That’s just it.

We’ve entered a new era. Big companies don’t need your startup. They only need your smart guys. Just those few guys. You keep the rest of your engineers and figure out what to do with them.

And lately, the answer has been, “wind it all down”.

This sucks so bad for most of their employees. But it’s a signal to the labor market:

Be very honest about what you are when you’re considering working at an AI startup. Are you an AI expert? Or a TF/Pytorch monkey? There’s an enormous difference between those two things. If you’re not the key guy, require a good salary up front. Because I don’t see a future where the “acquiring” companies start needing you as well.