8 ms·

As a current zynga contractor who is losing his job there next Friday, I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this. Firstly, I don't see the employees be

by Alex_r 14y ago

As a current zynga contractor who is losing his job there next Friday, I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this. Firstly, I don't see the employees being let go as victims, most are getting 3 months severance. Secondly, I don't think there is any real evil going on by Zynga; they accidentally hired more people than they can afford, it sucks as I'm one of them, but I fundamentally agree with the notion of at-will employment in the US.

andrewljohnson 14y ago
Can you say what product you are working on? How would you describe the game design philosophy for your team, or Zynga overall? I think when people say Zynga is evil, they largely point to three things: * spaminess of the games * propensity to copy other products rather than come up with original ideas * tuning of games to maximize revenues from individual players Do you think these are fair judgments about Zynga's methods? Is Zynga more guilty of these tendencies than other gaming companies?
- Alex_r 14y ago
  As a hardcore/indie gamer myself, I understand that a lot of hardcore gamers are turned away by Zynga. But I'm not Zynga's target audience, and that's okay. And there's a lot of sympathy for your point about the "spaminess." However, going from spammy/over-monetizing to evil has always seemed a tad dramatic to me.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I think the leap from "spamminess" to "evil" is helped by those other two things he pointed out.
  - krickle 14y ago
    The games are designed to both get people addicted, and to get your friends involved by manipulating social gift reciprocity obligations. I think we'd have settled for "awful" up until the clawbacks, now we know the leadership at Zynga is sociopathic at best. Maybe not evil, but totally unscrupulous, totally unsympathetic.
- motoford 14y ago
  I think the reasons you list are why people really dislike Zynga, but those things alone are not enough to explain the pure hate people have for the company. The reason I think they are evil is the way they treat their employees, beginning with forcing developers to give back stock before their IPO. This latest stunt is just piling on.
dusing 14y ago
3 months! Wow that's way more than generous. Anon might want to target someone else
taylonr 14y ago
How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hiring a lot of developers, designers or whatever else.
- trentmb 14y ago
  You expect to make more revenue than you actually do.
  - taylonr 14y ago
    So you didn't "accidentally" hire people. You did it with a lack of foresight. To me, that's different. Saying you accidentally hired people makes it sound softer than it really is. If Raytheon or Boeing hired 2,000 people ahead of a defense contract they were sure they'd get, and didn't that wouldn't be an "accident." That would be poor planning (counting your eggs before they hatch kind of thing.) Either way, I don't really care either way about Zynga. I don't think I've ever played their games, but at the same time I'm not hoping they fail.
- davidw 14y ago
  > How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
  - taylonr 14y ago
    So it's not really an accident. They meant to hire those people, they were just bad at forecasting. To me, those are separate issues.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  You are a middle manager. Do you say "bob in the other department hired 5 people, so I guess I'll stick with the three I have"? Nope. You go straight to your VP and say a rival VP just got five guys, where's mine. If hiring is decentralized and no one is concerned about costs you end up growing exponential.
adrr 14y ago
Thats standard, two months(60 days) are required by California Law(WARN act) and one month pay is usually tied to an agreement that you won't sue.
- h123b 14y ago
  IANAL, but I'm fairly confident that you're wrong about CA requiring severance pay under the WARN act, and I don't think you should be giving legal advice if you're not a lawyer. Your post can mislead a lot of people on HN.
  - adrr 14y ago
    The law: An employer must give notice 60-days prior to a plant closing, layoff or relocation. In addition to the notifications required under federal WARN, notice must also be given to the Local Workforce Investment Board, and the chief elected official of each city and county government within which the termination, relocation or mass layoff occurs. (California Labor Code Section 1401) No one gives notice because of the risk that employees will do something malicious and instead just pay out the 60 days(with benefits including vacation accrual). I've done 3 sets of layoffs at my old company as a manager and was eventually layed off. At non California locations and offices that were too small to fall under WARN, we terminated employees with no severance except one month that was attached to an agreement not to sue. BTW, nothing i said was legal advice just simply stating that 3 months is standard for California.
  - wtvanhest 14y ago
    Minor nitpick: He isn't giving legal advice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_advice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_advice Also, you did the exact same thing he/she did when you said you didn't think the warn act requires severance so even if what he/she did was giving legal advice, your comment would fall under the exact same category.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    If you didn't pay money for it, it's not legal advice.

