This is an extraordinarily wasteful way to run a corporate recruiting system! The workers who “win” the acqui-hire game spend years working on a fake product, pulling all-nighters, and neglecting their families. The customers who love that product sink money and attention into it, not suspecting that it only exists as a way to demonstrate the team’s willingness and ability to wreck their lives in service to shipping code. The “investors” in these acqui-hires spend millions to get one successful acquisition, at very high risk.
