[Phil's email shared] Microsoft to lay off 10,000 employees between now and March 31st. 343i, Bethesda Game Studios and The Coalition among impacted.

[Rotimi]

Seem these are the victims making room for Aquisition Blizzard. Sucks for them. I hope they all get Jobs and land on their feet.

Not surprised 343 is a scape goat but men sad stuff. I work for a multinational and this was my biggest fear. But thanks to mass exodus of colleagues to other countries, now we actually need people cause the workload is crazy.

 

[gofreak]

It is certainly possible. Tbh though I don't get the point of this acquisition if they are going to trim product redundancies. Xbox would have received all of these products anyway if they left ABK alone. They get to eat more of the profits owning them but they also swallow all the expenses too. Imo it's a wash. The whole appeal of ABK being first party imo is you get a host of exclusive content. If you are keeping the money makers multiplat and you're gonna trim redundant content that would be exclusive then wtf was the point of any of this?

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In this scenario, MS is making more money off the smaller 'combined' portfolio than the larger separated portfolio. So that's one big point. Nevermind the strategic control, the leverage into mobile etc.

If consolidation like that made space for new IP from others to break through to provide new competition, that could be counter-incentive for the combined entity to revive IP and add redundancy to their own portfolio again. But breakthrough new IP competing with established heavy hitters may seem like a remote risk compared to immediate pressures of operating margin during 'hard times'.

 

[Tovarisc]

I do think it's a bit strange they go straight for the lay off rather than trying to move in to other MS studios (aka Playground).

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It's about cutting costs and nothing else. Shuffling people around wouldn't get them that.

 

[HonestAbe]

Having record profits and fighting in court to be allowed to spend $70 Billion on a publisher acquisition while laying of 10,000 people is fucked up optics.

I don't know what the hell is going on at MS but none of this makes sense to me as an outsider looking in.

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This might help you understand. Both ABK acquisition and layoffs are short term expenses to increase long term income flow.

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It's not great optics, sure, but that's not how accounting "works". The financial impact of the 2 are completely different.

The $70B purchase has no operating impact(doesn't directly impact the income statement). However, reduction in force moves do. You can't say just spend the $70B to retain employees because sadly that's not how it "works".

It's unfortunate that these many people are impacted but let me tell you these decisions are never easy.

 

[Helix]

343 being built on the back of passionate contractors is just so absurd, you would assume the biggest franchise they fucking own could get some stability by keeping most of the head count full-time. They really need to fuck outta here with this contractor BS because it's actively hurting devs and funny enough even MS as they don't get to retain players if the game is fucked.

 

[Terbinator]

Riot about to make layoff announcements as well it seems.

It's about cutting costs and nothing else. Shuffling people around wouldn't get them that.

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? Cutting someones job in part of the business doesn't affect openings in other parts. We haven't heard anything about their teams that are actively hiring, such as PG, now pausing hiring.

If there's a vacancy in another brand/product it'd have been nice for them to get some sort of fast track process in place for them.

 

[behOemoth]

I do think it's a bit strange they go straight for the lay off rather than trying to move in to other MS studios (aka Playground).

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343i is US based and Playground is in UK.

 

[fenners]

one of my friend is just got fired.

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No, your friend got laid off. None of the people Microsoft got rid of yesterday were fired.

If you're fired, you lose benefit eligibility in the US, typically, but not if you're laid off.

 

[Jmdajr]

So much turmoil....

 

[convo]

343 being built on the back of passionate contractors is just so absurd, you would assume the biggest franchise they fucking own could get some stability by keeping most of the head count full-time. They really need to fuck outta here with this contractor BS because it's actively hurting devs and funny enough even MS as they don't get to retain players if the game is fucked.

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Using contractors means these people have less rights than full-time people right? That's a cost cutting thing that MS on the whole seems to like but for a Xbox game company that wants to do big games that are supposed to compete with Sony's big games, this just bleeds talent.

