Within one hour today, during conversations with three different people, in different parts of the world I heard the following Skype stories:
1. That the programmers in Estonia saw nothing to very little in the way of stock options.
2. That two days before the sale to eBay employees were told by Nicklas that the he would never sell the company.
3. That ebay is addling layers of management to Skype, with three new VPs..one for commerce, another for API and a third that I don't recall precisely.
4. That there are a lot of people leaving Skype due to the merger. Reportedly there have been some defections in Business Development and PR, but some of those rumors may relate to PR whiz Kelly Larabee being off on maternity leave for now.
.5.Pooj Preena, the stud biz dev honcho out of San Francisco has left Skype. Considering many of the deals announced of late had his involvement (i.e. Linksys for one as an example..) I'd say things are starting to turn the other way for the radicals at Skype.
How much of the rest is true is unclear, but I'm working on the facts...