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On March 01 2012 08:52 Chunhyang wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners. He's not paid for working 300x harder, he's paid to be 300x more accountable, I think
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
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lol...i like this article...we just fired 600 people...but we're still hiring! sounds like they cut an entire department or something...probably the "African Sc2 Promotional/Advertising department" ;p
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According to someone in the Reddit thread, one of the SC2 programmers got laid off, specifically one that was working on the tools team with all the map editor improvements and stuff, and that it seems that the tools team took an overall hit during these layoffs. I find this disappointing considering how awesome I think the SC2 map editor tools are, even though they are stifled by a really bad custom games B.net interface. Plus, the most recent Blizzcon panel showed off a ton of exciting new features that they had planned for the editor.
Also, someone else claims to know a couple of artists that got laid off.
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looks like the potential GFC 2 can hit any industry, not just the financial industry.
hope Blizz gets through this soon
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I don't get how firing that amount a people does any good to Blizzard. They have to give compensation, to explain why they fire people and reassure on the quality of their games, etc. Oh and layed-off people all have to find a job in the same field at the same time.
Why not just tell people to try to find another job as time goes and as wow suscribers diminish? And if you really have to fire then do it slowly to avoid breaking the teams apart.
They know what they're doing obviously but I just don't get it.
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United States12248 Posts
To be fair to Bashiok, he probably had no concrete information since he's not operating at a management level. What's more than that, budgets are typically re-evaluated quarterly and management likely didn't pull the trigger until they received their most recent financial report from the previous quarter.
It's unfortunate that some artists and programmers were cut. I wonder how much redundancy existed in each project's departments and how much downtime each individual employee had. It is mathematically true that if each of your team's 10 members has 10% downtime then you can afford to distribute one person's responsibilities to the rest of the team and cut that person, but sometimes it's not as simple as that... anyway, this is just silly speculation.
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On March 01 2012 03:52 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
I hate when people say "release" instead of fired, such alleviation is retarded. I imagine this decision has to do with Koticks 100% profit or hit the road strategy.
DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER
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There is a difference between fired and laid off though.
Fired = you sucked at your job and are being let go for that, your position is going to be filled after you leave by hopefully someone more competent.
Let go = the job you had is eliminated so you are no longer needed, nobody is going to be hired to replace you because the job no longer exists.
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one of my friends was one of those let go :[
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I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
While it is sad that some programmers and artists were cut, that is also a fact of the buisness, teams shrink and grow all the time, depending on what the company is doing (and planning to do) in the near future.
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On March 01 2012 03:50 TheRhox wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 03:47 Bagration wrote:
Damn, that very significant. I feel bad for the people who got laid off, and hopefully they can find some new careers quickly. Having "worked for Blizzard Entertainment" on their resume will be a huge help.
Just like a pro player getting laid off from their SC2 team, I agree that these guys will have no problem finding a new place to work. Wish them the best of luck in finding a new company.
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600 people is a lot of people. I bet Activision is pulling the strings on this. Hopefully this doesn't impact the quality of their games.
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On March 01 2012 08:15 Hoodlum wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 08:10 NotSorry wrote:On March 01 2012 07:51 lpstroggoz wrote:
blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
I was thinking more of 2003-2004 right before everyone jumped shipped with wow 99% done, started rushing out unfinished products not giving a damn about anything but their stock holders With WoW being the biggest cash cow ever and people going crazy over the release of Diablo 3 not to mention the next two installments of SC2, call me crazy but I think blizzard is gonna be juuusssstttt fine.
they are doing fine moneywise, but their game quality has clearly dropped since 1999. Sc2 storyline was laughably bad in sc2 compared to the original, and the sc2 multiplayer had nothing new, except a few units were changed around. Its mind blowing that people can take 7 years to make exactly the same game.
The reason blizzard is successful now is not the same reason they were succesful 12 years ago.
much like the movie industry remakes anything these days and they know there people will watch it, because there were fans of the original
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On March 01 2012 10:01 Zaqwert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 09:50 Playguuu wrote:
That's a shame people lost their jobs because blizz could certainly afford it. They were probably pressured by investors after losing so many wow subscriptions. Exactly. They'd rather fire these people and make 300 million than keep them on board and say make 270 million. (these are just made up numbers but you get the point) It's not a matter of profitable vs. not profitable, it's "ya if we keep them on board we make a ton of money, but if we fire them we make a ton plus more, so...." It's just the cold reality of a publicly traded company, success is growing revenue and profit every quarter and every year.
Privately traded companies have layoffs all the time, too. Especially in the tech/gaming industry - being publicly traded just means you hear about these, but it doesn't mean they don't happen all the time with even privately traded companies.
I know in the VC fund that used to own the company for which I work, in their portfolio of over 100 companies (of which many you've heard), over 90 of them did some form of layoff or budgetary reductions at least once over the last 3 years. All 100 are showing at least 5% EBITDA growth year over year.
The problem isn't as much whether they're public or private, but rather being unable to look beyond the horizon to reasonably forecast need. A big issue that many companies (mine included) run in to is they cut all this salary space and then 2 years later spend 2 times what they saved trying to hire back and re-attract people.
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Laying off employees is never fun news for everyone. At least they have a good resume for working at Blizzard (I would imagine its hard to get a job at the company for being a bit more prestigious).
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Yeah private companies can be soulless too, but it's at least owner dependent. For public companies it's almost impossible.
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On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
While it is sad that some programmers and artists were cut, that is also a fact of the buisness, teams shrink and grow all the time, depending on what the company is doing (and planning to do) in the near future.
This. Blizzard got too bloated with WoW. Now that stuff stabilized they probably realized they didn´t need so many decisions. Still sucks for the people who got laid off but well thats business
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On March 01 2012 11:24 Scorm wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 03:50 TheRhox wrote:On March 01 2012 03:47 Bagration wrote:
Damn, that very significant. I feel bad for the people who got laid off, and hopefully they can find some new careers quickly. Having "worked for Blizzard Entertainment" on their resume will be a huge help. Just like a pro player getting laid off from their SC2 team, I agree that these guys will have no problem finding a new place to work. Wish them the best of luck in finding a new company.
Wow, if you are laid off from your SC2 team, you are pretty much screwed! Think about it, SC2 is one of the only available gaming position that one can gain financial security. One must have done some terrible act to get laid off. No other company would want someone with bad reps to represent the team.
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Looks like they released a lot of their GMs. I heard their CSD is huge.
"BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON! *POOF*"
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The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.-
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EPT