 

[Expy]

Using contractors means these people have less rights than full-time people right? That's a cost cutting thing that MS on the whole seems to like but for a Xbox game company that wants to do big games that are supposed to compete with Sony's big games, this just bleeds talent.

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Less rights is probably not the correct wording -- you probably meant benefits.

 

[convo]

Less rights is probably not the correct wording -- you probably meant benefits.

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Seems about right, i was thinking less job security.

 

[Ascenion]

Using contractors means these people have less rights than full-time people right? That's a cost cutting thing that MS on the whole seems to like but for a Xbox game company that wants to do big games that are supposed to compete with Sony's big games, this just bleeds talent.

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Contractors aren't even cost cutting. From a budgetary standpoint you are likely paying them more than the cost of hiring them full time. Though this is only true if you're using a staffing company like collabera or synechron. Say you're paying the contractor like $50/hr. You end up paying another $25 to the staffing company for the worker. So in total it's $75/hr for the contractor even though they only see $50/hr. It's only cost cutting in the sense that you never intended to hire them full time.

 

[Fargoth's Ring]

It's really cynical. The same Microsoft is buying ABK for 70B USD and adding another 10000 employees.

It's not because they don't have money, their business is still growing and they are posting record profits. It's because they need to please their shareholders as the user before me implied. This has always been the case.

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It's "interesting" how the ABK acquisition is adding the same amount of employees laid off. I might be misremembering but I think they said no ABK employees would be laid off after the acquisition so I guess this is their "Well, technically we said..."

 

[Dimple]

It's "interesting" how the ABK acquisition is adding the same amount of employees laid off. I might be misremembering but I think they said no ABK employees would be laid off after the acquisition so I guess this is their "Well, technically we said..."

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Phil said the same thing after the Bethesda acquisition and look how that's turned out…

 

[Rogote]

Phil said the same thing after the Bethesda acquisition and look how that's turned out…

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Lmao indeed. People gotta stop hopiuming on corporate PR bullshit.

 

[Soi-Fong]

343i was hit HARD. I feel like every other post on my LinkedIn is a layoff post about Microsoft or Amazon.

 

[BarnabyJones]

While it sucks to see people get laid off in ANY job, it happens. They had six years to make a game and it released with less content than any other Halo game in history. 10 whole years working on this franchise and the best thing 343i has done was bring the Bungie games to PC. Again, I understand it sucks to get laid off (it's happened to me multiple times) I can't say I'm surprised here…

 

[Zephyrhills]

Contractors aren't even cost cutting. From a budgetary standpoint you are likely paying them more than the cost of hiring them full time. Though this is only true if you're using a staffing company like collabera or synechron. Say you're paying the contractor like $50/hr. You end up paying another $25 to the staffing company for the worker. So in total it's $75/hr for the contractor even though they only see $50/hr. It's only cost cutting in the sense that you never intended to hire them full time.

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It's about benefits. When I was a contractor, I didn't get health coverage or paid time off (including sick days and holidays).

Also, from what I was told a few years ago, staffing agencies only make a few bucks per employee.

 

[Mung]

It's about benefits. When I was a contractor, I didn't get health coverage or paid time off (including sick days and holidays).

Also, from what I was told a few years ago, staffing agencies only make a few bucks per employee.

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Slightly OT, but it depends how you look at it. Another way to look at it is that (in most developed countries) healthcare and usually sick pay/paid time off are considered rights, not benefits, so you lose what should amount to basic rights by being employed this way. I know in the US is doesn't work like that.

 

[NinjaScooter]

While it sucks to see people get laid off in ANY job, it happens. They had six years to make a game and it released with less content than any other Halo game in history. 10 whole years working on this franchise and the best thing 343i has done was bring the Bungie games to PC. Again, I understand it sucks to get laid off (it's happened to me multiple times) I can't say I'm surprised here…

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You realize this is far from just a 343 issue and is impacting people all over the company?

