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Disney begins laying off 7k employees
- lsllc 4y agoThis was announced in February, they're just starting them today. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/inde...
- cuteboy19 4y ago>The difficult reality of many colleagues and friends leaving Disney is not something we take lightly They aren't "leaving". Have the guts to stand by what you have actually done or the shame to remain silent.
- drstewart 4y agoIf they're not leaving, then they're staying?
- cuteboy19 4y agoThey are being made to leave, it wasn't their decision.
- eindiran 4y agoThey are being laid off, playing dumb about this isn't a good look.
- drstewart 4y ago[flagged]
- eindiran 4y agoI sincerely don't understand your responses in this thread. Why are you so personally invested in defending corporate blame evasion?
- drstewart 4y ago[flagged]
- stcroixx 4y agoPoor treatment of their employees (IT laid off then forced to train cheaper replacement staff) is more than enough reason. Any working person has solid ground to not be on the side of Disney.
- skyyler 4y agoBeing churlish over it isn't doing you any favours.
- lolchurlish 4y agoThat’s kind of like pointing at the guy openly peeing into the pool and saying to those around you, you know, that guy’s actions aren’t doing him any favors of how we perceive him, then tossing your empty soda bottle into the pool.
- skyyler 4y agoYou made an entire account to tell me this, I feel so special <3
- meragrin_ 4y agoThey weren't playing dumb. The writer cherry picked the comment to make them look worse and the bait was obviously swallowed. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-183218754.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-1...
- blululu 4y agoDon't be dense. The use of euphemism is what the OP finds objectionable. Leaving implies a choice. These people are getting booted and the company is using weasel words to gloss over the fact that this was a conscious decision that was made by people working for the company and it will cause harm to the people effected to the benefit of the company.
- drstewart 4y ago[flagged]
- ben0x539 4y agoIt's, like, using active voice. Like it's a thing the employees are actively, purposefully, doing or perpetrating. Of course it doesn't actually unambiguously say "and they've fully consciously decided they would like to no longer work to", but it's definitely language that's designed to, however ineffectively, not draw attention to the blatant fact that the company has chosen to fire people.
- lenkite 4y agoI guess when immigrants are given the boot on the backside by a nation state, they are also "leaving".
- nickpeterson 4y agoIf someone is carried out of a bar, would it be accurate to say they left the bar? Sure, but not of their own accord.
- usrusr 4y agoAnd yet it's an active verb, not a passive.
- meragrin_ 4y agoNo, the OP just latched on the bait the writer laid out there. The memo made it very clear in the lead up to that sentence that management was responsible. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-183218754.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-1...
- ftxbro 4y agoOh boy, oh boy, oh boy! It's your pal Mickey Mouse here, and I've got some news to share with all of you. Now, don't get too worried, but it looks like some of our Disney friends are going to be saying goodbye real soon. That's right, as much as it pains us to say it, we've got to do what's best for our company and that means making some tough decisions. So, if you hear from your manager that you're part of the first round of layoffs, please know that we're thinking of you and wishing you all the best. But don't you worry, because Disney is still going to be the most magical place on earth! We're going to keep bringing joy and happiness to all of our guests, and we know that our remaining cast members will continue to make dreams come true. So, let's all stick together and keep that Disney spirit alive. We may be going through some changes, but we'll always be a family. Thanks for all you do, and keep on smiling!
- selimthegrim 4y agoI think Goofy would be more natural for RIFs
- ftxbro 4y agoGawrsh! Hello, all my wonderful Disney coworkers. I'm so sorry to have to give you some not-so-magical news today. According to a memo from our CEO Bob Iger, the company will be laying off some of our fellow cast members in the coming weeks. Oh boy, I know this isn't easy to hear. The first round of layoffs will begin this week, and managers will be letting affected employees know soon. Then, a second, even larger wave of layoffs will happen in April, with several thousand employees being let go. Finally, a third round of layoffs will occur before summer, all to reach the company's goal of eliminating 7,000 jobs. Gosh, it's so tough to have to say goodbye to our colleagues and friends, but we have to remember that we are all part of a team, and sometimes tough decisions have to be made to keep our company moving forward. It's all part of the circle of life, as Simba would say! Disney is a special place, an important part of so many people's lives. We have to keep delivering the magic to our audiences and guests, even if it means making difficult decisions. We will get through this together, and we will continue to make dreams come true every day. Stay strong, my friends, and remember to keep smiling!
- 4y ago
- meragrin_ 4y agoPerhaps you should read the full memo before commenting? The two entire paragraphs prior to that sentence made it perfectly clear management axed the positions. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-183218754.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-1...
- bananapub 4y agoimagine a slightly better world where companies just didn't do this sort of crap and then obfuscate about it.
- jmeister 4y ago[flagged]
- clankyclanker 4y agoThat seems like a big jump, right? How do you get from public announcements of layoffs (ostensibly based on failure of several movies), to market inefficiencies from governmental subsidies, to forced labor camps? I’m so lost.
