11 ms·

Hasbro lays off nearly 20% of its workers

215 points by DDSDev 3y ago

no_wizard 3y ago
My heart goes out to those affected. Thats very rough. I know this isn't directly related to the article at hand or anything either, but I feel like I'm seeing a real uptick in November / December layoffs. Is it just me or was it really not a thing companies did with such frequency around the holidays? I feel like its as much a shedding of costs as it is a flex of big business trying to show strength because they all hate any inch of worker gains in the past 3 years that were made. In other news: It appears that Hasbro is shifting to become a trading card and video game company, per the article: >Meanwhile, Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, which publishes both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is experiencing all-time highs for both revenue earned and the number of players engaged in those brands >One area of investment for Hasbro appears to be the video game sector. Its latest project, Exodus, made a big splash last week at The Game Awards. Seems like they're trying to gear up those divisions while winding down their toy division at least somewhat. Its unclear if their stragetic growth with WOTC will also include investments in table top games there or if they will be primarily focused on the core money makers around Magic: The Gathering. If they can hit big in video games that will certainly bolster revenue though. We shall see if Hasbro is about to be an unexpected giant entrant into that industry
- fullshark 3y ago
  Perhaps it's a case of improved forecasting/data methods. Hasbro knows already this holiday season will be disastrous for them apparently, and previously companies that needed the holiday season to make their numbers had to wait until after it ended to really make decisions.
  - christkv 3y ago
    They have known for a couple of months Christmas toy orders from retailers are done months in advance.
    - WillPostForFood 3y ago
      They will have to take returns from retailers if things aren't selling. Retail orders are half the battle for a company like Hasbro - the products still need to sell.
  - teitoklien 3y ago
    If enough of these companies start doing these “forecastings”, what are the odds that these forecasts end up causing the very event to happen. Some stats in an index goes down, companies forecast annual sales downfall, starts cutting workforce in every industry, consumption tanks, makes the sales downfall a reality. Also, really ? Being laid of at Christmas time ?, to save a few bucks, its not like hasbro’s going bankrupt or anything. Humans do trade to improve each other’s quality of life, and not do things just for profit. It’s a means to an end, not the end. Too many companies are making their eyes into excel sheets, and ending up causing the very downfall by preparing for the downfall that they “anticipate”.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  Layoffs usually happen around the financial year-end so holiday layoffs are par for the course. Just noticeable because we're in a downturn, so more layoffs
- cuongfu 3y ago
  I wonder if it's companies trying to inflate their year-end numbers to appease shareholders. I agree that it feels like more layoffs this month than I expected, but none of them are necessarily due to 'market conditions' per se, like the layoffs that happened at the end of last year and earlier this year. Spotify and Hasbro seem like they just made bad investments and focused on the wrong areas for their business and now they (or rather their employees) are paying for it. With Hasbro specifically laying people off right now, I bet it's a way to cut down the numbers of payroll ahead of the Christmas sales rush, which I think probably inflates their overall profit margin.
  - andrewxdiamond 3y ago
    If a company provides a severance package, then a Dec layoff is almost certainly too late to have any impact on the bottom line.
    - macintux 3y ago
      I haven't looked at Hasbro, but the impression I've gotten is that fiscal years and calendar years rarely align for larger companies. No one wants to be spending the Christmas/New Year holidays working on end-of-year accounting.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    A completely unenforcable concept, but an interesting thought exercise: if executives (and with that, SVP/VPs) were as likely to experience the recieving end of a layoff the same as those below them on the org chart, how would that affect how often they happen in the first place? For instance, if the VPs and SVPs in charge of the toy division were guaranteed to be part of the layoff, do you think the calculus would have changed? You rarely hear about it actually having reprocusssions on the C-Suite or their immediate peers (VP / SVP). Look at it from another angle: if the layoff has to happen due to poor planning or lack of direction etc. Thats set from the top but only the bottom layers of your company is affected by the layoff. Shouldn't actually be in the reverse, where executives, SVPs and VPs should be booted as a matter of course, as they are the ones that set the direction after all and supposedly "bare the responsibility" of the company. This reminds me of a book I was reading, The Hard Things About Hard Things. Its an interesting book, full of alot of useful information, but one thing that grinded my gears is how he talked about layoffs vs removing executives (defined as VP and up) With layoffs, he says to do it successfully, you need to train you managers to do the following: - Be able toexplain briefly about what happend, and that it is a company rather than a personal [employee] failure - Be clear how the employee is impacted and that the decision is non-negotiable - Be fully prepared about the benefits and support the company plans to provide. Okay, on the surface, this seems good, but the first two bullets are extremely specific and targeted, while the last one uses more lax language regarding benefits and support the company plans to provide. Which is to say, it does not say serverance, it does not say what good support should look like. Follow so far? Okay, so its pretty open ended, particularly that last part. Then, in the exact next chapter, he talks about firing an executive, and it is suppose to work as follows: - Be clear on the reasons - Use decisive language - Have the severange package approved and ready As you can see, clearly, to fire an executive, you must clearly provide a serverance package and make sure its approved and ready In a nutshell, this is how they see it. The executive class does not play by our rules, and never has to take the same ownership the rest of us do, period. Its explicitly spelled out that the executive must have a severance package, approved and ready where as supporting frontline employees in a layoff is left to the readers imagination as to what you should be doing for benefits and support. I want everyone to remember this. Ben Horowitz has said outloud that what we're all thinking is true. Executives see themselves as above non executives, and expect to be treated as such. This is in a nutshell is why the average worker should never trust the executive class and should unionize
- sbrother 3y ago
  I am still taken aback when they do these holiday layoffs. My employer (Nextdoor) cut 25% of the company in November, and it's hard not to see the timing as a particularly brutal power play.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I hope that people will remember the callousness that these employers show when talk of unionization/worker's rights happens again.
- maCDzP 3y ago
  A colleague that used to work in the aviation industry told me that they always had layoffs on the 23:rd or 24:th. I believe it had something to do with the yearly reporting and the people doing the reporting being on holy day between Christmas and new year.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jay_kyburz 3y ago
  I'm really surprised magic is still so strong. The designers must be doing a great job of keeping the game fresh and interesting.
- Macha 3y ago
  Video games are a better market than toys for children, sure, but it still doesn't feel like a reliable bet for Hasbro to get into. Particularly the mention of video game licensing rather than development just screams execs amazed at how well that did, but I think they're overestimating how much they can make that repeatable. What with Pathfinder and Divinity games having laid the foundation for a CRPG comeback, Baldur's Gate 2 being one of those games still talked about nearly 25 years later, the wave of growth TTRPGs and derivatives got over the pandemic (see also the critical role amazon shows), there was a lot weighing in favour of BG3 that I don't think is repeatable on a more frequent basis. Not to mention Hasbro being relatively hands off and probably having forgotten they licensed it out. I think Hasbro think they're going to knock out Baldur Gate 3's and that it was their brand that provided all the value so they can charge the next people more, and maybe stuff it full of microtransactions. But I think much more likely is an outcome like the opening of Warhammer, a bunch of "ehh, it did ok I guess" mid tier games, and if they try to extract too much value from it they'll crush it.
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    Hasbro tried the video game business back in the 1990s. They bought Atari assets and name in 1998, and Microprose as well, and became a pretty major player, but it flamed out. Video game development/publishing is a tough business.
    - unnamed76ri 3y ago
      I forgot about them buying Microprose. I feel like that was all part of the two cancelled X-Com games that were in development around 2000 or so.
mikeortman 3y ago
I have a hunch a lot of companies that layoff in December are also motivated by the bonus structure. Many companies structure their bonus pay around the new year in line with their fiscal calendar, either paying at the beginning of the year or entitling them to the bonus paid out later in the year.
- arberx 3y ago
  Or health insurance reasons
- op00to 3y ago
  This - I worked at a place that paid bonus quarterly and firings while rare seemed to happen just before the quarter end. Now we are paid bonus yearly and I see firings in December. I think it does align to expenditures like bonus, for sure.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I guess I didn't get dicked too hard in my mid December layoff (a couple years back); they gave me a pro-rated yearly bonus so I only lost like 2 weeks of it. The severance wasn't too bad either so all in all I took my money and shut up like they wanted me to. As I say in all these comments, I just wish that healthcare access wasn't tied to an employer - that seems like the cruelest aspect of modern America. Get too sick to work (and I have a condition that I live with), and you can't get healthcare any more.
    - op00to 3y ago
      Certainly one of the the cruelest aspects. But there's so many.
- Consultant32452 3y ago
  Basically a ton of arrows point towards EOY as a good time to do this. January has the most layoffs, December second most. In industries with seasonal hires, you get rid of them after the rush. Additionally, company budgets tend to be yearly, so you adjust to the new fiscal year's budget at this time too. I wonder what kind of social change would occur if each company was randomly assigned a quarter in which their taxes were due instead of everyone defaulting to the same exact time.
josefritz 3y ago
My former employer does a layoff pretty reliably in early December every year. The optics are always poor even if their rationale is sound.
maximilianroos 3y ago
Getting laid off in December is tough. But it's better than getting laid off in January after coming back to work from holidays, with plans for the year ahead. At least this way, folks can recuperate with their family, and then hit the job market in January. Or do others disagree?
- throwing_away 3y ago
  Strong disagree. For anyone who makes enough to be getting severance, it's better to have it in the new tax year.
  - hamandcheese 3y ago
    Ignorant question - is severance typically paid lump sum?
    - StormChaser_5 3y ago
      Yes. Or at least here in Ireland
      - dmurray 3y ago
        If this was in Ireland, the workers wouldn't be laid off as of today - they'd at least have the option of a "consultation period". While that might be just a formality in terms of retaining their jobs, it would give anyone who wanted the option to get their severance payment in January instead.
    - ska 3y ago
