

Ask HN: When you are getting acquired does documentation/code really matter? - mrchess

How important is documentation to any acquisition? Does it make or break the deal? In the long run is it important to build things on traditional stacks (Rails or Django) instead of rolling your own custom stack?<p>And finally, is it unheard of for a big company to be interested in your product, look at your code, then laugh you off?
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andymurd
I've worked at a few small/mid-sized software firms that have been bought out
by larger players.

Part of the due diligence that larger companies will undertake before
acquiring any software IP is to determine the provenance and licensing of the
software. So watch out for any bits of code copy/pasted from open source
libraries and check that any third party libraries you use are correctly
licensed.

A big company may pull out of an acquisition at any time, even after
performing due diligence. They will never say "Ha ha! It's because your code
is rubbish" because an acquisition is a business decision not a technical one.

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staunch
It depends on what they're acquiring you for. If they're acquiring you as a
team of great programmers and they see your code is shit that probably isn't
good.

If they're acquiring you because you built a product that has great adoption
in the marketplace (YouTube), but your code is spaghetti they won't care very
much.

If it's based on revenue they _really_ won't care.

In most cases your core team will be required to stay on at the new company
long enough that any missing documentation will have had time to get written.

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jf271
Great product and spaghetti code works for a while. They will buy you for
market position but you will lose two years development down the line to bring
the code into corporate standards. It will take to engineering managers to
make it happen. From experience.

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unlikelygeek
It's always best to use good coding practices and follow generally accepted
standards. You should at least use in-code docs for your own sake. In addition
to the appearance of knowing what you are doing, it will be easier for new
developers coming in to get up to speed. The big company coming in will act
like it is a big deal, even if it isn't. It's all part of the negotiations.

