#Lay Offs

[veeves34]

Hey...hey...Jeffrey...I know what you could do with that $124 billion...just a thought....can you guess?

[potatosteinsillustrations]

Just so you get to know that there are alternatives to this:

Back in 2013-2014 Nintendo's President and CEO Satoru Iwata (rest in peace) cut his salary in half (along many of the other execs like Shigeru Miyamoto cutting 30& of his own salary) to avoid laying off employees at the company after the Wii U severily underperformed.

Here are some of Iwata's notable quotes from an investor Q and A: Source: Polygon

"If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world." "I know that some employers publicize their restructuring plan to improve their financial performance by letting a number of their employees go, but at Nintendo, employees make valuable contributions in their respective fields, so I believe that laying off a group of employees will not help to strengthen Nintendo's business in the long run."

In 2021 everyone was rightly scandalized and enraged when it was revealed that Bobby Kotick ( Activision-Blizzard's CEO and one of the biggest scumbags in the world) received a $200 million bonus after laying off around 240 employees at ABK ( Source: Yahoo News) Now your next question should be: How much money will the CEO and executives at Epic (or any other AAA studio or company doing massive lay offs this year like the Embracer Group, Electronics Arts) will receive and why are they receiving said bonuses if their mistakes have led to 830 employees being laid off.

And of course most people won't care, much like when it was revealed that there was a super toxic and chauvinistic environment in Activision Blizzard that led to many women being rampantly sexually harrased and even on of them taking her own life.

Or the severe crunch that employees at CD Project Red had to endure with Cyperpunk 2077 (even after they were promised there wasn't going to be cruel crunch like they had to endure with The Witcher 3)

As long as consumers can play their game sadly they won't care and that massively sucks! There won't be any effective change in how employees are treated at these big corporations if consumers don't vote with their wallets and advocate for the workforce's well being.

And this tweets ring true:

- The metaverse isn't worth 830 people being laid off even if it was the" next big thing", but let's be real it isn't and it won't. -This is another reminder that corporations aren't anyone's friends. -Also fuck corporations.

[ghostbunnygames]

Taking a Step Back

I have been doing a lot of reflection recently, and I have come to the conclusion, that I am juggling too much. As some of you may know, I was laid off from my game development job in December when HakJak Studios was shut down suddenly. Recently, I have needed to spend more time and energy on my job search along with supporting previous game titles. This is to say, taking extra time to post about my game, make gifs, and plan feature work based on showing visual progress has been taking up a lot of time and energy I no longer have...

Don't Worry!

Part of the reason I am taking a step back is so that I can focus on the game's development! 🎮

I have a lot of plans for the game, and can't wait to show everyone the newest game features and progress when I return.

Thank you for understanding 💖

I am eager when I can make my return and post progress updates more regularly!

[atom-bomb-baby]

Good shit

[theboookwitch]

So, I lost my job in the beginning of September and I’m having a really hard time finding a new one. I am waiting for unemployment to hopefully be approved, but as of right now I have no form of income. I’m applying for everything from corporate jobs to restaurant jobs and dog-walking, etc. but having bad luck. I currently have $11 to my name, and I’m extremely stressed. I’m also running out of my Multiple Sclerosis medication in two weeks and I’m worried all this extra stress is going to lead to a flare up.

I feel really weird asking for help on the internet but here we are. If you’re able to give a few dollars or anything at all, I’d be truly forever grateful. If you can’t give, I’d be so thankful if you shared this.

My Venmo is @elizabeth-perniciaro.

<3

[xtruss]

You Studied Computer Science But Big Tech No Longer Wants You. Now What?

Students at the Bay Area’s best universities once dreamed of working for Apple, Google and Meta. Then the lay-offs happened

— 1843 Magazine | May 15th, 2023 | By Charlie McCann

Armed with a stack of cvs still warm from the printer, Ayara (a pseudonym) plunged into the career fair. The room was already packed with job-seekers. The second-year student wasn’t expecting much. In past years, a computer-science student at the University of California, Berkeley, could hope to emerge from this campus ritual with an interesting summer internship, possibly at a “faang” company – the acronym for Facebook (now Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Ayara’s best friend had snagged an internship at Apple at a fair like this one.

But none of the faang firms was here this time. Neither were Spotify, Salesforce, Uber or Microsoft. In any case most of those companies and almost 50 others – “all the famous ones” – had already rejected her internship applications a few months earlier. And that was before the latest round of job lay-offs. There were 120,000 tech lay-offs in January and February alone; Alphabet, Google’s parent company, accounted for 10% of those lost jobs. (Meta would announce another 10,000 lay-offs shortly after the fair.) By the time the fair came round in March, Ayara had scaled back her ambitions. “Any company that will hire me is good, at this point,” she told me later.

