Going public is a big deal. In the wake of Twitter’s recent announcement that it will be filing for an IPO, former Google employee Hunter Walk has taken to LinkedIn to reflect on the experience of the search company going public back in August 2004. He arrived at the company less than a year before it filed its own S-1, and recounted some of the changes that came along with going public.
Before the IPO, Google was very open internally with its data. Afterwards, internal data became much harder to access and any request to get a hold of potentially sensitive information would take time. An IPO also opens up a new path to acquisitions, although Walk points out that a publicly traded company attracts a different kind of employee: “careerists.” Walk also saw many departures shortly after the IPO, and expects Twitter will see a similar flight.
At the end of the day though, after the dust had settled Walk and his colleagues “all went back to work,” and Twitter’s employees will end up doing the same.