 

[Zephyrhills]

Slightly op, but it depends how you look at it. Another way to look at it is that (in most developed countries) healthcare and sick pay are rights, not benefits, so you lose those rights by being employed this way. Clearly in the US its not the case.

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One of the biggest reasons why I am for universal healthcare here. It would give workers much more flexibility and freedom.

 

[megamanofnumbers]

Microsoft: "Mom said it's my turn to be EA."

 

[BarnabyJones]

You realize this is far from just a 343 issue and is impacting people all over the company?

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Oh I'm aware, but Im not talking about the others, am I?

 

[Cess007]

"To do more with less", they said

Microsoft Hosted Sting Performance in Davos on Night Before Announcing Layoffs

On Tuesday evening, Microsoft hosted an event. It was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives, who got to while away the evening listening to a performance by the musical artist Sting, said people familiar with the event. The concert would end up sounding a

www.wsj.com

 

[vixolus]

It's about benefits. When I was a contractor, I didn't get health coverage or paid time off (including sick days and holidays).

Also, from what I was told a few years ago, staffing agencies only make a few bucks per employee.

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Idk about staffing agency like randstad vs contracting consultant type company like Accenture, but from my experience my salary was like 71k and we were billing them close to 92/hr for my lower level qa engineering role. Insane disparity.

 

[nihilence]

A bespoke engine needs a dedicated and stable team. I don't think contractors and a bespoke engine are a good plan.

Unless contractors were just backend, art etc or periphery contributed, the debt to tech is massive.

In 18 months, how much time is spend learning before mastery? What could the masters be doing with their time if they weren't teaching?

I'm curious what onboarding is like.

 

[RPGam3r]

"To do more with less", they said

Microsoft Hosted Sting Performance in Davos on Night Before Announcing Layoffs

On Tuesday evening, Microsoft hosted an event. It was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives, who got to while away the evening listening to a performance by the musical artist Sting, said people familiar with the event. The concert would end up sounding a

www.wsj.com

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Yes, the executives want to do more fun things, and force less people to make them more money.

This is a bad look for them, fucking hold off your celebrations when you're aiming to sack thousands of employees.

 

[Ascenion]

It's about benefits. When I was a contractor, I didn't get health coverage or paid time off (including sick days and holidays).

Also, from what I was told a few years ago, staffing agencies only make a few bucks per employee.

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Different industry but our contract workers get paid $20/hr and the we pay and additional $12 to te staffing company. Long term it's cheaper to hire for 18 months than it is to effectively pay then $32 an hour. Benefits don't cost that much. Companies make it seem that way but it's a lie. They want an easy way to let you go

 

[gifyku]

Contractors aren't even cost cutting. From a budgetary standpoint you are likely paying them more than the cost of hiring them full time. Though this is only true if you're using a staffing company like collabera or synechron. Say you're paying the contractor like $50/hr. You end up paying another $25 to the staffing company for the worker. So in total it's $75/hr for the contractor even though they only see $50/hr. It's only cost cutting in the sense that you never intended to hire them full time.

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This is not fully accurate. A lot of these are due to government and accounting regulatory agency mandated ways on how to account for costs. Whether you can capitalize or treat it as an expense. There are accounting benefits to contractors versus FTEs, just as there are financial benefits for the company to have FTEs instead of (and especially highly paid) contractors.

It works the other way too. I know some folks who will not take FTE jobs and want to stay on contract because you can deduct your home and car expenses as a contractor for tax reasons. Of course, they dont get benefits from the company but if your partner has a FTE job, you can get added onto their plan or in many cases, you can join a group insurance plan for your university alumni or some such

If a project is time-bound, then yes there is the additional benefit of hiring and letting go of contractors at will but I guarantee that many of big corp FTE vs contractor ratios are simply due to how they are accounted for rather than ease of letting go

 

[PRrambo_]

The Rich always want more, and its everyone else who suffers

 

[Fat4all]