By the time the fair came round, Ayara had drastically reduced her ambitions. “Any company that will hire me is good, at this point”

Ayara muscled her way to a crowded stall towards the back, where Juniper Networks was holding court. Founded in 1996 – long before most college students were born – Juniper is a workhorse of Silicon Valley: it makes a decent share of the hardware underpinning the internet, and software that controls that hardware. It has none of the “sparkle” (one of Ayara’s favourite words) of a faang company – its talent-acquisition manager told me that students often haven’t heard of it. Yet at this fair it had one irresistible selling point: it was still hiring interns.

Ayara caught the eye of a Juniper recruiter and they started talking. The fair was a bit like a cocktail party – the polite smiles, the hard sell – except without alcohol to quell people’s nerves. Some students were tapping their thighs or pinching the skin on their hands. Ayara put on a good show of appearing relaxed. As the recruiter scanned her résumé, she peppily described some of the highlights: interning at a subsidiary of Zipcar, a car-rental company; introducing emoji reactions within a messaging feature at PlayStation.

“Looks like you’ve worked for some big companies,” the recruiter said approvingly. “So why are you interested in Juniper? Do you know something about our company or just exploring?”

“I’m looking for a summer internship,” she said, gently dodging the question.

The recruiter, who wore a Berkeley alum badge on his t-shirt, nodded politely. He explained that a primary focus of the company is network security. “Are you interested in security?”

“Yeah,” she said tentatively, in the voice of somebody who had never considered pursuing a career as unglamorous – as unsparkly! – as security. After the fair, she submitted an application to Juniper. Weeks later, she had yet to receive a response.

It is not the ideal moment to enter the tech job market. For years the tech industry has paired huge profits with massive investments in expansion. Intoxicated by its own success during the pandemic, big tech binged on new recruits: Meta doubled its headcount over a short span. Now the good times are over. The tech giants have encountered stiffer competition (like TikTok) and tougher economic conditions, including manufacturing shortages and high interest rates. Pushed by investors to embrace unfamiliar concepts like “fiscal responsibility” and “long-term growth”, the industry has, over the past year and a half, shed some 300,000 workers, the most since the dot-com crash two decades ago. Amazon and Meta have rescinded job offers.

The effects are being felt in campuses all over the country. At Berkeley, would-be interns had formed a queue outside the career fair before its doors even opened. A few especially keen students wore suits and ties (a rare sight on campus where hoodies are de rigueur).

Even if they succeed in snagging an internship, their position is precarious. Some computer-science majors have had their internships cancelled; those with job offers have had their start dates pushed back, according to Sue Harbour, the executive director of the college career centre. They are the lucky ones. Several students told me that they had applied for jobs and internships at hundreds of companies with no offers to show for their efforts. When I introduced myself to a sophomore, who was majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, he asked, “Is The Economist hiring?” He was joking. Sort of.

More than 60 companies had set up stalls at the fair, ranging from government agencies and financial institutions to niche tech startups and, surprisingly, a spa. The biggest tech name there was sap, a European software giant. The absence of the most famous names in tech probably gave a boost to the less flashy suitors at the ball. “We get passed by a lot at this table,” a recruiter from a local public-transport agency told me; she managed to draw a smattering of enquirers. Firms that had suddenly become rock stars included Bank of America, and a startup making self-driving trucks. Students often haven’t heard of Juniper, said Benjamin Chen, a talent-acquisition manager whom I found setting up his stall, because “we work behind the scenes”. He’s often greeted by students who gamely open with, “Oh tell me about Jupiter,” Chen said, laughing.

Big tech binged on new recruits: Meta doubled their headcount over a short span. Now the good times are over

These companies have an appeal beyond simply being all that’s on offer. The quality that student job-seekers prize most in a company now is stability, according to a recent survey conducted by Handshake, a recruitment startup. Chen says he too has noticed a shift “towards a company that’s more stable and more predictable rather than something a little bit more, I guess, risky.”

This is a big adjustment in the culture of computer-science students at Berkeley. The large firms used to be imbued with an almost magical allure: no other companies were seen as worth working for. “The name is important because with the name comes recognition of your skills or your work,” Ayara told me. People say, “Oh, this person worked there.”

