Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard (UPDATE: CMA says NO!).

[K]

You can't possibly think it's bad to make 10,000 people redundant. Sorry, I just don't buy it. What's your real interest here? Stop pretending you think sacking 10,000 people is a bad thing and get to the point, I'm a busy man with no time for this ulterior motive bullshit.

[Lying Cat]

Ultimately, if somebody on this forum posted up "I've been made redundant", you'd have to be a proper dick to just be all like "it's just business".

[Mallet]

I was made redundant in 2017 after spending 11 years in my job. 

 

"it's just business" was exactly my attitude and what I told anyone who asked me about it. I wasn't mad or bitter about it because it is the way the world works. 

[Clipper]

5 minutes ago, Mallet said:

I was made redundant in 2017 after spending 11 years in my job. 

 

"it's just business" was exactly my attitude and what I told anyone who asked me about it. I wasn't mad or bitter about it because it is the way the world works. 

yep the way it works is shit.

[Benny]

I'm beginning to think that some people don't just enjoy the taste of footwear, but that they are even open to the idea of multiple flavours.

[JPL]

28 minutes ago, Clipper said:

yep the way it works is shit.

How should it work, do you think? If someone's job isn't required any more, what should the company do?

[Giddas]

5 minutes ago, JPL said:

How should it work, do you think? If someone's job isn't required any more, what should the company do?

 

They could start by not publicly proclaiming their love of workers rights several weeks earlier in a cynical attempt to get the moral high ground.

[thesnwmn]

1 minute ago, Giddas said:

 

They could start by not publicly proclaiming their love of workers rights several weeks earlier in a cynical attempt to get the moral high ground.

 

Why? No one is doing anything that means they shouldn't "give" with one hand and punch with the other. Anyone selling their console? Moving to a Mac? 

 

They win some good will with the first and then give it up straight after. In fact it's not even that transactional. It doesn't balance to zero. The workers rights thing wasn't because they love workers. It's because they felt it was the best way for them to navigate the decision of some of their workforce to unionise.

 

Most of the time these layoffs don't even break the surface on here. It's good that people are aware of it and can consider it for their current and future platform choices.

[LaveDisco]

Call me a psycho communist scumbag, but I think the principle responsibilities of a company are two fold, 

a) to do public good

b) to provide a good quality of life to those who work for the company

 

Rather than profit for a third party investor. So I'm fundamentally opposed to the legal framework companies operate.

 

Obviously, mass firings like this, are how the world works, but illness is also how the world works too. So I would be mad to respond that it's just part of life. My role is opposition. 

 

The crucial, supporting narrative here, is just more evidence that MS are in a position where they cannot manage people and dev teams. They can't foster brilliance any more, they have to keep buying it to top up their diminishing supplies. I've no doubt that within 3 years MS wil start closing these devs they bleed them dry.

 

[Giddas]

13 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

 

Why? No one is doing anything that means they shouldn't "give" with one hand and punch with the other. Anyone selling their console? Moving to a Mac? 

 

They win some good will with the first and then give it up straight after. In fact it's not even that transactional. It doesn't balance to zero. The workers rights thing wasn't because they love workers. It's because they felt it was the best way for them to navigate the decision of some of their workforce to unionise.

 

Most of the time these layoffs don't even break the surface on here. It's good that people are aware of it and can consider it for their current and future platform choices.

 

Nah they put that statement out for optics, and than had it crapped all over by subsequent events

[RubberJohnny]

1 minute ago, Giddas said:

Nah they put that statement out for optics, and than had it crapped all over by subsequent events

 

They said they're fine with unionisation, that's not like, inconsistent with having to lay people off no matter how much people pretend it is.

[Stanley]

2 hours ago, JPL said:

How should it work, do you think? If someone's job isn't required any more, what should the company do?

They should announce record profits during a meeting with that person, and then sack them the next day. 

[JPL]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

They should announce record profits during a meeting with that person, and then sack them the next day. 

Do you honestly think they should keep these people on even if there's no job for them, just because they've posted record profits?

[Stanley]

4 minutes ago, JPL said:

Do you honestly think they should keep these people on even if there's no job for them, just because they've posted record profits?

You’re like one of those innocent naive robots from a Disney movie. 

[Clipper]

7 minutes ago, Stanley said:

You’re like one of those innocent naive robots from a Disney movie. 

with quotes around the "innocent naive" part

[Unofficial Who]

Mixed feelings about the redundancies, I think putting people out of work is always a tough call (or it should be) especially when you've been successful and you've been part of that success. I don't know that many would be surprised though, this is common pre or post expected merges or acquisitions and many roles would have been made redundant post the Activision acquisition any way. And with a lot of companies that deliver tech products it happens when they change direction. I don't know that many would have been surprised by google slashing staff post Stadia shutting down. Same with Meta failing at VR.

 

Personally having been through it myself it really sucks. I went through an incredible lean two years before I found another job, my marriage didn't survive it and when I had about six months savings left I seriously thought about plans to square all my debts and walk into the sea. (There were other complications due to depression at the time but being suddenly cast adrift after almost two decades of hard work did not help.)

 

In retrospect it all worked out pretty well in the long term but it sure sucked at the time.