      Sometimes. So Dec is the worst case, especially if you have a longish period. You end up paying top rates on this year, then suddenly have no income come January. Of course details vary country to country. One fairly common thing is you can opt to take it as an lump sum now, or take it as a monthly salary - but with the proviso that if you take a new job you stop getting it. This is often the way benefit extensions work also. Sometimes the monthly option is larger. So financially you are often better off with the lump sum, but it can be a tax hit.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Guess nobody's getting beat up/waylaid in the parking lot for Cabbage Patch Dolls or Furbies this year
oflannabhra 3y ago
Hasbro is essentially upside down, with huge losses across all their brands being subsidized by enormous growth from their subsidiary Wizards of the Coast. Even with that growth, they are significantly down. There was a big investor push recently (led by Alta Fox) to get Hasbro to spin WotC out into an independent company [0], which failed. The big concern being that forcing growth on those properties (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) to continue to support failed strategies with legacy properties could risk ruining those properties through mismanagement for short-term gains. I really don't know where Hasbro goes from here. I don't think the toy market will ever recover, and the board game world has completely passed by properties like Monopoly. Chris Cocks, the CEO is the former head of WotC, so I'm hoping there is some level of understanding of stewardship of the WotC properties, but I'm really not confident. Even the recent D&D movie was disappointing from a business perspective (although surprisingly wonderful for fans). They also have a huge success in Baldur's Gate 3, although it is also disappointing from a monetization perspective. Even those recent lukewarm wins are within the WotC umbrella. [0] - https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/hasbro-wins-wizards-of-the-coast-spin-off https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/hasbro-wins-wizards-of-the-coas...
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  BG3 was disappointing from a monetization perspective? How on earth, it sold over 20 million copies in less than a year!
  - entropicdrifter 3y ago
    It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Hasbro's income from BG3 pales in comparison to MTG boosters from this year alone, let alone the income over time.
    - Macha 3y ago
      It's also clear from Hasbro's own statements they didn't expect it to do so well. Maybe they thought it would have sold like a Divinity 3 and as such gave Larian a better deal on the IP licensing than they think they could have got if they'd known in advance how well it would sell.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lancesells 3y ago
Executive salaries: https://www1.salary.com/HASBRO-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/HASBRO-INC-Executive-Salaries.html
- sixothree 3y ago
  That's probably 50% or more of the yearly cost of those workers.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    No - it's $37M - it should be less than 20% for sure. They HAD 5500 employees. After the layoffs, it could be close to ~30% - which is INSANE - but not as absolutely crazy as 50% would be.
    - sixothree 3y ago
      I was calculating laid off workers at $70k.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  ~$37M for the execs listed, vs 1100 workers laid off - probably mostly making under $100k. This is one of the rare cases in the layoff discussions where the exec salaries do seem quite excessive. Hasbro had been averaging profits of around ~$250M for the last several years. Paying ~5 people >10% of your profits is INSANE. Continuing to reward them handsomely as your profits drop from ~$250M to -$500M is REALLY INSANE. Fire them. The new hires should be making 1/5th that or less. And, yes, you can get someone competent to run Hasbro for $1M. It's not a fusion reactor...
  - Denvercoder9 3y ago
    Not saying the pay isn't outrageous, but most of the executive pay is in equity, which probably cost Hasbro next to nothing. They can't pay those laid off workers, probably making little more than minimum wage, with that.
irrational 3y ago
Is there a worse time of year to do layoffs than just before the holidays? Do they do it because their fiscal calendar is aligned to the … whatever you call the normal calendar? My company has its fiscal calendar about 5 months off from the normal calendar and while we have had layoffs, they have never happened at the holiday time.
- bunderbunder 3y ago
  That's exactly why. Thing is, laying people off in January would be even worse, for pretty much the same reason. As much as getting laid off during the holidays is a gut punch, it's probably ultimately better to go on the job market right before the January hiring season than to get laid off right after it wraps up.
roughly 3y ago
Laying off the workers at the toy factory two weeks before Christmas is the thing the villain in an 80s kids movie would do. I don't mean that to be hyperbolic - like, literally, that's the sort of thing that was culturally cast as villainous behavior a generation or two ago.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  But the country in the 80s didn't have a generation of brainwashing by Billionaires, Millionaires, and Temporarily-Displaced-Millionaires parroting the myth that the executive board of a publicly-traded company has a "fiduciary duty" to make as much money as possible.
  - influx 3y ago
    Did you live through the 80s? I did and find this wildly inaccurate. See the Greed is Good memes and hero worship of Wall Street.
    - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
      Yeah. That type of people have existed since forever. Today they just have more power than ever or just don’t try to hide it anymore.
      - lamontcg 3y ago
        It has been happening all along. People are just barely starting to notice now (and back in the 1970s people were a lot more aware of it).
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I did not live through the 80's (not the whole decade at least), but I have seen Robocop which I thought was supposed to be a parody. Obviously Alec Baldwin's speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross" is iconic as well. Even a recent re-watch of "Tommy Boy" really drove home how much of a toll Reagonomics took on the industrial midwest. I never really understood why the man was so revered, but I guess he put on a good act that people bought into.
TheGRS 3y ago