Some of this yearning comes from a sense of competitiveness and one-upmanship, driven by social media. Berkeley students had already gone through what one described as a “very stab-in-the-back” selection process to get on the computer-science course. Students who have secured jobs and internships crow about their success on LinkedIn, said Ayara.

The high salaries and gourmet food of the big tech firms were also part of the appeal. So are the sprawling campuses, which resemble “a playground”, said Vicky Li, a 21-year-old Berkeley graduate. Several students told me that big tech internships are far from demanding. Li has heard that interns at Google, for example, “get paid a ton” even though they work just two hours a day. (I asked Google about this and was told, “We do not accommodate part-time internships.”)

But students are now starting to wonder if they were seeing these big tech firms straight.

Li thinks she “romanticised” faang companies. She has started to see the perks they offered as gimmicks. Now she describes herself as “a little bit more anti-corporation”. She had realised she didn’t want to work in big tech before the lay-offs and is relieved she didn’t get sucked into it. She hopes to work as a product designer at a small company, ideally a startup, where she can get “solid experience rather than just chasing a bigger name”.

At the Juniper stall I met Arthur Kang, a Berkeley senior who had spurned offers from famous companies in favour of a job with a less glamorous firm this summer. Juniper offered him the opportunity to create something new rather than being a cog in the machine, he explained. His friends are puzzled by his decision, but he’s confident it was the right call. “Stability”, he told me, “includes not being fired right away.” ■

— Charlie McCann is a Features Writer for 1843 Magazine | Illustrations Klaus Kremmerz

[the-growing-rose]

Me and my sister was just discussing this. If you have a job please keep it. With the recession , food prices , gas prices , bill prices going up it’s best to hold on to whatever income you have coming in. It’s really hard out here and no one seems to be talking about this. Don’t let anyone job shame you. Any job is a blessing during this time. I’m proud of you for even getting up everyday and trying despite how you’re feeling. Keep going!

[tenth-sentence]

McKinsey in particular drove home the message that head office had to be further pared back, with the head-office staff of 1,100 cut by up to 60 per cent, and that would entail drastic reductions in the economics and strategy units.

"Westpac: The Bank That Broke the Bank" - Edna Carew

[helmstone]

Paramount Global to lay off 15% of its US workforce

Paramount Global to lay off 15% of its US workforce

The merger / takeover may be happening, but (as Deadline reports) there’s sadly no surprise as Paramount Global is to layoff 15% of its US workforce before the end of 2024. Co-CEO Chris McCarthy confirmed the news in the second-quarter earnings call. McCarthy said marketing and communications would be one of two areas to be targeted in the reductions. The other will be support functions…

[h34vybottom]

12/06/2024 - VR Chat laid off 30% of their staff, about 50 people. This comes after an announcement that price increases for VRChat Plus and VRChat Credits for European nations will be instated (Notably, prices are not increasing on FaceBook's platform). As Scott Hayden notes, "Granted, Steam user data doesn’t tell the whole picture... however Steam data suggests VRChat isn’t falling out of favor, rather experiencing less exponential growth than seemingly expected." This all comes after the 2021 80 million USD funding round from Anthos Capital (etc.), to create a digital economy. While the lay offs are accredited to the company's mass amount of individual contributors no longer being tenable, ultimately, nothing the company has done has proven them competent in anything other than developing a trap. I'll leave this post off w/ a segment from GiovanH's excellent write up on VRChat's "user" economy, as I think it explains a lot about these lay offs and the overall zeitgeist of neoliberal capital's entrapment schemes.

[potatosteinsillustrations]

My heart is with the 830 people who lost their jobs at Epic Games. Standing in solidarity with 'em.

Fuck Tim Sweeney

Fuck the metaverse

[teachanarchy]

McKinsey: The Group Secretly Running Every Company (And Government?)

[wolfleblack]

1900 people to be laid off across Xbox and Activision Blizzard

We haven’t even made it an entire month into 2024 and yet we’ve already seen a staggering amount of layoffs across the gaming industry, with some people predicting that it will only get worse as the videogame bubble caused during Covid 19 bursts. Microsoft has confirmed that it plans to lay off 1900 people across its gaming divisions. According to Video Game Layoffs which attempts to track the…

[techxoner]

AI-powered disruption is sweeping through Google’s ad sales giant, driving a major restructuring and raising questions about the future of human roles in the industry. Following its largest-ever job cut in early 2023, Google is now set to revamp its 30,000-strong ad sales unit, fueled by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI).