I have seen a lot of layoffs these past few years.
I have survived a number of them.
I have fallen to a few of them.
I have talked to far too many friends, on the phone, through email, through IM, over beer, watching them tear up from the sense of failure and betrayal.
Too many. Goddamned too many. In a sense, it’s easier when it’s you.
I am tired of watching impotently as my friends fall to yet another corporate earnings report and mandated change in direction and any other euphemism you care to use for “we screwed up and are damned if we’re ever going to take any responsibility for it”.
There is a deadly rhythm developing to these horrible events. The drumbeat of rumors weeks prior, the dead look in the eyes of the people who know earlier and can’t say, the worry in the eyes of everyone else as they furtively check networking sites and job listings and send emails on their private accounts.
It’s always the same. Always the fucking same.
And the people responsible – no, not the managers who actually have to wreck people’s lives up close and in person, but the higher-ups who actually made the screwups that led everyone to the cliff – they’re Out Of The Office. Off To Meetings. Not Here Today.
Responsibility. It’s a nice long word, rolls around in your mouth. Says a lot. Isn’t said much, in any way meaningful.
The part of the ritual that always gets me? The Official Statement. There always is one – the people in charge of PR can’t just let it go (or else they might be let go themselves!), they always have to weigh in with the usual Our Hearts Will Go On malarkey.
And that’s why it always gets me. Because it’s always something to the effect about how “these unfortunate events” weren’t really critical. It’s not important, those people we let go. They’re not that important. We didn’t really care about them, you see. It’s unfortunate, sure, but we have great things in store, just you watch! We’re not set back in any way, no sirree bob! Everything’s GREAT!
Everyone knows it’s what companies say – everyone knows it’s what companies have to say.
And it’s the final act of betrayal. That final kicking dirt on the guy as he heads out the door with his action figures and Best Employee Of The Year trophies in a box that was helpfully set out in the hallway the night before. Because it’s not enough that you let that guy go after he gave his all for your bottom line, it’s not enough that you had to force him out into an economy that is anything but welcoming. No, not only did you wreck his life and reward his loyalty with a pink slip and a packet about COBRA coverage, you then got to announce to Teh Intertubes that in the grand scheme of things he wasn’t really that important.
You know what? Everyone reading those releases knows it’s a ritual. And it’s a ritual that sucks. It’s IMMORAL. It lies. It lies to your customers, your stockholders and the employees that remain in fear of their continued livelihood.
It’s the final gratuitous act of betrayal. It always happens. And it always sucks.
I remember when I had one of those *on the radio*. I had been let go from a dot-com company in mid-collapse, in 2001, and escorting my shocked and awed arse out the door was a press release that said that those let go were “underachievers”.
Thanks, guys! I’m sure that’ll look good on my job application. Underachiever Class of 2001. Way to reward working long hours and surviving layoff after layoff and wondering when I’d be the next.
Corporate loyalty is a LIE.
Maybe someday I’ll be in a position to change that.
Or maybe I’ll just keep impotently raging into chat windows.
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On the positive side…
After the wailing and gnashing of teeth, many of the newly unemployed MMO developers will clean out their garages and starting working on the MMO they’ve always wanted to create… not the WoW clone their previous masters were asking for.
Without knowing almost anything about Matt Mihaly, I pegged him for upper management. A quick peak at his blog confirms this. Matt’s responses are completely on par with what you would expect to hear from upper management: interesting, thoughtful answers that do nothing to address the topic at hand.
What seems to be missing from Matt’s responses, which many people are commenting on, is the lack of recognition to employees being laid off. Most employees being laid off are not being properly recognized for their contributions and instead are being held up as scapegoats. Rather than treating those former employee’s as people, worthy of dignity and respect, they are loaded with the blame, shame and responsibility for the present cirucmstances when quite often this was out of their immediate control.
Not knowing Matt or his management style, I can’t say what he is like to work under. Any company today functions in a classical (pure economics) economic view versus a socio-economic view.
If you are a business major studying in today’s universities and colleges you will be familiar with the concept of corporate social responsibility. The heart of this concept is the idea, notion, perhaps even ideal, that a business’ obligation go beyond law and economics to also pursue long term goals that are of benefit to the society in which they exist. An example of this would be a company that indicates to its employees it values their ideas, their creativity, their hard work and what they bring to the table as people and holds on to that talent when times get rough. And times always get rough, kinda like seasons being a natural rhythm.
Many companies present themselves this way, yet when things get rough, they revert to a classical mode of operating. That’s where a deeper sense of betrayal kicks in, when you thought you were working for a different kind of company and was actually just working for a company no different than all the rest.
Ultimately, companies that operate in a purely classical capacity, lose both customers and good employees over time. I have a relative that will not buy from certain brands because of their lack of social corporate responsibility. I didn’t understand this until I worked for such a brand. One of my job functions was to contact large corporate customers that brand had lost over the past decade. Every single company I talked made it clear to me that the brand I worked for would not be doing business with them ever again. After a year of trying to rebuild business relationships with those companies, I chose to leave that brand.
Those who function in a classical sense don’t understand this. The world is changing, people are changing and how you treat both your employees and customers define you and the corporate image you represent. Word gets out.
And yes, many investors are looking for short term gains, but isn’t that what got us all into this current economic mess? Short term gain at the expense of long term fundamentals?
We’re not people, we’re resources, sure human resources, but still just resources, just like the tables, chairs and pc’s. Resources don’t have feelings, at best they’re like cattle, so yes it’s unfortunate when bad things happen to them but you know it’s not like they’re people is it?
@Swader
That’s the thing. At the end of the day, if the only reason for your company to exist is to make money and expend so that it can make more money, it means nothing, it’s just wind.
Likewise, if the only reason you work is to consume good and then some more, your life means nothing.
That’s the rethinking, putting back the “WHY” into the work, the economy and the industry.
The very first gaming studios were not there just to make money and more money, they all had ideas, a “vision”. Still today, new gaming studios want, of course, to be able to live off their work, but their sole purpose for working is NOT just so that they can live and buy stuff, they have something more to put into it. ALL this is lost on a more global scale and THAT’s a big part of the problem.
Hey Scott,
Thanks for writing this post. It is very much what I have been going through here in Vancouver in the past while. It’s been non stop layoffs since July 2nd. But the last two weeks have taken the cake.
The day Skate 2 comes out they fire everyone from Blackbox (basically everyone). Then the following Monday, Nexon Vancouver shuts down completely. Propaganda (disney) lays off 70 people. EAC laid off a few but im sure more are coming with their loss of 600+ million.
The Vancouver section of the game industry is pretty big. But not big enough to weather this. We have a ton of really really good artists looking for gigs.
So thanks again for writing this. You are saying exactly what has been going on in my life.
As for being tired of posting these posts it is probably the reason I have not updated my personal site in a while with anything of substance.
Maybe if all these recently unemployed developers get jobs at Blizzard, they will give us housing and alternate appearance tabs in WoW like they have in many of the other games. I know, I know, I had to try…
I’m just wondering how many of these guys are taking the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” route.
@Matt: You are right in that the answers are not always so clear cut. What I’m trying to tell you is that some of the posters in a layoff thread almost certainly ARE in a position to know some of the answers.
Managing upward leaves the people on top feeling good about themselves. Managing down – taking care of people, giving up one’s own bonus to protect someone in worse shape, helping young employees network their way to new jobs, inspiring loyalty – is rare.
Scott,
Well said.
The layoffs are one thing. The global economy isn’t to doing well (I am Captain Obvious) and companies are laying people off left and right. The problem is with the massive boat of fail that is MJ’s response.
