We get articles like this

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week. While Microsoft is primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted by the cuts.

It’s always sad to hear someone lose their job. My unpopular opinion is that it needed to happen.

I work in corporate where the culture is so bad that you need a purge. Managers protecting bad employees. Toxic people getting promotions by playing office politics. Good employees fail to get recognition.

I’m not saying all 1900 people “got what’s coming to them”. Many may be very excellent humans, and losing your job sucks.

My extremely unpopular view from where I sit is that Blizzard Activision has for the past decade, continued to fall deeper and deeper into shitty-ness. And this shake up should have been done years ago.

  • TheAlbatross
    23·
    10 months ago

    I guarantee you they didn’t take the time to carefully prune the dead branches, yo.

    These mass layoff like this are purely for corporate greed so they can report better numbers to shareholders before end of their fiscal year sometime around Q2.

    They’re not to cut inefficiencies or streamline anything, that’s just corporate doublespeak. I’m sorry you worked in a shitty office, and I’m sure at times it felt like razing the Earth was the only way to move forward, but your projecting that onto a different situation.

  • PassingThrough@lemmy.world
    10·
    10 months ago

    I would be the first to ask:

    But who do you think survived the purge?

    The politicians, the protected. Some may have been collateral, especially in the case of entire department wipes but you can bet they weren’t the first to go.

    The quality of the employee is neither here nor there really. It’s all about the money now saved, and converted into C-suite bonuses.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
    9·
    10 months ago

    One big problem is when you think the shittiness is going to be fixed now. Those employees weren’t the root of the problem, which is still down there and growing. It’s not Jews or “Illuminati” either. It’s harder than that.

  • ravheim@lemmy.world
    7·
    10 months ago

    I agree that Blizzard, and many other gaming companies, have continued to dig deeper into shittiness. The thing is, these lay-offs were not surgical or even tactical. They were lines on a spreadsheet and numbers in a column. In the corporate world this is what’s called “Spreadsheeting”. Column B was adjusted until Column C was in the range that the C-Suite wanted. Toxic employees are probably still there, shitty managers are still there. The office politics are still there. The people that were let go where simply the ones that made the columns easier to balance out.