If Zuck thought Adam was valuable, he would have given him an incentive to stay instead of replacing his position with a newcomer and putting him in a position where he would likely leave the company.
Clearly we don't know if he did. But what we do know is that guys like Adam, Paul Buchteit etc. just want to go do their own thing after a while. And we also know the tendency of founders to sell their co back to their original employer or a close competitor.
It obviously wasn't enough if there were any. And don't you think it is convenient that Zuckerberg "got rid of" the CTO position when Adam left (when he complains about his position not fitting his stature)...and then a couple months later they have another CTO again?
It makes sense, until you realize that Facebook does "Talent acquisitions" basically, i.e. with drop.io, friendster, etc.
He thinks highly of Adam for sure, but Adam also left Facebook to found Quora. I don't think Adam would want to be bought back by Facebook and actually stay there for any significant period of time.
Plus, there's Facebook Questions... (Of course, the quality of the questions/answers is certainly debatable)
I don't think Adam would want to be bought back by Facebook and actually stay there for any significant period of time.
For the right amount of money, he could stay for 3 years, the avg post-acquisition lock-in period. It'd be a win-win for all: the next three years are super critical for fb and if they can lock-in a guy like Adam, it'll be well worth the acquisition.
This. Zuck speaks about Adam and Quora highly; no reason it wouldn't translate into an acquisition. With a $50B evaluation Zuck can very well afford back his old friends into the fold.