Saying that this was planned and that it was mostly support staff is ludicrous. I understand that he’s partially correct, in that after a project is done, some of the workers bees – designers and developers are let go, and that’s a common practice in development. But to cut some of your senior support staff, including, according to the rumors, the person responsible for one of the game’s novel features (Carrie and the ToK) and hide that as “reducing support staff” is just wrong plain and simple. Companies are so focused on making money they forget that a key component to that are HAPPY EMPLOYEES. Happy employees are motivated and productive employees.
As a follow along, why do you think Google treats its employees so well? There is a fine line, of course, where happy employees become spoiled employees, but that means to balance out keeping employees happy with satisfying investors.
I swear a lot of these places laying off people do it simply because it’s the best time to drop dead weight or peeps they just dont like enough. They mask it all with the excuse of “bad economy” and let ‘er rip! Jerks.
In my long winded post I forget to mention a couple things.
Back in 2000 I recommended a friend come work for the company I worked for. I knew his skill set was weak but for this specific project, he could fit. He was hired. Almost 6 years later the project came to an end. My friend and several others were let go at the end of the project. He didn’t have any relevant skills to the new projects that were coming on board. As part of releasing him and the others, he was given the opportunity to do some skills retraining. A recruiting firm was lined up for him to see, at the company’s expense, that would help with resume formats, interviewing prep and assistance with finding a new job / career.
The company my bro works for had to let go 300 people. They too lined up a recruiting firm at the company’s expense for each employee, to help with resume format, interviewing prep and finding new work.
Some companies look after their employees, when times are good and bad. Some don’t. The difficult part when looking for a company to work for is knowing the difference.
Whats wrong with dropping dead weight?
If someone isn’t providing the value expected for their expense then the employment relationship isn’t working well and they should be dropped. Keeping poor performers on staff is a horrible problem, it puts extra burden on your key employees who have to pick up the slack.
It seems like people are trying to find the “bad guy” to blame because something bad happened (layoffs). I have not really heard any counter argument to Matt’s point that layoffs are sometimes needed in an environment where actual results did not meet predictions. The only argument I hear opposing him is that the company should help them and make them feel better about the layoffs.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that companies that assist employees terminated for non-performance reasons to find other jobs are more socially responsible, but does this really make an employee feel better? Probably not. Sometimes bad things happen and there is not a big bad wolf to point the finger at. Maybe the product was inferior. Maybe the market wasn’t as big as expected. Maybe a competitor offered something better. It’s just not as black and white and cause and effect as… people lose jobs -> management hates worker bees.
I agree with your thoughts, but layoffs can be handled well (they are never easy). When I was at Wizards of the Coast and we had to do a layoff, I was really impressed with how well they handled it. They actually hired a bunch of folks in to tell us the most humane way to do it (we had geeks firing geeks, very few stuffed shirts at WotC). I appreciated the advice as I had to lay-off one person (although he was a friend, so I ignored all the advice and took him out for a beer, I could see where it really helped some coworkers). What gets me the most is that time between the rumors about the layoffs and the actual day of layoffs – it’s always too long.
You be shocked to see those people in upper management still drive their BMW’s and collect that nice yearly bonus for trimming the bottom line.
The Kings and Queens of Corporate America. People need to realize your in debt, a consumer, and own nothing. Serfs in modern Feudalism
A big part of this post, and the comments that follow, are predicated on the concept of corporate loyalty. But anyone who has worked in American IT, or is familiar with its history, knows that the old concept of corporate loyalty died with IBM’s abandonment of it in the 80s.
There is no job security today, and I know of very few IT companies who are pretending it exists. A good IT worker knows to keep their skills sharp, because that’s the only job security people have. That, and the establishment of proper, positive relationships with your co-workers, because every business is a vertical microcosm, and you’re going to run into those guys again.
The company owes you no loyalty, and you owe them nothing in return. You’re the one who needs to control your career, and you should be prepared to find a new job every day you wake up. That’s how American business works.
