I would agree, and it's a damn good talent acquisition. Hunch's team is made almost exclusively of engineers who (a) went to some of the best CS programs in the world (CMU, MIT, Stanford), and (b) really really really know their shit (just have a 5-minute convo with one of them).
Here in NY, Hunch had a reputation for opportunistic hiring. They had lots of funding and an incredible core team, so they'd only hire engineers that astounded them. That's a great way to set yourself up for a talent acquisition.
There's really almost no such thing as talent acquisition , IMHO:
1. No dev is worth $1m. Their skills may generate as much and more, but only in a specific context. Being great at catching a football is worth $50m in context of the NFL, $0 without it.
2. You can't really buy talent. At best, you can keep it, working at 1/2 of its ability, until fully vested and moves on. Alternately, eBay could create an environment as challenging and attractive as Hunch - but (a) by definition, it's almost impossible and (b) if you could pull it off, you could hire the similar talent for much less than $80m.
You think Ebay can't just, you know, hire this kind of talent?
I'd think walking through the halls of those CS programs offering $250k a year in salary would get a a bunch of A-Level talent at a much lower price then they paid for Hunch.
I would agree, and it's a damn good talent acquisition. Hunch's team is made almost exclusively of engineers who (a) went to some of the best CS programs in the world (CMU, MIT, Stanford), and (b) really really really know their shit (just have a 5-minute convo with one of them).
Here in NY, Hunch had a reputation for opportunistic hiring. They had lots of funding and an incredible core team, so they'd only hire engineers that astounded them. That's a great way to set yourself up for a talent acquisition.