[trollbridge]

The level of aqui-hires is getting interesting - at this point, it appears that if one wants one's career to progress, you need to start some kind of tiny startup like Astral or Bun and hope to be notable enough you can get acquired by someone like OpenAI or Anthropic.

It certainly makes the idea of a career progression / promotion more challenging than it used to be, but perhaps it also opens up some new opportunities. It becomes far more "high stakes" since you have to take the risk of starting and running a startup that ultimately fails if it does not get acqui-hired.

[mcmcmc]

It also kills competition and disincentivizes providing long term value. I’m not sure how making the job market more like gambling does anything positive for the majority of people

[elcritch]

It’s been true for a while, but AI seems to have exaggerated it. To me it reinforces the idea that LLMs created a “K” shaped talent market. Those whose are good become even more valuable.

[michaelcampbell]

> at this point, it appears that if one wants one's career to progress, you need to start some kind of tiny startup like Astral or Bun and hope to be notable enough you can get acquired by someone like OpenAI or Anthropic

This has been popular for 25+ years. Likely before, but that's when I first started noticing a significant number of companies that were clearly in business solely TO BE BOUGHT.

[jitl]

yes selling things unheard of in business. quite unusual to participate in economy