According to Mark Jacbos Warhammer was the smoothest MMO launch in the recent MMO history (while the servers under load had auto-rollbacks each 30 minutes), so why firing employees? They can’t be all underperformers, and even an underperformer with a degree should be good at something and if not, then the person who hired the underperformer should be fired first.
EAs latest report says that PC has brought in 10% of the net income in Q4 2008. Wii had 9%, Xbox 360 and PS2 way more.
In a couple of years MMO development will be about small studios, starting with a small, dedicated fan base and working it up and not about big studios with expensive IP, expensive development trying to score big.
Meanwhile a lot of people will still believe that working for IBM or Siemens or whatever is something special, while IBM fires people offering them to start in India (for local wages) because even in India too little people want to work for IBM for longer than a year and while Siemens bribes every goverment on Earth to get contracts.
So what to do? Go into micro economics, buy your pizza from a local dude working hard to earn his money but don’t sell your soul to some talentless twats who even when equipped with a lot of money will produce mediocrity.
Please someone tell me the USP and target audience of Warhammer for example, I don’t see any.
Targetting the people who got a bit bored of all the other products isn’t a strategy.
Almost copying the interface of a major competitor isn’t a USP.
Trying to move into a very saturated fantasy market where Blizzard holds an unprecedented market position (to me it’s a singularity in the western world) while saying “we don’t want to compete with Blizzard, but look here Funcom, we’re going to put ALLLLOOOOTTTT of money into Warhammer to make it a good game” is to me a sign of minute-to-minute business and not of a clear strategy.
I am just an outsider, but I can see many mistakes which must have been made at the highest level, the people responsible should go.
Bad economy is just a bad excuse, we already had the .com-bubble, everyone straight in the head knew that the subprime market in the US would collapse, that many just lived from bank loans. The whole US American and German car industry ignored the demand for cheap, ecologically aware cars. Some problems are 100% home-made problems.
Not like it would have made any difference, in recent years there have been big companies (Allianz, Deutsche Bank) who had a yearly net revenue in billions of Euros, but they still fired thousands of employees because some analyst calculated that they wouldn’t meet a desired profit margin in 2 or 3 years if they don’t.
In a big company most employees are just a number one can add or substract.
Our quarter-to-quarter economic obsession has failed us all. ‘They’ bet the long-term future of the company and its employees on short-term gambles. And why not?
They get paid to move the stock -this quarter-. They have a golden parachute if they screw up. There’s no incentive to do anything -but- gamble.
It’s not their money. Not their mess five years down the road.
You screw up, you lose your job.
They screw up, you lose your job.
If you take a job at a public corporation, buy shares or even just let them manage your 401k, you’re ceding control of your destiny to brazen asshats.
This reminds me of vanguard. brad gets a golden parachute and they basically lay people off in the parking lot.
Marc is just another “visionary” that people bought into the kool-aid and suddenly have pink slips
Sanya wrote:
@Matt: You are right in that the answers are not always so clear cut. What I’m trying to tell you is that some of the posters in a layoff thread almost certainly ARE in a position to know some of the answers.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Even as CEO (the innermost of the inner circle) all you can do is render an opinion about why your company succeeded or failed. You’re not likely to be completely correct or completely incorrect (barring extreme cases, like Bernie Madoff’s fund….it failed because he was an out-and-out thief) even if you’re able to step outside of yourself and attempt to look at the situation through as objective a lense as possible.
There’s a lot of room for legitimate differences of opinion here given the amount of nuance involved. I realize it’s more fun for a lot of people to just throw darts at the people in charge though (something we’re all guilty of in different contexts….I know I threw a hell of a lot of darts at Pres Bush).
–matt
@Matt Mihaly
As the expression goes, “The buck stops here.” Whether it was literally something the CEO did and thus was personally responsible for, or it was something someone else did and the CEO either went along with it or just wasn’t paying attention, ultimately the responsibility lies with the person at the top.