- babypuncher 4y agoWell you see, any suggestion of rules or laws that are pro-worker smell like communism. And as we all know, even the vaguest hint of communism automatically results in millions of people dying in forced labor camps, because nuance in politics is dead.
- clankyclanker 4y agoEmbracing Grice’s maxims may help here [0]? Being a pit of cynicism isn’t a particularly nuanced take, please do better than that. 0: https://youtu.be/IJEaMtNN_dM https://youtu.be/IJEaMtNN_dM
- babypuncher 4y agoI didn't think I was the one being cynical in a discussion where someone equated better standards around hiring and layoff practices to forced labor camps... It's not even in "slippery slope fallacy" territory anymore. It's like arguing that kids throwing rocks in their back yard leads to earthquakes.
- rabuse 4y agoSurely this will bring the price of their bottled water down to $19.99, right? /s
- matt1555 4y ago[flagged]
- WakoMan12 4y ago[flagged]
- rvz 4y ago[flagged]
- causality0 4y agoThe last few years have been very capital-rich and interest-low. In that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off. If you don't lay people off in the bad times you can't hire them in the good times. Disney is evil for many, many reasons, but laying off three percent of their workforce when interest rates go through the roof and they're in a cold war with a lunatic governor is not one of them.
- yieldcrv 4y agoDont need the company controlled public servants to run their fiefdom anymore
- snozolli 4y agoIn that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off. This sort of MBA-logic, algorithmic approach to business is why American corporate life is so terrible. Let's see some vision and leadership for a change. Instead, we get endless cycles of resume-padding for management and scapegoating for the people creating the business value.
- bhhaskin 4y agoIt's pretty simple math. Vision and leadership doesn't alter the reality. If there was a better way to do things companies would be doing it.
- Pulcinella 4y agoIf it’s simple math then why hasn’t e.g. Apple mass fired people?
- bhhaskin 4y agoThey have been laying people off. Just slowly and have managed to keep it out of the news. Lots of contractors.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- VirusNewbie 4y agoAnnouncing layoffs in advance has to be a power play in employee/employer relations, no?
- throwaway049 4y agoMaybe they hope some people will quit and thus not qualify for severance pay.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoAlso gives a lot of the marginals some runway to line something up.
- darthrupert 4y agoCould be that too, but they also have an obligation to shareholders to report significant layoffs as a public company.
- zamadatix 4y agoI've yet to see a layoff announcement without the comments being about how it was done wrong. No notice? How horrible, everyone is going to be anxious all the time, people were caught off guard, how do they know when their job is safe. Notice? How horrible, this has to be a power play. No direct responsibility? How horrible, someone should be blamed for this. Direct responsibility? How horrible, they don't really care about this and it doesn't affect them enough. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the announcement to "The entire board committed seppuku after announcing the layoffs" to be met with comments of how horrible, don't they know how many more problems this chaos from lack of upper management will cause for the remaining workers? The truth is the only acceptable way to perform a layoff is to not need to perform a layoff, be it more profit or not over expanding. Though as a warning, there will be upset if the company doesn't expand fast enough or doesn't invest the profit too. If reality hits it's a matter of avoiding ways of doing it which are worse not finding a way everyone is going to agree was a great way to get rid of a bunch of jobs.
- 4y ago
- Syonyk 4y agoTheir last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance. Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M. It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof. Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget. They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs. You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)
- conanbatt 4y ago> It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof. Turning Red was surely a hit on Disney+. Hard to see from the consumer side what the impact was, but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.
- notafraudster 4y agoCrucially, Turning Red was _not_ released in theatres in most countries due to COVID-19. It may or may not have been a money loser, but there's very little reason to believe executives think it's anything about the movie that made it that way.
- nohaydeprobleme 4y agoYes, Turning Red's low revenue was primarily a cause of the film not being in theatres, rather than the quality of its story. I personally liked the story of Turning Red very much (though I'm biased to like it because it's set in Toronto), but more objectively, the film is a step above Strange World and Lightyear in terms of ratings. Turning Red's ratings: 95% on the Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes (RT), 7.0/10 on IMDb, and 3.7/5 on Letterboxd Lightyear's ratings: 74% on RT, 6.1/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd Strange World's ratings: 72% on RT, 5.6/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
- robertoandred 4y agolays off* Layoff is not a verb.
- syrrim 4y agoYou could read it as "disney layoffs: 7000 people", I guess.
- Syonyk 4y agoThe world you're looking for is "Fires." "Disney Fires 7000 People." Not "Lays off," "Let go," "Set free to chase their dreams," or whatever other euphemism you care to find. "Fired" is the word, and it's a perfectly good one to use, unless you're a PR flunky trying to tiptoe and weasel word around what just happened.
