After 800 Blizzard Employees Lose Their Jobs, Game Workers Unite Calls for Kotick Firing - MMORPG.c

MadFrenchie

halfmystic said:

Gdemami said:

That is why we can't have nice things...

The self-entitlement of these disgruntled ex-employees is shocking...well, not so much, seems like a good riddance...

Oh boy, can't tell if a troll or actually thinking like this.

The world is so jaded to me at this point that I have to second guess if someone is trying to bait me into an argument now.

He is just really that committed to trying to be edgy.

Gdemami

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

Scot

I do wonder after the "merger" was this not bound at some point to happen? Not sure of the structure of Activision, but Blizzard directors go, then staff goes. It just seems to me that the fall out from the merger may have been held off until now?

pwnasaurus

Not taking a position on this, but I wanted to clarify for everyone discussing: Kotick's salary is actually around $2M, and the rest of the number you're seeing is stock options/awards. This is not the same thing as receiving a $30M cash salary.

Ungood

Gdemami said:

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

Here is an aspect.

It's called "Accountability" and it seems to be something that is not present in today's rich or leadership culture at the top end.

See if a CEO, makes a mistake, hires a bunch of people, and realizes that was not a good move, they should be docked pay for this event, they directly should lose money for that mistake in judgment, because they are linked to the success of the company.

What we saw here, was the CEO got a bonus, the shareholders made money, and 8% of their staff got fired... because.. obviously someone at the upper levels, made a bad call in judgment.. but.. still got paid top dollar regardless of it.

Think about this way.. those 775 people, got fired because a CEO made a mistake, but the CEO themselves did not lose anything for that mistake.

So you not see a problem with that?

laserit

Gdemami said:

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

Hey

A good response with valid points

What I don't like about the way this was done is the shock factor. I like a smooth sailing boat, laying of close to 10% of your workforce is alarming for everyone in the company. It's shitty for moral and shitty for productivity.

IMHO of course.

Panther2103

Gdemami said:

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

It's a little different when a company is doing extremely well, and making profits. You shouldn't expect "Well damn my company is doing well, I might get fired tomorrow". If you are working for a company that just launched a game that failed, then sure I would completely understand. The reason this is causing such a big ruckus, is Blizzard is not going under, Blizzard didn't release a flop (other than that stupid mobile announcement), Blizzard is doing well. 

If the jobs are redundant or part of a team that isn't going to exist anymore, and they were expecting that for a while, it would make sense, but it seems like this was extremely unexpected which is a rather poor way of handling things for a company so large.

simsalabim77

Panther2103 said:

Gdemami said:

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

It's a little different when a company is doing extremely well, and making profits. You shouldn't expect "Well damn my company is doing well, I might get fired tomorrow". If you are working for a company that just launched a game that failed, then sure I would completely understand. The reason this is causing such a big ruckus, is Blizzard is not going under, Blizzard didn't release a flop (other than that stupid mobile announcement), Blizzard is doing well. 

If the jobs are redundant or part of a team that isn't going to exist anymore, and they were expecting that for a while, it would make sense, but it seems like this was extremely unexpected which is a rather poor way of handling things for a company so large.

They axed Destiny 1/2 and a lot of e-sports. In addition, dev teams are being increased by 20%. I'm not defending toxic capitalism, but they have reasonable justifications. 

Gdemami

Panther2103 said:

It's a little different when a company is doing extremely well, and making profits. 

It is not.

uriel_mafess

No company that is doing great goes firing quite a sizeble chunk of their employees. Just like companies post IR0 go from record profit to record profit until the closure/pay suspension.

Benefits dont always come, nowadays almost never, from doing well. Actually firing and reducing personnel can boost income as a short time boost. As selling parts, the most profitable, of the company or self buying stocks due to rivers of money launched by the QEs.

Also not sure how much that CEO is doing in salary (I guess that those figures about 30M$ include stocks or other forms of payment wich arent 1:1 convertible to salary) but unless those fired guys made way less than the median income in the industry his firing could save no more than 300 workers if you take into account the total cost of employment nowadays.

Im not by any means defending the "new" paradigm of lets make short term profit by milking the cow as much as possible and lets cross fingers that another keynesian boost (theft) saves our asses, but if it fails it matters not cause we alreay have made more than enough to feed the next 3 generations of our kind, thanks to the efrots and emporerishment of the contributors especially, and the whole of the population.

But this is what we have voted into action. And we have been doing it for at least 4 decades. The new era of no Moral hazard thanks to FEDs & goverment socialism. Dilution of all responsability and consecuences into the future or the shoulders of all the population finally is here.

Those guys "just" do their best to success in this new world of colectivist poverty sponsored by the leviathan state and cheered by the masses.

Gdemami

Ungood said:
Do you not see a problem with that?

Do you mean your sore lack of critical thinking?