That’s why you threw darts at Bush, and that’s why people throw darts at CEO’s. It is irrelevant who was at fault; people will always complain in the direction of the person who was responsible for it all. Rightly so, IMO.
@Nerd Rage
I have a bad habit of failing to make my point before I hit submit:
One of the hardest things about being a leader is recognizing that even when it’s not your fault, it’s still your fault.
@Nerd Rage
True as that is, when something is a particular person’s fault, that only means that they need to do something about it. Blame itself does not specify what that response should be. If it’s the leader’s fault because it’s some organization member’s fault, the solution is very different than if it’s the leader’s fault directly.
I’m not trying to place or displace blame here. If we had all the information we needed we could play the blame game around every desk in the building, and nobody would be completely clean by the time it was done. Nor am I trying to criticize the response. For all I know it was entirely appropriate.
All I’m saying is that if the person who sits at the top of the local pyramid makes an effort to represent himself to the public as a “stand-up guy”, and apparently gives that same image to his employees, well… this is exactly the kind of situation where a stand-up guy would shoulder the blame whether he deserves it or not.
The response after that might be identical, but I see a big difference between taking action on a problem, and taking responsibility for a problem, even when both of them end up at the same place. The first one says, to me, that a person is more interested in covering their own ass. The second one says that they’re at least trying to look out for their people, even if they’re doing a bad job of it right now. All the difference in the world, right there.
Sorry Scott, but you come off like a giant entitled baby here. No, the business world is not summer camp. Do you own mutual funds? Yeah, you’re part of the problem. The idea that companies should publically immolate themselves while handing out pink teddy bears and hugs to former employees is juvenile.
@Con
The idea here is that taking the little lollipops of the little kids while keeping the huge sugar-coated cream-trimmed lollipops of the big kids because if they don’t do it, the big kids won’t have anymore huge lollipops is one of the wrong ways to go about a problem, that was usually caused because the big kids wanted even bigger lollipops in the first place.
I completely agree with Matt and Con here. You are free to work/not work for a company and so does the company’s decision to hire/fire you. Both me and my wife work for small companies, and I will totally understand if my boss has to let me go. He will not sale his home just to pay the employees. They are people too. It is much clearly on a small scale.
I have been laid off before, it doesn’t feel good but I never blame the company, they paid me while I worked there and they have to do what ever to survive. I always worry about how a company can support so many people, epically software companies, because they use a lot of people to do what can be done by just a few (or even one).
You know, I can recall my grand dad sticking with TWO companies until he pensioned out of each (One shut down operations after 25 years and the other he worked until retirement.) Those companies are long gone, or so changed that they aren’t recognizable. When I was a kid, you stuck with a company until you retired if you could because it was a sensible thing, you learned your job and became very good at it. Yet now, if you don’t plan on leaving within 36 – 72 months, you are being short sighted. But everyone wonders why quality sucks, no one knows their job and everyone is stressed the fuck out. God forbid you actually mention the plans to anyone though because then you are a scum sucking traitor for thinking about the future.
At this point, I wonder if we do not really deserve a total economic collapse.
Hm reading these comments, tells me that most people have never worked for companies with ethical practices before. They seem gleeful that labor gets shit on, despite being the backbone of how companies make profit.
I guess I am old, and can remember workers being important to companies. Maybe we DO need unions in large portions of all industries?
They’ve never worked for companies with ethical practices before because over the longterm those types of companies have been weeded out by the market. Ethic don’t contribute directly to the bottom line but do cost resources so on average companies with them go bankrupt or get bought out at a higher rate than those without them.
And while I don’t think people are gleeful about it, they are being realistic in that expecting anything else out of corporate America is simply foolish.
I don’t feel it is foolish to want a company that behaves ethically or treats its workers well. I think we are on the cusp of seeing some of the corporate ‘rights’ get backed down a bit and the upper management and boards be held accountable for their actions.