I feel like a lot of attention from this is on the WotC side, which is doing very well, bully for them, I consume a lot of the D&D product line. But what's up with the rest of the company doing poorly? They have a huge trove of great IP that's failing. Play-doh and Nerf seem like they're still children's play staples no? Is there a big shift in consumption of action figures I should know about? Or is the story more about issues with inflation/affordability for these types of toys?
- NohatCoder 3y ago
  The problem is, nobody cares if the can actually says Play-doh on the label. When kids become brand aware it matters what phone they get, not so much the brand of a toy gun. You can pump them full of commercials to sell stuff, but anyone can do so, and it doesn't matter what your brand used to be before they were born.
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    I think the way kids consume commercials has also changed? I think my kids (age 2-8) have maybe seen no more than 10 commercials each in their entire life? But I know influencers and such are going to start leaving a mark. Vs as a kid, I saw so so so many commercials for GI Joe, etc.
hakdbha 3y ago
[dead]
corethree 3y ago
They got lucky with D&D. The ruled gameplay isn't even that good/original with D&D when compared to other RPG mechanics from other systems... it's mostly the lore that enabled WoTC to sell rights to the IP to get us Baldurs gate, torment etc. With magic it's just an addictive game and the "lore" though slim makes it feel adultish.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  D&D got lucky that both stranger things and critical role happened more than anything. I wonder what % of the popularity boom was from those two sources? D&D has been around forever. It has always been super niche. Then it somehow jumped into mainstream?
  - corethree 3y ago
    Stranger things? Did it really popularize D&D that much? I saw the first season and they played the game like a couple of times. Didn't think it would cause a huge surge in D&D sales.
guyzero 3y ago
The price of toys has fallen drastically since 2000. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERE01 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERE01 That's got to come straight out of Hasbro's bottom line.
- FredPret 3y ago
  That price decline is absolutely wild. Competition working it's magic.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    More like toys are being superseded by other forms of entertainment among the youth.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      So, competition then.
      - manuelabeledo 3y ago
        "Competition" assumes that the market is the same. It is not. A good example would be cable TV, and the introduction of videogames and streaming services. While the latter both are technically competing with cable TV, prices didn't change for the better.
        FredPret 3y ago
        It is the same market. The entertainment market. People don't buy toys, games, cable, streaming, or movies. They buy something fun to do with their time. All these things are competing in the same market. Cable TV didn't come down in price or go up in quality, and so it is losing subscribers in droves. Supply and demand at work.
        manuelabeledo 3y ago
FredPret 3y ago
These guys are in a pickle. Wild revenue swings, declining profit, high leverage of 70% (although that's in line with competitors Funko and Jakks who are at 62% and 73%). And through it all, they're paying a 5.7% dividend yield. They simply don't have the business to support that. [https://valustox.com/HAS https://valustox.com/HAS, https://valustox.com/FNKO https://valustox.com/FNKO, https://valustox.com/JAKK https://valustox.com/JAKK] Even Mattel is barely breaking even on a wild upward swing in revenue [https://valustox.com/MAT https://valustox.com/MAT]
Eumenes 3y ago
i'd like to see toy companies go out of business. esp ones that create unsustainable plastic crap made in china. support local artisans.
bingemaker 3y ago
I never understood these layoffs. Don't the management team see it coming and plan it? Seems like a knee jerk reaction which affects people. Sad to see them ruining Christmas Downvote mfs.
sircastor 3y ago
The older I get the more I hate publicly traded stock. Early on it seems like it had a positive advantage for companies, but here in the fully matured market we find that it just screws up all the incentives. Every company imaginable stops being what they are: A computer company, a cookie company, a toy company, an internet provider, a movie studio, etc. They all just turn into a single, stupid thing: A stockholder appeasement company. Their singular goal becomes making stockholders (more accurately market analysts) look favorably at them. I hate it so much.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  So what is the alternative? You can have a fully private company.. but most of those focus on squeezing cash out. A few are more "benefit the world" style which is great, but I don't think its the popular thing. The biggest drawback is stock investors are too short sighted, and value things that are good for 1 quarter and bad for 10 years.
  - kridsdale3 3y ago
    Somehow get companies to be like Valve.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      I'm not the only one who thinks that. Whatever happened with Valve, it should be repeated
  - nine_zeros 3y ago
    > So what is the alternative? That shareholders and execs accept a few quarters of low/no growth? Infinite growth quarter-over-quarter is madness.
neilv 3y ago
I wouldn't feel good about giving money to Hasbro right now. With young kids' toys given as gifts, you're a little stuck, if they really want, say, specific Transformers. But for entertainment that teens and adults buy for ourselves, there's more choice... I can see how MtG lifestyle players who use genuine cards might be locked into continuing to give money to a Hasbro brand. But maybe not for some of the other brands. For example, (speaking as a former DM who wrote some modules), do D&D players really need much more than d20 dice, graph paper, and an imagination?
jackcosgrove 3y ago
Why is the toy market struggling? Is children's amusement all digital now? Are there fewer children? I don't know why, but when toy companies and retailers fail (FAO Schwartz, Kaybee, Toys 'R Us) I always feel sad.
billtsedong 3y ago
Then I'll pay only for 2/3 of their products I guess
JenniferBazan 3y ago
[dead]

