3 ms·
These layoffs are 1900 people out of 22,000 people in the gaming division, or 9% of the group. It's sad for the people involved, but this seems pretty standard,
by lacker 3y ago
These layoffs are 1900 people out of 22,000 people in the gaming division, or 9% of the group. It's sad for the people involved, but this seems pretty standard, honestly, after a big acquisition. The combination of "people whose jobs are redundant after the acquisition" and "underperformers who Blizzard hadn't fired because management was distracted by the acquisition" could account for the whole 9%.
- danaris 3y agoFrom what I can tell, there's very little of either of those categories represented here, at least not in any systematic way. Based on what I've seen from people within Blizzard, there was absolutely no performance-based layoff here. This was entirely from a high-level "pick the roles you think you don't need anymore" perspective. It's also not at all clear that it represents any meaningful consideration of who is "redundant" after the merger. A significant amount of those 9% came from eliminating the roles working on the canceled survival game. I did hear that they also eliminated an entire customer service office in Texas—it's possible that was considered "redundant", but it's also possible they've just decided to outsource that particular bit of customer service. No; as with many, many layoffs-in-good-times (which generally includes layoffs-after-a-merger), this is primarily just the people at or near the very top reaching down and slashing with big machetes and very little careful aim in order to juice the stock price.
- eska 3y agoThis is not a one-time action though. MS had even bigger layoffs a year ago