[eli_gottlieb]

Ok, now here's where I take the math apart, starting by attacking every intangible I can find.

First: who says that your start-up team consists of 10 senior (as in, actually experienced) engineers? Who says they actually work well together? Basically, who has determined that the acquihire is a smarter recruiting method than poaching a team off a BigCo somewhere or just hiring a bunch of friends out of university?

I don't even know why we're talking about teams that can't ship; don't they just get hired and then fired again for a much lower cost than $533k/man-year? Even if we have to pay double the nominal salary for an employee's "total cost of employment" each year, Team Suck will simply never match the costs of acquihiring Team Wannabe the Very Best Like No-One Ever Was.

It seems to me like acquihiring involves a huge financial premium paid solely for the "surety" of hiring an "established" and "successful" team. Basically, it looks like some companies are paying big, big door prizes just for having lived the Start-Up Experience, well beyond what they pay for even more experienced employees.

Just another form of business-school capitalist arrogance, I'd call it: the belief that the closer someone has been to business administration, the more they're worth as an employee (even if they were only an employee at "their" previous "company").