 

Even with my biases here I'm not sure stopping the acquisition would have saved all 10,000 jobs.

[JPL]

21 minutes ago, Stanley said:

You’re like one of those innocent naive robots from a Disney movie. 

I'd say it's you who's being extremely naive. It's like you've got no idea how capitalism or business works.

[RubberJohnny]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

You’re like one of those innocent naive robots from a Disney movie. 

 

You're what, in your mid-40s? Fairly sure you should know how the job market works at this point.

 

We could actually be having a nice conversation about the topic everyone is actually circling around, or we can just do this feigning ignorance and patronising explanation of basic concepts that everyone actually knows for a few more pages, up to you I guess.

[Stanley]

no one is circling around any topic, the issues are laid bare by anyone entering the discussion. Some people just don’t want to talk about that, and that’s fine. 

[Sarlaccfood]

Anyone else picturing Stanley in a Starfleet uniform, pleading with the view screen?

[JoeK]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

They should announce record profits during a meeting with that person, and then sack them the next day. 

Clearly, this isn’t what happened in reality. It’s what has been offered to us in the news because it makes everything nice and dramatic, but these things very rarely happen like this.

 

I went through redundancy way back in 2011 and it is very, very much like @Malletsaid - it very much is business. You get on with it. It became terribly annoying how people around you kept on going on about how terrible it must be to lose your job. In reality…the redundancy package was fine, and I was easily able to live off that whilst I got a new job. 
 

These things happen. It’s shitty and I don’t really want to go through it again, but you cope.

 

I’d imagine the severance pay offered to these people would be pretty reasonable, I’d hope.

[Sarlaccfood]

5 hours ago, JPL said:

How should it work, do you think? If someone's job isn't required any more, what should the company do?

Have them remake The Last of Us?

[rafaqat]

So to summarise. 
 

these redundancies are happening in an industry where the big players are shedding jobs so it’s not an isolated thing
redundancies are bad for the individual but good for a company that legally has to make a profit.  
Capitalism in its current form is shit.  Some people choose to accept that while others decide to complain about it. 
Microsoft accepting unionisation is wonderful. Hopefully more teams choose to do it.
Microsoft seem to find it hard to deliver triple A games as regularly as they should given the number of devs now working for them. 
Gamepass is not the service for you if you want triple a releases every month. 

 

 

I hope the deal goes through as I like gamepass and more games on it is great. 

 

[Stanley]

17 hours ago, JoeK said:

Clearly, this isn’t what happened in reality.

That’s exactly what happened in reality. 

[footle]

57 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

redundancies are bad for the individual but good for a company that legally has to make a profit.  

 

 

They'd make a huge profit anyway, and companies don't have to legally make a profit. They have to respond at some point to the wishes of their major shareholders. That isn't the same thing.

[rafaqat]

3 minutes ago, footle said:

 

They'd make a huge profit anyway, and companies don't have to legally make a profit. They have to respond at some point to the wishes of their major shareholders. That isn't the same thing.

i don’t know many shareholders that don’t say maximise profits please. 
 

I’m sure we could find a a couple of examples out of the tens of thousands of companies out there but I think the maximise profits point probs my stands well enough right?  
 

[Stanley]

Just now, rafaqat said:

i don’t know many shareholders that don’t say maximise profits please. 
 

I’m sure we could find a a couple of examples out of the tens of thousands of companies out there but I think the maximise profits point probs my stands well enough right?  
 

They are doing that anyway. When leading economists, behavioural experts etc. can’t explain these mass layoffs, other than “because everyone else is doing it” I don’t think we’ll be able to understand it any better here. What we do know, unequivocally, is that these events are extremely damaging and crucially, entirely avoidable. 

[Mallet]

Redundancy can be good for the employee as well. You get a tax free lump sum and if you can get another job quickly it can work out great. 

 

My redundancy package is probably the largest tax free sum of money I will ever get. I was only out of work 2 weeks and I have never had to touch the money. 

 

If you are out of work for a long time obviously it isn't so good. 

[RubberJohnny]

50 minutes ago, Stanley said:

When leading economists, behavioural experts etc. can’t explain these mass layoffs, other than “because everyone else is doing it” I don’t think we’ll be able to understand it any better here.

 

They can explain it! These companies were projected, in the pandemic, for a lot of rapid growth - they have to grow and recruit rapidly for this, like hiring 50,000 people in a year. The pandemic growth turned out not to be a permanent shift in habits, but temporary and returned to how it was before, projections for the future market size are now much lower, these companies now have 50,000 more employees than they need for the amount of work they'll have in future, and a possible recession which means that market will shrink further in the short term, making this even worse. All of these companies have had hiring freezes for the last year, attempting to get down to the right size just through general churn of staff and retirements, but that wasn't enough, which is why they're announcing layoffs.

 

Like some people are taking issue with me suggesting some sort of hidden agenda, but all of this is simple stuff, I can't believe you genuinely can't figure this out. We could run you through a simple example of how if a company has 10 staff to deal with a market size of X and then 100 staff to deal with a market size of 10X, then having 100 staff to deal with X is clearly too many, and so on, but we're genuinely in "this one is small, those are far away" territory at that point.

[Stanley]

I’m glad that all makes sense to you mate