215 points by DDSDev 3y ago

My heart goes out to those affected. Thats very rough. I know this isn't directly related to the article at hand or anything either, but I feel like I'm seeing a real uptick in November / December layoffs. Is it just me or was it really not a thing companies did with such frequency around the holidays? I feel like its as much a shedding of costs as it is a flex of big business trying to show strength because they all hate any inch of worker gains in the past 3 years that were made. In other news: It appears that Hasbro is shifting to become a trading card and video game company, per the article: >Meanwhile, Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, which publishes both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is experiencing all-time highs for both revenue earned and the number of players engaged in those brands >One area of investment for Hasbro appears to be the video game sector. Its latest project, Exodus, made a big splash last week at The Game Awards. Seems like they're trying to gear up those divisions while winding down their toy division at least somewhat. Its unclear if their stragetic growth with WOTC will also include investments in table top games there or if they will be primarily focused on the core money makers around Magic: The Gathering. If they can hit big in video games that will certainly bolster revenue though. We shall see if Hasbro is about to be an unexpected giant entrant into that industry

fullshark 3y ago
Perhaps it's a case of improved forecasting/data methods. Hasbro knows already this holiday season will be disastrous for them apparently, and previously companies that needed the holiday season to make their numbers had to wait until after it ended to really make decisions.
- christkv 3y ago
  They have known for a couple of months Christmas toy orders from retailers are done months in advance.
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    They will have to take returns from retailers if things aren't selling. Retail orders are half the battle for a company like Hasbro - the products still need to sell.
- teitoklien 3y ago
  If enough of these companies start doing these “forecastings”, what are the odds that these forecasts end up causing the very event to happen. Some stats in an index goes down, companies forecast annual sales downfall, starts cutting workforce in every industry, consumption tanks, makes the sales downfall a reality. Also, really ? Being laid of at Christmas time ?, to save a few bucks, its not like hasbro’s going bankrupt or anything. Humans do trade to improve each other’s quality of life, and not do things just for profit. It’s a means to an end, not the end. Too many companies are making their eyes into excel sheets, and ending up causing the very downfall by preparing for the downfall that they “anticipate”.
passwordoops 3y ago
Layoffs usually happen around the financial year-end so holiday layoffs are par for the course. Just noticeable because we're in a downturn, so more layoffs
cuongfu 3y ago
I wonder if it's companies trying to inflate their year-end numbers to appease shareholders. I agree that it feels like more layoffs this month than I expected, but none of them are necessarily due to 'market conditions' per se, like the layoffs that happened at the end of last year and earlier this year. Spotify and Hasbro seem like they just made bad investments and focused on the wrong areas for their business and now they (or rather their employees) are paying for it. With Hasbro specifically laying people off right now, I bet it's a way to cut down the numbers of payroll ahead of the Christmas sales rush, which I think probably inflates their overall profit margin.
- andrewxdiamond 3y ago
  If a company provides a severance package, then a Dec layoff is almost certainly too late to have any impact on the bottom line.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I haven't looked at Hasbro, but the impression I've gotten is that fiscal years and calendar years rarely align for larger companies. No one wants to be spending the Christmas/New Year holidays working on end-of-year accounting.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- no_wizard 3y ago
  A completely unenforcable concept, but an interesting thought exercise: if executives (and with that, SVP/VPs) were as likely to experience the recieving end of a layoff the same as those below them on the org chart, how would that affect how often they happen in the first place? For instance, if the VPs and SVPs in charge of the toy division were guaranteed to be part of the layoff, do you think the calculus would have changed? You rarely hear about it actually having reprocusssions on the C-Suite or their immediate peers (VP / SVP). Look at it from another angle: if the layoff has to happen due to poor planning or lack of direction etc. Thats set from the top but only the bottom layers of your company is affected by the layoff. Shouldn't actually be in the reverse, where executives, SVPs and VPs should be booted as a matter of course, as they are the ones that set the direction after all and supposedly "bare the responsibility" of the company. This reminds me of a book I was reading, The Hard Things About Hard Things. Its an interesting book, full of alot of useful information, but one thing that grinded my gears is how he talked about layoffs vs removing executives (defined as VP and up) With layoffs, he says to do it successfully, you need to train you managers to do the following: - Be able toexplain briefly about what happend, and that it is a company rather than a personal [employee] failure - Be clear how the employee is impacted and that the decision is non-negotiable - Be fully prepared about the benefits and support the company plans to provide. Okay, on the surface, this seems good, but the first two bullets are extremely specific and targeted, while the last one uses more lax language regarding benefits and support the company plans to provide. Which is to say, it does not say serverance, it does not say what good support should look like. Follow so far? Okay, so its pretty open ended, particularly that last part. Then, in the exact next chapter, he talks about firing an executive, and it is suppose to work as follows: - Be clear on the reasons - Use decisive language - Have the severange package approved and ready As you can see, clearly, to fire an executive, you must clearly provide a serverance package and make sure its approved and ready In a nutshell, this is how they see it. The executive class does not play by our rules, and never has to take the same ownership the rest of us do, period. Its explicitly spelled out that the executive must have a severance package, approved and ready where as supporting frontline employees in a layoff is left to the readers imagination as to what you should be doing for benefits and support. I want everyone to remember this. Ben Horowitz has said outloud that what we're all thinking is true. Executives see themselves as above non executives, and expect to be treated as such. This is in a nutshell is why the average worker should never trust the executive class and should unionize
sbrother 3y ago
I am still taken aback when they do these holiday layoffs. My employer (Nextdoor) cut 25% of the company in November, and it's hard not to see the timing as a particularly brutal power play.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I hope that people will remember the callousness that these employers show when talk of unionization/worker's rights happens again.
maCDzP 3y ago
A colleague that used to work in the aviation industry told me that they always had layoffs on the 23:rd or 24:th. I believe it had something to do with the yearly reporting and the people doing the reporting being on holy day between Christmas and new year.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jay_kyburz 3y ago
I'm really surprised magic is still so strong. The designers must be doing a great job of keeping the game fresh and interesting.
Macha 3y ago
Video games are a better market than toys for children, sure, but it still doesn't feel like a reliable bet for Hasbro to get into. Particularly the mention of video game licensing rather than development just screams execs amazed at how well that did, but I think they're overestimating how much they can make that repeatable. What with Pathfinder and Divinity games having laid the foundation for a CRPG comeback, Baldur's Gate 2 being one of those games still talked about nearly 25 years later, the wave of growth TTRPGs and derivatives got over the pandemic (see also the critical role amazon shows), there was a lot weighing in favour of BG3 that I don't think is repeatable on a more frequent basis. Not to mention Hasbro being relatively hands off and probably having forgotten they licensed it out. I think Hasbro think they're going to knock out Baldur Gate 3's and that it was their brand that provided all the value so they can charge the next people more, and maybe stuff it full of microtransactions. But I think much more likely is an outcome like the opening of Warhammer, a bunch of "ehh, it did ok I guess" mid tier games, and if they try to extract too much value from it they'll crush it.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  Hasbro tried the video game business back in the 1990s. They bought Atari assets and name in 1998, and Microprose as well, and became a pretty major player, but it flamed out. Video game development/publishing is a tough business.
  - unnamed76ri 3y ago
    I forgot about them buying Microprose. I feel like that was all part of the two cancelled X-Com games that were in development around 2000 or so.