There was no mistake nor bad judgement made. The lay-offs have nothing to do with company actual profits, CEO bonus or w/e - they are simply not needed/they are not qualified for the direction company is now taking.

alkarionlog

Panther2103 said:

Gdemami said:

Panther2103 said:
Holy crap. What? You shouldn't be on edge 24/7 about whether or not you get to keep your job. 

...hm, so how will be paying those people when company does not have any use for them any longer? Or company should be paying them until they go under? Or do you have some magic knowledge how you can ensure company profits without ever need any sort of restructuralization?


The thing is, no one knows the future, no one knows how long you will be in a business or how you will perform, it is not the whim of company leadership to let people go, they just do their best to keep up with market changes.



It is getting ridiculously blown out of proportions. If any mid sized dev studio counting 200 heads let go 16 of their employees, no one would notice. 800 is a big number, sure, but they have freaking 10k employees.

It's a little different when a company is doing extremely well, and making profits. You shouldn't expect "Well damn my company is doing well, I might get fired tomorrow". If you are working for a company that just launched a game that failed, then sure I would completely understand. The reason this is causing such a big ruckus, is Blizzard is not going under, Blizzard didn't release a flop (other than that stupid mobile announcement), Blizzard is doing well. 

If the jobs are redundant or part of a team that isn't going to exist anymore, and they were expecting that for a while, it would make sense, but it seems like this was extremely unexpected which is a rather poor way of handling things for a company so large.

only one problem we know already blizzard would pull the Esports plug out, so that already is a tell of people would lose they job

the company can be getting profits, that don't mean your sector is helping on that, a company will never only count the end of the month budge, they will count everything, even a damn single paper clip, I saw people get a real flack for forgetting broken nail in his pocket because in the end of the day they had to account for that broken nail,

what I see here is a lot of people don't really even work on any big company and are talking in hopes they point of view is seen as the right, but these utopic viesw will never survive the real world,

sorry snowflake your view will never be taken, if you belive that is the right thing to do and they are only being greed without care, please prove the world wrong, start a bussiness, and show everyone you are right

Cryomatrix

DMKano said:

The real issue are ridiculously inflated C level salaries there is no logic that can explain how 1 persons value is 200 times greater than a senior developer making $150K a year.

You can hire 200 senior developers vs 1 C level - hello???? 

The issue is obvious

The logic is easy. 

1) CEO has the potential to make your company hundreds of millions of dollars and if you get the right one, they can do even more. You get the best CEO and you're making billions. 

2) The senior developer is replaceable. You get the best senior developer and they basically do what? Reduce the amount of bugs a DLC will have? You hire any ole developer and their main contribution is basically + or - bugs. It's probably more sophisticated than that as i'm not a programmer. 

See, logic is easy. 2018 net income +300 million more than the year before. You think a developer influences that bottom line or the overall direction of the company. 

I'll wait for your rebuttal. 

Cryomatrix

SBFord

Cryomatrix said:

DMKano said:

The real issue are ridiculously inflated C level salaries there is no logic that can explain how 1 persons value is 200 times greater than a senior developer making $150K a year.

You can hire 200 senior developers vs 1 C level - hello???? 

The issue is obvious

The logic is easy. 

1) CEO has the potential to make your company hundreds of millions of dollars and if you get the right one, they can do even more. You get the best CEO and you're making billions. 

2) The senior developer is replaceable. You get the best senior developer and they basically do what? Reduce the amount of bugs a DLC will have? You hire any ole developer and their main contribution is basically + or - bugs. It's probably more sophisticated than that as i'm not a programmer. 

See, logic is easy. 2018 net income +300 million more than the year before. You think a developer influences that bottom line or the overall direction of the company. 

I'll wait for your rebuttal. 

Cryomatrix

Tagging you, @DMKano because I'm sure you'll have something to say.

Dairios

The thing is, Kotick *does* need to go. He is absolutely a problem with the company/industry as a whole - especially if you read some of his comments on the business and the industry. He absolutely views gamers as sentient Wallets that live only to give him money.

https://www.h3xed.com/pc-gaming/all-your-favorite-bobby-kotick-quotes-in-one-place

Gdemami

DMKano said:

You can hire 200 senior developers vs 1 C level - hello???? 

...200 senior developers can make you a product, but they are pretty useless when you can't pay for their wages because they are not who make the money.

ohioastro

Cryomatrix said:

DMKano said:

The real issue are ridiculously inflated C level salaries there is no logic that can explain how 1 persons value is 200 times greater than a senior developer making $150K a year.

You can hire 200 senior developers vs 1 C level - hello???? 

The issue is obvious

The logic is easy. 

1) CEO has the potential to make your company hundreds of millions of dollars and if you get the right one, they can do even more. You get the best CEO and you're making billions. 

2) The senior developer is replaceable. You get the best senior developer and they basically do what? Reduce the amount of bugs a DLC will have? You hire any ole developer and their main contribution is basically + or - bugs. It's probably more sophisticated than that as i'm not a programmer. 

See, logic is easy. 2018 net income +300 million more than the year before. You think a developer influences that bottom line or the overall direction of the company. 

I'll wait for your rebuttal. 