- galaxytachyon 4y agoPersonally, layoff carries the connotation that it is not the employee's fault while "fired" means the employee's performance was the cause. Depend on the context, it may make a difference.
- toast0 4y agoFiring and laying off are different things. You're fired if you're more or less at fault (misconduct, not meeting goals, not doing the job requirements, failing a drug test, violating policies, etc, etc); you're laid off if the position is being eliminated. Sometimes there's a little bit of both; when you eliminate 7000 positions, you may or may not consider recent performance reviews while you're doing it. Sometimes the employer doesn't want to go through the process of firing for cause, so they claim it's a lay-off, etc. But there's a difference. Layoff is better than the Britishism "made redundant" anyway. The action to make someone's position redundant generally happens at a different time as when the position is declared to be redundant. A merger may make many people's positions redundant, but they won't generally be laid off until a later time when their position is declared redundant.
- brokencode 4y ago
- neilv 4y ago> The first round will begin this week, and managers will soon start to notify affected employees. A second, larger round of layoffs will take place in April, Iger said, with several thousand staffers let go. A third round of layoffs will then occur “before the beginning of the summer” to reach the company’s planned goal of eliminating 7,000 jobs. For the people at Disney wondering whether they'll get hit in one of the waves of indiscriminate axe swings, sounds less like the happiest place on earth, and more like the anxiety and stress of living under a wicked stepmother.
- safog 4y agoIt was never the happiest place on earth for a lot of the non-creative types. No idea how the creatives at Disney felt. For instance, they used to have unpaid interns do full days at theme parks in-character and people would fly all the way from Australia for that privilege because, you know, you get to be Peter Pan for a summer. It's sort of the same experience as Amazon. If you're a customer, it's the greatest thing ever. If you're an employee, not so much.
- _2d30 4y ago> For instance, they used to have unpaid interns do full days at theme parks in-character and people would fly all the way from Australia for that privilege because, you know, you get to be Peter Pan for a summer. Want to hear one even crazier than this? I literally have to PAY a company in order to go there and move heavy weights around to the point of exhaustion. Insanity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
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- unpopularopp 4y agoYeah I agree, Linux still sucks in 2023
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago>Disney workers used to make magic, now they struggle to make ends meet Savage.
- chrislan815 4y agoCan confirm a ML engineer is laid off today.
- stuckinhell 4y agoI'm surprised that's it, given how so many of there franchises like Marvel and Star Wars aren't too doing well, and then still trying to deal with Covid changing the way they run the Parks. I can't imagine them getting political with Ron Desantis helped at all, he's extremely popular in Florida. Thinking about the Pixar brand, I still the remember the first I thought Pixar isn't as good anymore was with Brave. I also remember being surprised a large amount of the original Pixar teams left to Dreamworks or other places. I expect Bog Iger was brought in as a Hatchet Man, he already fired Victoria Alonso an executive with disney for 17 years rumored to be behind marvel phase 4 and 5 failures.
- dev_daftly 4y agoHe never really left, he kept his office for years after "stepping down" while having meetings without his replacement. He literally saw covid coming and decided to "step-down" to save his image before taking back control last year
- skuzye 4y agoFeel bad for those employees, being on the line of fire myself at Google and waiting to find out if I have a job next month. That being said, how on Earth has Disney managed to screw up 10 years of Marvel success? They spread themselves too thin trying to create too many shows without proper planning. And that's only focusing on Marvel. They also managed to piss people off with their half-assed Star Wars trilogy, to the point that you can clearly perceive directors going into different and incompatible paths for films that should build on the predecessor. Edit: They should be two franchises that print money, but instead we get the current headlines.
- hgsgm 4y agoDo you think those 7000 people are working on Marvel or Star Wars? Or that Disney is a charity?
- basseed 4y ago"layoff" is not a verb. it's lay off, and the title should be "lays off"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- indymike 4y agoHere's the symptom: I shouldn't have to pay extra so my kids don't get treated like trash (let people skip in front of them in line, removing them from their seat when someone with a special badge shows up, etc...) on a "dream" vacation. The disease? Disney is out of touch with it's customer base.
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoDevil's advocate: if somebody was willing to pay more than you as a customer to get said special badge (which caused your kid to get removed from their cheaper seat), isn't Disney in tune with its customers? request from privileged customer: "we want to pay more for a better, more privileged experience" offering from disney: exactly what the request wants, for more money/profit you might not agree with it because you're in the "i don't want to pay the more expensive premium" camp (which, granted, most people would be). it's just... that doesn't matter when you are competing/have those who are willing to pay the premium on top of what you're willing to pay, does it? they're running an experiences business and they've been able to find customers who are willing to pay more (than you)
- indymike 4y ago> we want to pay more for a better, more privileged experience The person who wants their experience to be better by making other customer have a bad experience is a customer to be avoided. They cannibalize your market. > (than you) Not impressed with this attempt at trolling.