"To do more with less", they said

Microsoft Hosted Sting Performance in Davos on Night Before Announcing Layoffs

On Tuesday evening, Microsoft hosted an event. It was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives, who got to while away the evening listening to a performance by the musical artist Sting, said people familiar with the event. The concert would end up sounding a

www.wsj.com

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classic rich folk shit right here

 

[LJ11]

Different industry but our contract workers get paid $20/hr and the we pay and additional $12 to te staffing company. Long term it's cheaper to hire for 18 months than it is to effectively pay then $32 an hour. Benefits don't cost that much. Companies make it seem that way but it's a lie. They want an easy way to let you go

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I mean if you hire direct, you're probably paying, and I'm overshooting, 12% in employment taxes, so at 20/hr, it's 22.5/hr or so for an employee. Obviously, the big savings is that you don't have to offer benefit packages. Staffing companies pick up that cost for you, but most folks working for staffing companies don't sign up for benefit plans, work is short term, the packages suck, etc, so the staffing company pockets the extra they're charging you for the vast majority of hires.

This is not fully accurate. A lot of these are due to government and accounting regulatory agency mandated ways on how to account for costs. Whether you can capitalize or treat it as an expense. There are accounting benefits to contractors versus FTEs, just as there are financial benefits for the company to have FTEs instead of (and especially highly paid) contractors.

It works the other way too. I know some folks who will not take FTE jobs and want to stay on contract because you can deduct your home and car expenses as a contractor for tax reasons. Of course, they dont get benefits from the company but if your partner has a FTE job, you can get added onto their plan or in many cases, you can join a group insurance plan for your university alumni or some such

If a project is time-bound, then yes there is the additional benefit of hiring and letting go of contractors at will but I guarantee that many of big corp FTE vs contractor ratios are simply due to how they are accounted for rather than ease of letting go

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Good post.

 

[Precious Tritium]

"To do more with less", they said

Microsoft Hosted Sting Performance in Davos on Night Before Announcing Layoffs

On Tuesday evening, Microsoft hosted an event. It was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives, who got to while away the evening listening to a performance by the musical artist Sting, said people familiar with the event. The concert would end up sounding a

www.wsj.com

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To be fair, they booked Sting and not The Police.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Reported by Jason Schreier:

View: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1468593247324815361

And somewhat confirmed by a former Halo designer today:

View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615870908950007808

For the record I enjoyed Halo Infinite's multiplayer a lot, I love my Series X, but the way Halo support slowed to a trickle post launch (not to mention delays to other core features) shows that Microsoft just isn't giving Halo the attention it needs. It's a flagship franchise, it should be supported in the same way a Call Of Duty game or Fortnite is. Hot-swapping developers every few years undoubtedly hurt the development.


View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615866682521833474

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thanks for sharing!

this policy is so stupid. i've been at my current position for 20 months and i feel i'm only now starting to become somewhat productive. onboarding and training people on tools and processes takes so much time. and then you have to do handover and documentation when someone leaves. a policy that habitually throws people out after 18 months feels like it would basically slow progress in any organization down to a halt.

 

[Shemhazai]

To be fair, they booked Sting and not The Police.

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Megacorps only book The Police when people start talking about industrial action. 👉😎👉

 

[The Bookerman]

Don't get me wrong, I understand the business behind it. It's still fucked up and evil though especially as MS try to present themselves as the "good guys".

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This is strictly to look good for wall street's analysts. It's an ice cold move for numbers.

 

[Kitano]

This is strictly to look good for wall street's analysts. It's an ice cold move for numbers.

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Not just for numbers. Didn't like to say this but these lay-offs also serve to push out underperforming employees easier.

I'm not saying everyone being laid-off have a bad performance (actually I think the vast majority of the 10,000 is not in this case), but it's a way to do that, mainly when your company has over 200k employees.

 

[The Bookerman]

Not just for numbers. Didn't like to say this but these lay-offs also serve to push out underperforming employees easier.

