
Twitter and Yes, Inc - coloneltcb
http://yesitsyes.com/joining-twitter/
======
jondubois
WTF is "Yes, Inc"?

They're so insignificant, they don't even have an Alexa ranking.
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yesitsyes.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yesitsyes.com)

None of their products seem popular either:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/getfrenzy.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/getfrenzy.com)
and
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/itswyd.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/itswyd.com)

This has SV nepotism all over it. Thankfully, Twitter doesn't have a monopoly
so they can't afford to keep doing this.

If I was a Twitter investor, I would be outraged (assuming that this article
is true).

~~~
pavlov
There's three kinds of hiring in the tech industry. The proles must take an
agility course of whiteboard coding interviews that maintain a pretense of
objectivity, but actually are loyalty filter tests that only measure how much
time are you willing to spend on studying shit books like "Cracking the Code
Interview" which have no application in the real world.

Then there's the networked hire who basically lets people know he/she is on
the market, and can land a job without having to spend 6 hours at a whiteboard
answering trick questions about the space-time complexity of the interviewer's
socks.

Finally, the super-networked can get in through an acquihire, so they don't
have to feel bad about having spent a couple millions of investor money on
their startup sabbatical.

~~~
ng12
"Coding interviews are the devil" is my favorite HN meme. This post magically
appears any time anybody mentions hiring of any kind.

------
tptacek
This whole thread is so bad I flagged the story as a form of psychic self-
defense.

Like, apparently, the rest of you, I have no idea what "Yes" does, or why I
should care. I don't know why 'coloneltcb submitted the story --- they don't
work at Yes.

What I do know is that if you run a company --- really any company --- and it
winds down, it is a normal thing to write a post like this. In this case, the
company apparently has many dozens of users, so it makes even more sense to do
it. †

Meanwhile, another perfectly normal thing to do in 2016 is to "acquire" a
company as a means of importing a gelled dev team all at once. If the acquired
company has no other real prospects, this isn't a bad thing; it's a soft
landing. The availability of soft landings makes it easier for all of us to
start companies. Since most companies fail anyways, it's hard to see how they
hurt users.

Almost every comment on this thread seems to be taking Yes to task for putting
a brave face on an acquihire. "Spot the duress acquihire" is one of our less
appealing sports here on HN. I wish we'd do some more self examination about
where the impulse to play that game comes from.

† _We just went through this ourselves, and the anticipation of a thread like
this is a big part of why I haven 't gotten around to writing it yet._

------
downandout
Each of their apps have 10-50K users. Based on the number of reviews on each,
I'd say they're probably on the higher end of that. But let's say they have
100K combined users...how does a company like that even get on Twitter's
acquisition radar? I doubt it's for very much - probably more of an acqui-hire
situation - but even those can be in the low seven figures. It's interesting
that they're doing acqui-hires in the wake of layoffs.

I guess it really is all in who you know.

~~~
geodel
Twitter seems to be learning best practices of Yahoo. Acquiring
small/insignificant products and generate buzz (laugh?) in tech media.

~~~
tptacek
Is there some other buzz I'm missing or is the only buzz we're talking about
literally just the blog post the company they acquired wrote to announce
they'd been acquired?

------
caiob
I still have a hard time understanding why an early stage acquisition is
something to be celebrated in this industry.

------
ProAm
Joining Twitter seems like a bad move for any company, hopefully those stock
options paid out well.

------
jaxomlotus
Lots of acquisition announcements today. 'Tis the season.

~~~
burger_moon
Maybe it's a case of 'use it or lose it' for their acquisition budgets with
the year coming to a close.

------
nicky0
Has there ever been an acquisition announcement that didn't include the word
"excited"?

~~~
teen
obligatory:
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
nicky0
Nice, thanks. Turns out the answer is "yes".

------
f_allwein
Surprisingly devoid of information.

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0xCMP
What do they actually do/make?

------
agency
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
keville
This is awesome, and sad, just like the Valley.

------
sean_patel
Acqui-hire?

------
poetic
they joined the sinking ship...

