[stevenwei]

Many startup employees will work for Yahoo for $150K/year if all their favorite coworkers are working for Yahoo and they get to work on a product they're familiar with.

That seems at odds with the fact that most of these companies products are immediately shut down when the acquisition is announced.

[nostrademons]

Shutting down the product is often not part of the deal. Many founders will deliberately choose an acquirer that offers less money but promises to keep the product alive.

It's often a bait-and-switch tactic on the part of the acquirer. Once the deal is complete, the acquirer owns everything, product and all, and has no legal obligation to keep it open and active. If you wait a month or two after the deal closes to announce this, then many of the employees already have large sunk costs in the employer - they've possibly relocated, they've signed up for health insurance again, they don't want to have a tenure of 1-2 months on their resume, they've learned some of the acquirer's systems, they've made contacts in their new employer - and so you can keep them even if it's not a choice they would've made initially.