mikeortman 3y ago

I have a hunch a lot of companies that layoff in December are also motivated by the bonus structure. Many companies structure their bonus pay around the new year in line with their fiscal calendar, either paying at the beginning of the year or entitling them to the bonus paid out later in the year.

arberx 3y ago
Or health insurance reasons
op00to 3y ago
This - I worked at a place that paid bonus quarterly and firings while rare seemed to happen just before the quarter end. Now we are paid bonus yearly and I see firings in December. I think it does align to expenditures like bonus, for sure.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I guess I didn't get dicked too hard in my mid December layoff (a couple years back); they gave me a pro-rated yearly bonus so I only lost like 2 weeks of it. The severance wasn't too bad either so all in all I took my money and shut up like they wanted me to. As I say in all these comments, I just wish that healthcare access wasn't tied to an employer - that seems like the cruelest aspect of modern America. Get too sick to work (and I have a condition that I live with), and you can't get healthcare any more.
  - op00to 3y ago
    Certainly one of the the cruelest aspects. But there's so many.
Consultant32452 3y ago
Basically a ton of arrows point towards EOY as a good time to do this. January has the most layoffs, December second most. In industries with seasonal hires, you get rid of them after the rush. Additionally, company budgets tend to be yearly, so you adjust to the new fiscal year's budget at this time too. I wonder what kind of social change would occur if each company was randomly assigned a quarter in which their taxes were due instead of everyone defaulting to the same exact time.

josefritz 3y ago

My former employer does a layoff pretty reliably in early December every year. The optics are always poor even if their rationale is sound.

maximilianroos 3y ago

Getting laid off in December is tough. But it's better than getting laid off in January after coming back to work from holidays, with plans for the year ahead. At least this way, folks can recuperate with their family, and then hit the job market in January. Or do others disagree?

throwing_away 3y ago
Strong disagree. For anyone who makes enough to be getting severance, it's better to have it in the new tax year.
- hamandcheese 3y ago
  Ignorant question - is severance typically paid lump sum?
  - StormChaser_5 3y ago
    Yes. Or at least here in Ireland
    - dmurray 3y ago
      If this was in Ireland, the workers wouldn't be laid off as of today - they'd at least have the option of a "consultation period". While that might be just a formality in terms of retaining their jobs, it would give anyone who wanted the option to get their severance payment in January instead.
  - ska 3y ago
    Sometimes. So Dec is the worst case, especially if you have a longish period. You end up paying top rates on this year, then suddenly have no income come January. Of course details vary country to country. One fairly common thing is you can opt to take it as an lump sum now, or take it as a monthly salary - but with the proviso that if you take a new job you stop getting it. This is often the way benefit extensions work also. Sometimes the monthly option is larger. So financially you are often better off with the lump sum, but it can be a tax hit.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Guess nobody's getting beat up/waylaid in the parking lot for Cabbage Patch Dolls or Furbies this year