I'm not saying everyone being laid-off have a bad performance (actually I think the vast majority of the 10,000 is not in this case), but it's a way to do that, mainly when your company has over 200k employees.

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Sure but that's not 5% of your staff that underperforms

 

[Deleted member 129418]

EA... It's just... Let's not talk there.

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I think I might be forgetting something, is EA bad to work for nowadays?

 

[kostacurtas]

 

[zombiejames]

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Is MS still planning on supporting Halo Infinite for a decade? Losing 30 artists, jeeze…

 

[vixolus]

Is MS still planning on supporting Halo Infinite for a decade? Losing 30 artists, jeeze…

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1. Halo Infinite itself was very likely never going to be supported for ten years.
2. Chris Lee said Halo Infinite would serve as the launch point for the Halo franchise for the next 10 years. Likely to have been like a Destiny vision where even if Destiny 2 came along later, Destiny was the launch point.

"We want Infinite to grow over time, versus going to those numbered titles and having all that segmentation that we had before," he said in an interview with IGN shortly after the Xbox Games Showcase. "It's really about creating Halo Infinite as the start of the next ten years for Halo and then building that as we go with our fans and community."

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3. Chris Lee bailed so his plan is moot.

 

[Capt Sensib1e]

Feel bad for Bethesda employees undergoing these Western public corporation cullings, and it won't be the last, MS will do it again and again for fractionally better profit margins and exec bonuses. Was about to say the same for AB but they already go through this derp.

 

[M.Bluth]

Not just for numbers. Didn't like to say this but these lay-offs also serve to push out underperforming employees easier.

I'm not saying everyone being laid-off have a bad performance (actually I think the vast majority of the 10,000 is not in this case), but it's a way to do that, mainly when your company has over 200k employees.

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When you're pushing out employees out of the company due to projects failing due to your mismanagement (which has been ongoing for the better part of a decade at this point), suggesting a bunch of those people are underperforming employees is just gross.

 

[Watership]

Google just announced they're laying off 12,000 employees today.

Google to lay off 12,000 people — read the memo CEO Sundar Pichai sent to staff

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, said in an email sent to the company's staff Friday that the firm will lay off 12,000 employees.

www.cnbc.com

Here are the numbers of tech layoffs in the few months, and it's horrible.

Facebook: 11 000
Amazon: 18 000
Microsoft 10 000
Google 12 000

 

[IIFloodyII]

Google just announced they're laying off 12,000 employees today.

Google to lay off 12,000 people — read the memo CEO Sundar Pichai sent to staff

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, said in an email sent to the company's staff Friday that the firm will lay off 12,000 employees.

www.cnbc.com

Here are the numbers of tech layoffs in the few months, and it's horrible.

Facebook: 11 000
Amazon: 18 000
Microsoft 10 000
Google 12 000

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Collectively them 4 made hundreds of billions in profit and just cut 50k people like it was nothing. Big tech definitely deserve a good slapping about, sure they will continue gobbling up everything though, laying off hundreds of thousands of people when they are done.

 

[platocplx]

Collectively them 4 made hundreds of billions in profit and just cut 50k people like it was nothing. Big tech definitely deserve a good slapping about, sure they will continue gobbling up everything though, laying off hundreds of thousands of people when they are done.

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yep they are utterly reckless. MS for example had 20 freaking acquistions from 2020 to now.
Google acquired 22 companies in that time.
Amazon acquired 12 companies.

Shit is ridiculous.

 

[Outtrigger888]

Starting to lose faith in Phil and his direction with Xbox at this point. His hands off approach when obviously some of these studios needed better direction and leadership is on him as head of Xbox.

 

[M.Bluth]

Collectively them 4 made hundreds of billions in profit and just cut 50k people like it was nothing. Big tech definitely deserve a good slapping about, sure they will continue gobbling up everything though, laying off hundreds of thousands of people when they are done.

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They really need to be broken up into tiny little pieces already.