[willchang]

Something's going on that's more than just network effects. Google was arguably not the first dominant search/advertising company, and Facebook was not the first social network, etc. But these companies can convince very good engineers that it's more profitable to join them than to compete against them, whereas their predecessors failed to do that. How they do this merits more investigation.

[jacquesm]

> How they do this merits more investigation.

It's easy:

The first group they get straight out of the gate with the certainty of 150K+ salaries for as long as they're employed. Life-style adapts to new stream of income, hooked, threat of potential start-up neutralized.

The second group goes against the grain, refuses the initial bait and starts a competitor and then gets bought out at a significant multiple of their real life value - if you ignore the threat to the top dog. If you don't ignore that threat it makes good business sense.