didn't describe Italy as Eastern Europe, they said you can hire in Eastern Europe for far less. Eg. you can do that from Italy and keep people in the same timezone and relatively close by.
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