Cryomatrix

------------------------

There is no correlation at all between CEO pay and performance.  People make tens of millions of dollars a year to drive companies into the ground.  See for example

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ceo-pay-and-performance-dont-match-up-1526299200

The Wall Street Journal isn't exactly a socialist rag.  The reason isn't a mystery: CEO compensation is set in backroom deals, with no accountability.  In fact, it's worse than their being no correlation: there is actually strong evidence that the higher CEO pay is, the worse the company does:

http://fortune.com/2016/07/25/ceo-pay-total-shareholder-return/

Sorry libertarians - your market God can fail.  And ordinary people pay the price.

Tamanous

I've not given the 'Big Boyz' money for awhile now do to their practices.

If you have ... why are you even posting here?

Consumers vote with their wallets. THAT is your power. Grow some standards people.

BruceYee

There will be no justice firing Kotick except in the minds of the few employees who were let go. That sense of victory will fade quickly once they realize he received 100 mil to "resign" and can live well off that money for the rest of his life.

There's lots of personal beliefs of how "things should be in a perfect world" being injected into this thread. While I agree that it sucks stuff like this happens, what some people here suggest for capitalism is an everyone is equal system that isn't capitalism. When you remove the rank of 'king' motivation to rise to the top fades from the equation which is terrible for an art focused industry like gaming. You are left with people who are not equals believing they are equals and there are many examples of those countries all over the world that are void of many great things and are in rough shape for following that belief. I pray I don't live long enough to see that horror ever happen here in the USA but it looks like the process has started in the minds of the younger generation.

They should keep Kotick so he can drive his company further into the dirt like Smedley, Hartsman and Dohrman did and the company is forced to sell for pennies on the dollar. That is the only way justice will be achieved in this scenario if that's what you're after. My guess is if that ever happens Tencent would be happy to buy and who knows maybe they can do a better job with WoW seeing as they improve company productivity after they acquire them.

uriel_mafess

If you dont know what you talking about is better to shut your mouth than open it as you did an remove all doubt.

3 fallacies in 13 words. Congrats.

ohioastro said:

Sorry libertarians - your market God can fail.  And ordinary people pay the price.

Wizardry

#1  Does Kotick deserve ANY credit for the profits? This ia very huge topic that can't simply be answered in a few lines.

#2 This is just one of the guys i have been talking about because for a business that seems so touchy over some low waged employees,they seem ok allowing a guy like Kotick to be making multiple millions.
#3 You can't sit there all high n mighty.all cozy in that chair when things are going great but soon as the shit hits the fan it is like....OH remember what i did before?Know why,well because they are not affording the laid off employees that same luxury,soon as shit hits the fan it is like .ok you can all leave now.

None the less just some agency/gathering talking about what i have already mentioned and can easily see what is going on w/o anyone telling me.

lahnmir

Aeander said:

MadFrenchie said:

AriesTiger said:

It's theft when these millenials think they deserve a job when a company can do just fine firing 800 employees. SMH.

Seriously, GTFO with your ignorant generational generalizations (that phrase doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it? ).  You don't even have a fucking clue about the dempgraphics of the employees fired or the company's current makeup.


Holy shit, the amount of scapegoating the ignorant do of younger generations is astounding.

I, conversely, am getting increasingly weary of the angry, unintelligent cretins who make up so much of the boomer generation.

Pffft weaklings, I hate ALL humans!

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Sandmanjw

People are acting like this does not go on ALL the time.

Anyone going into the gaming industry either knows full well how often people are laid off and fired, or are so clueless...that, well enough said.

Trying the wage equality argument... just old and ridiculous to the vast majority of corporations out there, anywhere in the world really. The dollar is always the bottom line.

Always say i hate for people to lose jobs...but damn people...it is not that hard to see how volatile the gaming industry is, and mostly always has been, on working slobs. 

Most gaming and games are all in the hands of corporations and such now. Has been for what? Almost 2 decades? Not a big secret folks, how, and who, gets the can first in this business. Not gonna change either.

Palebane

Gdemami said:

Ungood said:
Do you not see a problem with that?

Do you mean your sore lack of critical thinking?

There was no mistake nor bad judgement made. The lay-offs have nothing to do with company actual profits, CEO bonus or w/e - they are simply not needed/they are not qualified for the direction company is now taking.

Then someone made a bad judgement call in hiring them and focusing on the wrong thing. What hes saying is that the person who made this poor decision in the past will most likely not be held accountable for/to the folks who lost their jobs. It’s also likely not easy (if at all possible) to trace fault as the corporations have insulated themselves enough that trimming the fat is business as usual, imo.

bmw66

He was hired by the board for a reason......the board approved the cuts for a reason.  People need to quit whining about it.  Its business plain and simple.....this is a business who have responsiilities to its shareholders......this is not a group of guys sitting in their parents basement playing games.  Unless you work for a fortune 100 company you will never get it. 

Yeah it sucks for the people who got cut, its never a good outcome but one has to understand the economics of it all.