oflannabhra 3y ago

Hasbro is essentially upside down, with huge losses across all their brands being subsidized by enormous growth from their subsidiary Wizards of the Coast. Even with that growth, they are significantly down. There was a big investor push recently (led by Alta Fox) to get Hasbro to spin WotC out into an independent company [0], which failed. The big concern being that forcing growth on those properties (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) to continue to support failed strategies with legacy properties could risk ruining those properties through mismanagement for short-term gains. I really don't know where Hasbro goes from here. I don't think the toy market will ever recover, and the board game world has completely passed by properties like Monopoly. Chris Cocks, the CEO is the former head of WotC, so I'm hoping there is some level of understanding of stewardship of the WotC properties, but I'm really not confident. Even the recent D&D movie was disappointing from a business perspective (although surprisingly wonderful for fans). They also have a huge success in Baldur's Gate 3, although it is also disappointing from a monetization perspective. Even those recent lukewarm wins are within the WotC umbrella. [0] - https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/hasbro-wins-wizards-of-the-coast-spin-off https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/hasbro-wins-wizards-of-the-coas...

TheCaptain4815 3y ago
BG3 was disappointing from a monetization perspective? How on earth, it sold over 20 million copies in less than a year!
- entropicdrifter 3y ago
  It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Hasbro's income from BG3 pales in comparison to MTG boosters from this year alone, let alone the income over time.
  - Macha 3y ago
    It's also clear from Hasbro's own statements they didn't expect it to do so well. Maybe they thought it would have sold like a Divinity 3 and as such gave Larian a better deal on the IP licensing than they think they could have got if they'd known in advance how well it would sell.

deleted 3y ago

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lancesells 3y ago

Executive salaries: https://www1.salary.com/HASBRO-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/HASBRO-INC-Executive-Salaries.html

sixothree 3y ago
That's probably 50% or more of the yearly cost of those workers.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  No - it's $37M - it should be less than 20% for sure. They HAD 5500 employees. After the layoffs, it could be close to ~30% - which is INSANE - but not as absolutely crazy as 50% would be.
  - sixothree 3y ago
    I was calculating laid off workers at $70k.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
~$37M for the execs listed, vs 1100 workers laid off - probably mostly making under $100k. This is one of the rare cases in the layoff discussions where the exec salaries do seem quite excessive. Hasbro had been averaging profits of around ~$250M for the last several years. Paying ~5 people >10% of your profits is INSANE. Continuing to reward them handsomely as your profits drop from ~$250M to -$500M is REALLY INSANE. Fire them. The new hires should be making 1/5th that or less. And, yes, you can get someone competent to run Hasbro for $1M. It's not a fusion reactor...
- Denvercoder9 3y ago
  Not saying the pay isn't outrageous, but most of the executive pay is in equity, which probably cost Hasbro next to nothing. They can't pay those laid off workers, probably making little more than minimum wage, with that.

irrational 3y ago

Is there a worse time of year to do layoffs than just before the holidays? Do they do it because their fiscal calendar is aligned to the … whatever you call the normal calendar? My company has its fiscal calendar about 5 months off from the normal calendar and while we have had layoffs, they have never happened at the holiday time.

bunderbunder 3y ago
That's exactly why. Thing is, laying people off in January would be even worse, for pretty much the same reason. As much as getting laid off during the holidays is a gut punch, it's probably ultimately better to go on the job market right before the January hiring season than to get laid off right after it wraps up.

roughly 3y ago

Laying off the workers at the toy factory two weeks before Christmas is the thing the villain in an 80s kids movie would do. I don't mean that to be hyperbolic - like, literally, that's the sort of thing that was culturally cast as villainous behavior a generation or two ago.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
But the country in the 80s didn't have a generation of brainwashing by Billionaires, Millionaires, and Temporarily-Displaced-Millionaires parroting the myth that the executive board of a publicly-traded company has a "fiduciary duty" to make as much money as possible.
- influx 3y ago
  Did you live through the 80s? I did and find this wildly inaccurate. See the Greed is Good memes and hero worship of Wall Street.
  - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
    Yeah. That type of people have existed since forever. Today they just have more power than ever or just don’t try to hide it anymore.
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      It has been happening all along. People are just barely starting to notice now (and back in the 1970s people were a lot more aware of it).
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I did not live through the 80's (not the whole decade at least), but I have seen Robocop which I thought was supposed to be a parody. Obviously Alec Baldwin's speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross" is iconic as well. Even a recent re-watch of "Tommy Boy" really drove home how much of a toll Reagonomics took on the industrial midwest. I never really understood why the man was so revered, but I guess he put on a good act that people bought into.

