It’s a job. I worked for a startup that was burning out and got acquihired. I just left and got a new job, but a few friends stayed because they wanted some form of stability. They got a pretty minimal retention bonus to stay on for at least six months, I think it was under $5k.
Mine was a Friday "hey we got bought, it was just enough to pay off our debts basically so no your stock is not worth anything, the good news is you're all hired by the acquiring company so show up at X on Monday for your new job, have a nice weekend!" so of course I showed up at X, signed their shitty employment contract, did whatever they asked, and spent the rest of the time reading novels in my terminal and finding another job that wasn't a huge open-floorplan low-wall-cube office hellhole.
