No, my position never changed, you misunderstood and are ignoring what I’m saying and using that to strawman the point I was making.
Have fun, I’m out.
It doesn’t often work like that at large companies. It’s pretty hard to work across autonomous business units. I wish it wasn’t, but I’ve seen it at quite a few stops.
I agree, but since this is all so predictable, it shouldn’t be used to judge anyone’s performance. I don’t think that’s the case though.
Internal Blizzard Memo shared with Kotaku
From Schrier’s article:
The letter also promised “a comprehensive severance package,” continued health benefits, career coaching, and job placement assistance as well as profit-sharing bonuses for the previous year to those who are being laid off at Blizzard. (Blizzard employees receive twice yearly bonuses based on how the company performed financially.) “There’s no way to make this transition easy for impacted employees, but we are doing what we can to support our colleagues,” Brack wrote.
Yeah I saw that too but it’s like like they’re going to release a memo that says we’re giving everyone a subpar severance package to make our our investors happier, or we’re rolling in dough so we’re just throwing out bags of gold just because we can. Once the emotional roller-coaster ride evens out, it really needs to come from the employees on whether or not they felt they got a generous package. I mean no matter what, it sucks, but I suspect at least a few out of hundreds will eventually realize whether or not they did the extra mile with the severance or not… keeping in mind I’m not the one claiming they will because they have money. That’s someone else’s claim.
Certainly a better deal then at Telltale.
FWIW, I was laid off from Blizzard in the last big round of layoffs 7 years ago, and the severance package they gave everyone was two weeks pay for every year with the company. No idea how that compares to what companies typically give, or what they are doing this time around.
The “job assistance” they offered was fairly marginal, just some help with resume writing, use of office space and printers, and an occasional job lead passed along, much less than I found on my own.
But at least this is a much better time to be looking for work than the middle of the recession was.
This doesn’t seem… great. The problem is the bottom is basically zero, like no severance at all so it’s hard to do comparisons. I am asking for information that you don’t have to give, so please don’t’ feel like you have to. Did they offer to pay your COBRA at all?
This sounds standard to me, but I’d love to hear if other companies do better in this area. This line item sure sounds sexy and generous with PR announcements though!
And hopefully that stays that way, and they can get back on their feet relatively quickly.
A more reasonable severance I’ve seen is two or four weeks PLUS two weeks for each year of service.
Yes, 2 weeks baseline plus 2 weeks/year is pretty standard. Cutting out that baseline doesn’t save much on vets but can really screw new hires.
PC Gamer piling on:
This guy seems a bit upset. Good read.
That’s a harsh read. I feel so bad for him.
Unions are the obvious answer to this sort of thing. Otherwise executives like Kotick will follow the incentives clearly laid out before them.
Blame the game, not the playa’.
Not until game development loses its halo of prestige where job losses will be filled by youth willing to work for nothing or pennies.
Well unions don’t actually/often stop layoffs, but they usually bring the union, and thus the employees, to the table so there’s m ore transparency. I would hate for anyone to think a union involved would somehow mean there would not be layoffs now or that severances might be better than they are. They could still change a lot though.
just as an fyi a friend of mine hit by the Acti/Blizz layoff confirmed the severance was good and gave some breathing room to find another job.
So that bit of the press release stuff was correct.
On the other hand he is most definitely a developer and a very good one.
So the layoff only impacting “non developers” bit seems to have been horseshit.
The games industry is one of the few where I think consumer revolt would work. Imagine if gamers stopped buying Overwatch lootboxes in protest. It could happen.
Shit it took less than a week of rage posts on Reddit to humble EA when Battlefront 2 came out.
Not normal layoffs, but I feel like a union would have something to say about layoffs happening simultaneously with record profits.
This in a nutshell is exactly what’s wrong with corporate think. There is no long term, no vision, no plan, only money in the next quarter. Anyone without the vision to see that E-sports is a long term growth industry/market, is a fool. Esports hasn’t even begun to capitalize on it’s potential, it needs more investment not less. This goes x10 for someone like Blizzard, who has proven they can refine genres and turn them into huge successes. This move, to cut E-sports, is probably the most boneheaded thing you could possibly do.
This same exact thing happened in the music industry. When I was at Warner Brothers, The head of company was amazing, and had been around a long time. He understood the time it took to develop artists, and what that process entailed, and what the rewards were at the end of it. When he left, that company went to absolute shit. It’s since been populated with the same kind of quarterly thinking that plagues just about everything now, and it’s an abject failure.