TheGRS 3y ago

I feel like a lot of attention from this is on the WotC side, which is doing very well, bully for them, I consume a lot of the D&D product line. But what's up with the rest of the company doing poorly? They have a huge trove of great IP that's failing. Play-doh and Nerf seem like they're still children's play staples no? Is there a big shift in consumption of action figures I should know about? Or is the story more about issues with inflation/affordability for these types of toys?

NohatCoder 3y ago
The problem is, nobody cares if the can actually says Play-doh on the label. When kids become brand aware it matters what phone they get, not so much the brand of a toy gun. You can pump them full of commercials to sell stuff, but anyone can do so, and it doesn't matter what your brand used to be before they were born.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  I think the way kids consume commercials has also changed? I think my kids (age 2-8) have maybe seen no more than 10 commercials each in their entire life? But I know influencers and such are going to start leaving a mark. Vs as a kid, I saw so so so many commercials for GI Joe, etc.

hakdbha 3y ago

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corethree 3y ago

They got lucky with D&D. The ruled gameplay isn't even that good/original with D&D when compared to other RPG mechanics from other systems... it's mostly the lore that enabled WoTC to sell rights to the IP to get us Baldurs gate, torment etc. With magic it's just an addictive game and the "lore" though slim makes it feel adultish.

brianwawok 3y ago
D&D got lucky that both stranger things and critical role happened more than anything. I wonder what % of the popularity boom was from those two sources? D&D has been around forever. It has always been super niche. Then it somehow jumped into mainstream?
- corethree 3y ago
  Stranger things? Did it really popularize D&D that much? I saw the first season and they played the game like a couple of times. Didn't think it would cause a huge surge in D&D sales.

guyzero 3y ago

The price of toys has fallen drastically since 2000. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERE01 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERE01 That's got to come straight out of Hasbro's bottom line.

FredPret 3y ago
That price decline is absolutely wild. Competition working it's magic.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  More like toys are being superseded by other forms of entertainment among the youth.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    So, competition then.
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      "Competition" assumes that the market is the same. It is not. A good example would be cable TV, and the introduction of videogames and streaming services. While the latter both are technically competing with cable TV, prices didn't change for the better.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        It is the same market. The entertainment market. People don't buy toys, games, cable, streaming, or movies. They buy something fun to do with their time. All these things are competing in the same market. Cable TV didn't come down in price or go up in quality, and so it is losing subscribers in droves. Supply and demand at work.
        manuelabeledo 3y ago

FredPret 3y ago

These guys are in a pickle. Wild revenue swings, declining profit, high leverage of 70% (although that's in line with competitors Funko and Jakks who are at 62% and 73%). And through it all, they're paying a 5.7% dividend yield. They simply don't have the business to support that. [https://valustox.com/HAS https://valustox.com/HAS, https://valustox.com/FNKO https://valustox.com/FNKO, https://valustox.com/JAKK https://valustox.com/JAKK] Even Mattel is barely breaking even on a wild upward swing in revenue [https://valustox.com/MAT https://valustox.com/MAT]

Eumenes 3y ago

i'd like to see toy companies go out of business. esp ones that create unsustainable plastic crap made in china. support local artisans.

bingemaker 3y ago

I never understood these layoffs. Don't the management team see it coming and plan it? Seems like a knee jerk reaction which affects people. Sad to see them ruining Christmas Downvote mfs.

sircastor 3y ago

The older I get the more I hate publicly traded stock. Early on it seems like it had a positive advantage for companies, but here in the fully matured market we find that it just screws up all the incentives. Every company imaginable stops being what they are: A computer company, a cookie company, a toy company, an internet provider, a movie studio, etc. They all just turn into a single, stupid thing: A stockholder appeasement company. Their singular goal becomes making stockholders (more accurately market analysts) look favorably at them. I hate it so much.

brianwawok 3y ago
So what is the alternative? You can have a fully private company.. but most of those focus on squeezing cash out. A few are more "benefit the world" style which is great, but I don't think its the popular thing. The biggest drawback is stock investors are too short sighted, and value things that are good for 1 quarter and bad for 10 years.
- kridsdale3 3y ago
  Somehow get companies to be like Valve.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    I'm not the only one who thinks that. Whatever happened with Valve, it should be repeated
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > So what is the alternative? That shareholders and execs accept a few quarters of low/no growth? Infinite growth quarter-over-quarter is madness.

neilv 3y ago

I wouldn't feel good about giving money to Hasbro right now. With young kids' toys given as gifts, you're a little stuck, if they really want, say, specific Transformers. But for entertainment that teens and adults buy for ourselves, there's more choice... I can see how MtG lifestyle players who use genuine cards might be locked into continuing to give money to a Hasbro brand. But maybe not for some of the other brands. For example, (speaking as a former DM who wrote some modules), do D&D players really need much more than d20 dice, graph paper, and an imagination?

jackcosgrove 3y ago

Why is the toy market struggling? Is children's amusement all digital now? Are there fewer children? I don't know why, but when toy companies and retailers fail (FAO Schwartz, Kaybee, Toys 'R Us) I always feel sad.

billtsedong 3y ago

Then I'll pay only for 2/3 of their products I guess

JenniferBazan 3y ago

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