by Alex_r 14y ago

andrewljohnson 14y ago

Can you say what product you are working on? How would you describe the game design philosophy for your team, or Zynga overall? I think when people say Zynga is evil, they largely point to three things: * spaminess of the games * propensity to copy other products rather than come up with original ideas * tuning of games to maximize revenues from individual players Do you think these are fair judgments about Zynga's methods? Is Zynga more guilty of these tendencies than other gaming companies?

Alex_r 14y ago
As a hardcore/indie gamer myself, I understand that a lot of hardcore gamers are turned away by Zynga. But I'm not Zynga's target audience, and that's okay. And there's a lot of sympathy for your point about the "spaminess." However, going from spammy/over-monetizing to evil has always seemed a tad dramatic to me.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I think the leap from "spamminess" to "evil" is helped by those other two things he pointed out.
- krickle 14y ago
  The games are designed to both get people addicted, and to get your friends involved by manipulating social gift reciprocity obligations. I think we'd have settled for "awful" up until the clawbacks, now we know the leadership at Zynga is sociopathic at best. Maybe not evil, but totally unscrupulous, totally unsympathetic.
motoford 14y ago
I think the reasons you list are why people really dislike Zynga, but those things alone are not enough to explain the pure hate people have for the company. The reason I think they are evil is the way they treat their employees, beginning with forcing developers to give back stock before their IPO. This latest stunt is just piling on.

dusing 14y ago

3 months! Wow that's way more than generous. Anon might want to target someone else

taylonr 14y ago

How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hiring a lot of developers, designers or whatever else.

trentmb 14y ago
You expect to make more revenue than you actually do.
- taylonr 14y ago
  So you didn't "accidentally" hire people. You did it with a lack of foresight. To me, that's different. Saying you accidentally hired people makes it sound softer than it really is. If Raytheon or Boeing hired 2,000 people ahead of a defense contract they were sure they'd get, and didn't that wouldn't be an "accident." That would be poor planning (counting your eggs before they hatch kind of thing.) Either way, I don't really care either way about Zynga. I don't think I've ever played their games, but at the same time I'm not hoping they fail.
davidw 14y ago
> How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford? Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
- taylonr 14y ago
  So it's not really an accident. They meant to hire those people, they were just bad at forecasting. To me, those are separate issues.
codeonfire 14y ago
You are a middle manager. Do you say "bob in the other department hired 5 people, so I guess I'll stick with the three I have"? Nope. You go straight to your VP and say a rival VP just got five guys, where's mine. If hiring is decentralized and no one is concerned about costs you end up growing exponential.

adrr 14y ago

Thats standard, two months(60 days) are required by California Law(WARN act) and one month pay is usually tied to an agreement that you won't sue.

h123b 14y ago
IANAL, but I'm fairly confident that you're wrong about CA requiring severance pay under the WARN act, and I don't think you should be giving legal advice if you're not a lawyer. Your post can mislead a lot of people on HN.
- adrr 14y ago
  The law: An employer must give notice 60-days prior to a plant closing, layoff or relocation. In addition to the notifications required under federal WARN, notice must also be given to the Local Workforce Investment Board, and the chief elected official of each city and county government within which the termination, relocation or mass layoff occurs. (California Labor Code Section 1401) No one gives notice because of the risk that employees will do something malicious and instead just pay out the 60 days(with benefits including vacation accrual). I've done 3 sets of layoffs at my old company as a manager and was eventually layed off. At non California locations and offices that were too small to fall under WARN, we terminated employees with no severance except one month that was attached to an agreement not to sue. BTW, nothing i said was legal advice just simply stating that 3 months is standard for California.
- wtvanhest 14y ago
  Minor nitpick: He isn't giving legal advice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_advice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_advice Also, you did the exact same thing he/she did when you said you didn't think the warn act requires severance so even if what he/she did was giving legal advice, your comment would fall under the exact same category.
- rhizome 14y ago
  If you didn't pay money for it, it's not legal advice.