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Sophistry aside, it’s still profoundly disruptive for many people. Whether or not they know there’s a risk, it means people are scrambling to reestablish their

by acdha 3y ago

Sophistry aside, it’s still profoundly disruptive for many people. Whether or not they know there’s a risk, it means people are scrambling to reestablish their finances and routines, and in many cases that can have long-lasting impacts – people have to move, Americans have disruptions to their healthcare access & providers, and older people might never regain their old salary. That doesn’t make it illegal, or even a bad business move, but it very much has victims. They’re the ones being sacrificed for the good of the company.

sarchertech 3y ago
Exactly. My wife is a highly paid doctor, but she can only work at a children’s hospital. If she were laid off we’d be fine financially, but we’d still have to relocate the entire family hundreds of miles away.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Riot is offering a minumum of six months of severance. I agree, layoffs are disruptive, but this view that somehow if you get hired the company can't ever decide to let you go is totally bizarre to me. Plus, what you would be essentially arguing is that it would have been better to never have hired these people in the first place, which I strongly disagree with in the vast majority of cases. People need to stop acting like layoffs are the worst, evilest thing that can happen. It's important that people are treated with dignity and a financial cushion, and at least according to this blog post that seems to be the case.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Maybe those people would have been otherwise hired by employers who prudently didn’t overhire and need to cut afterwards.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    I think that's a fair point when you hear stories about people who are hired and then laid off within a couple months (or sooner). Nobody can predict the far future with accuracy, but those kinds of stories usually just point to corporate incompetence and the company usually could have planned better. But when it comes to cases where economic and business conditions have drastically changed, I don't think it's reasonable that we expect business leaders to have crystal balls for years in the future.
- acdha 3y ago
  > Plus, what you would be essentially arguing is that it would have been better to never have hired these people in the first place If you reread my comment, that’s not there and I acknowledged that it’s sometimes necessary (many of the current layoffs are not but I also remember 2000 when a lot of places which had been unable to fill customer demand were abruptly without business). My point was simply rejecting the idea that people are somehow not harmed by this - it’s usually legal, something people should expect, etc. but it still has a big impact. I respect business leaders who are cognizant of that and treat people with dignity - for example, Riot doesn’t appear to be claiming this is performance based like a certain company recently in the news.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- eganist 3y ago
  > Riot is offering a minumum of six months of severance. [...] It's important that people are treated with dignity and a financial cushion, and at least according to this blog post that seems to be the case. It wouldn't surprise me if part of this is because of how much harder it (anecdotally) seems to be for game developers/designers to find new jobs relative to their non-gaming peers. I'm having a hard time finding data to distinguish the two (game devs v. devs, game designers v. e.g UX designers), but going at least from my own network, those in gaming were more profoundly affected. If that's true on any broader scale, then putting people out with two months pay in an industry that could take four to eight months to find new work could be a bad look for the RIFing company.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
I agree, but layoffs are not necessarily sacrifices. layoffs really are necessary sometimes.
- acdha 3y ago
  Definitely sometimes, but my point was simply that whoever is being let loose is taking the downside. It might help their friends who are still employed but they’re feeling the most immediate downsides and likely will not benefit if it does save the business.
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    What about the millions of customers. Prices all go up then. Sort of goes against the bussiness priorities, most produce for lowest cost.
    - acdha 3y ago
      That doesn’t matter to them anywhere near as much as losing a job does to the people who were laid off, and it’s certainly not the case that prices won’t go up anyway.
      - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
        Im not talking about the consequences of the layoffs for those who are fired. We agree on that front entirely. But i'm pointing out that if all the agents in a market acted against the interest of the relationship between the bussiness and the customers, we would have much bigger issues than just layoffs. Everything would be unnecessarily expensive all the time, insufficient volumes and supply. Development would be slower. The companies trying to minimize costs and maximize trade between them and the customers is not just caused by greed, or resulting in suffering, these are the basic drives behind the survival of modern life as we know it.

by acdha 3y ago

sarchertech 3y ago

Exactly. My wife is a highly paid doctor, but she can only work at a children’s hospital. If she were laid off we’d be fine financially, but we’d still have to relocate the entire family hundreds of miles away.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Riot is offering a minumum of six months of severance. I agree, layoffs are disruptive, but this view that somehow if you get hired the company can't ever decide to let you go is totally bizarre to me. Plus, what you would be essentially arguing is that it would have been better to never have hired these people in the first place, which I strongly disagree with in the vast majority of cases. People need to stop acting like layoffs are the worst, evilest thing that can happen. It's important that people are treated with dignity and a financial cushion, and at least according to this blog post that seems to be the case.

Apocryphon 3y ago
Maybe those people would have been otherwise hired by employers who prudently didn’t overhire and need to cut afterwards.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I think that's a fair point when you hear stories about people who are hired and then laid off within a couple months (or sooner). Nobody can predict the far future with accuracy, but those kinds of stories usually just point to corporate incompetence and the company usually could have planned better. But when it comes to cases where economic and business conditions have drastically changed, I don't think it's reasonable that we expect business leaders to have crystal balls for years in the future.
acdha 3y ago
> Plus, what you would be essentially arguing is that it would have been better to never have hired these people in the first place If you reread my comment, that’s not there and I acknowledged that it’s sometimes necessary (many of the current layoffs are not but I also remember 2000 when a lot of places which had been unable to fill customer demand were abruptly without business). My point was simply rejecting the idea that people are somehow not harmed by this - it’s usually legal, something people should expect, etc. but it still has a big impact. I respect business leaders who are cognizant of that and treat people with dignity - for example, Riot doesn’t appear to be claiming this is performance based like a certain company recently in the news.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eganist 3y ago
> Riot is offering a minumum of six months of severance. [...] It's important that people are treated with dignity and a financial cushion, and at least according to this blog post that seems to be the case. It wouldn't surprise me if part of this is because of how much harder it (anecdotally) seems to be for game developers/designers to find new jobs relative to their non-gaming peers. I'm having a hard time finding data to distinguish the two (game devs v. devs, game designers v. e.g UX designers), but going at least from my own network, those in gaming were more profoundly affected. If that's true on any broader scale, then putting people out with two months pay in an industry that could take four to eight months to find new work could be a bad look for the RIFing company.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

I agree, but layoffs are not necessarily sacrifices. layoffs really are necessary sometimes.

acdha 3y ago
Definitely sometimes, but my point was simply that whoever is being let loose is taking the downside. It might help their friends who are still employed but they’re feeling the most immediate downsides and likely will not benefit if it does save the business.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  What about the millions of customers. Prices all go up then. Sort of goes against the bussiness priorities, most produce for lowest cost.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That doesn’t matter to them anywhere near as much as losing a job does to the people who were laid off, and it’s certainly not the case that prices won’t go up anyway.
    - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
      Im not talking about the consequences of the layoffs for those who are fired. We agree on that front entirely. But i'm pointing out that if all the agents in a market acted against the interest of the relationship between the bussiness and the customers, we would have much bigger issues than just layoffs. Everything would be unnecessarily expensive all the time, insufficient volumes and supply. Development would be slower. The companies trying to minimize costs and maximize trade between them and the customers is not just caused by greed, or resulting in suffering, these are the basic drives behind the survival of modern life as we know it.