As I’ve said before, there’s a reason I do this indie thing. Hint: it’s not an allergy to money, it’s a strong dislike for organizational stupidity.
I’ve had friends let go, too, and it sucks. If anyone out there wants to learn more about the indie side of things, perhaps work on a small project, drop me a message. Perhaps we can do something that doesn’t require us to put out press releases criticizing people who sacrificed part of their life for the opportunity to maybe work on a cool game.
@Nerd Rage
Eric Peterson of Feverpitch Studios/Warthog Texas – A standup guy.
He went into big debts paying off his employees’ salaries out of his own pocket and other added costs/owings after it was discovered that the entire Gizmondo thing was actually a scam to launder/steal money by the Erickson mafia rampaging boy and that there was no actual funds to cover all the development costs – which put a lot of people on the streets, render many gizmondo owners pissed and canned lots of cool game projects.
Now I’m even more depressed than I was when I started reading this thread.
@Hank
It’s not foolish to want it, it’s foolish to expect it. Our current system of economics (especially our focus on quarterly earnings) indirectly discourages ethical behavior and so our companies have adapted to thrive in that system.
And even if you’re right and corporate powers are going to take a lasting beating in the coming months (which I doubt) corporations will still not act ethically, they will simply follow the letter of whatever new law is enacted.
>Corporate loyalty is a LIE.
Your boss isn’t your friend.
When you take a job you aren’t joining a clan who will stick with you through thick and thin. They’re taking on your services because they need them and they can afford them; if either of those things changes, and one day it will, they should and will let you go.
The problem here isn’t that people lose their jobs when the economic situation doesn’t support them or when the company is being run poorly. Those are just facts of life.
The problem is that there isn’t enough provision for the people who lose their jobs. It’s part of how our economy works; those people form the pool of labour that allows new businesses to form and flourish. The unemployed are a vital resource but our society treats them like dirt. Losing your job should mean tightening your belt a bit; it shouldn’t mean losing your health coverage.
The other problem is how much people identify with their jobs and place their sense of self-worth in something they were merely hired to do. I know it’s difficult not to if you work in an industry you love. But ultimately, unless you own the business the job is just a job; it isn’t a part of you.
You’ve got a point about the press releases. I don’t think it’s really a matter of betrayal so much as it is of being pricks about it. They have every right to lay off staff they can’t support or don’t need, but they don’t have to be pricks about it.
Best writing Ive think Ive ever read from you over the years
But hey it could be worse, your boss could have fabricated a bunch of emails so that they have a reason to fire people instead of layoff. (Happened to me once)
I agree with the notion that corporate loyalty is a lie – it’s a lesson I learned a long time ago, thankfulyl when I was young.
The thing is though, do they give impressions that they are loyal to you? I’ve not had a lot of experience in many corporations so there could well be ones that do (and if so, shame on them).
Our company has never given that impression. That sounds negative to me but it isn’t. It’s not like they said if you do well and work here a long time you’ll NEVER EVER get let go. At the end of the day, they will do whatever makes the most business sense. And that’s how I treat myself as well. Like a business. I have no loyalty to my company either, really. I like them, I like working there and I think I do good work. But I wouldn’t harm myself to stay there, or stay there because I owe them something or because I am “loyal”.
But I think where the real failings here, that Scott is talking about, is treating people with dignity. That’s huge to me. Being fired or layed off is horrific. That IS one thing about my company I do respect. They have a ridiculously huge severance package. The owners have said that when people are let get they must be treated with respect and dignity (we had a round of lay offs some time ago and that was one of the first things they said).
The press releases are gross, I agree. The company should be expressing regret about the need to make such a decision in these financial times, or because budgets weren’t met or WHATEVER.
Don’t worry “Higher Ups” are not a company make. When their jobs start getting affected, and when they start losing all their “things” is when we can have some real change.
It shouldn’t be too long now.
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