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[Men_in_Boxes]

Obviously we're hearing a lot of people call companies and CEOs evil, greedy, and selfish for laying employees off right now.

I don't even want to challenge that concept. I'll accept that idea for the sake of the discussion.

But if that's true, then doesn't that mean CEOs + companies are good, generous, and benevolent when they hire employees and grow studios?

Why does it feel like people never bring up the other side of the coin when these people create jobs? Why is it acceptable to moralize others when things go bad, but not when things go good?

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I aint praising them for creating more wage slaves

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I aint praising them for creating more wage slaves

 

[Krieger]

Why are you always making such shitty threads?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Why are you always making such shitty threads?

Because you're taking too long making your awesome threads.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Layoffs is as natural as growth and hiring. And it allows companies to bypass years of pain and the shitty employees that are hard to fire go first.

 

[MikeM]

CEO of EA making $20 million+ which is well over 200 times a $100k salary gets no sympathy from me.

These layoffs indicate a failure of his vision which means he should be laid off with them. He is the most expensive employee.

Yes- I hate how overcompensated these CEOs are. No one is worth that much money.

 

[mdkirby]

As an entrepreneur for 20 years (partner never ceo, I’m a creative), with multiple companies, and whom most my friends are also business owners, at least from my experience no ceo wants to lay off good people, unless there’s very good reasons. Most would be pretty heartbroken having to do so, unless you’re a sociopath, it’s not pleasant even letting go people who underperform.

When you occasionally read emotional linked in posts from CEO’s following layoffs, whilst coming off pretty tone deaf, many will be really genuine and heartfelt.

A lot of the current wave will be finance departments taking a long hard look at the books, relaying that to the ceo and them then having to make difficult decisions.

I’m not entirely sure exactly what is going on in the games industry specifically the last couple of years, it’s certainly unusual, sometimes it’s obvious, such as embracer but some come from seemingly very profitable companies making massive cuts. At some point the picture will become clear, but there’ll 100% good reasons.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

CEO of EA making $20 million+ which is well over 200 times a $100k salary gets no sympathy from me.

These layoffs indicate a failure of his vision which means he should be laid off with them. He is the most expensive employee.

Yes- I hate how overcompensated these CEOs are. No one is worth that much money.

But that's not the topic here.

I'm talking specifically about the idea that these companies are greedy & selfish during layoffs but no one calls them altruistic & benevolent during hiring sprees.

 

[Aion002]

It is. Some people cheered for MS buying ABK and then complained when they started firing people.

 

[SHA]

AI will make them smaller in number as a team but bigger in contents.

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

Obviously we're hearing a lot of people call companies and CEOs evil, greedy, and selfish for laying employees off right now.

They are, yeah.

I don't even want to challenge that concept. I'll accept that idea for the sake of the discussion.

Okay.

But if that's true, then doesn't that mean CEOs + companies are good, generous, and benevolent when they hire employees and grow studios?

Those three words don't apply to those actions.
Because hiring employees and growing studios is part of your job as a CEO, or a Company.

Generous, good or benevolent, would arguably apply to that one story about that one Nintendo CEO (Satoru Iwata, If I'm not mistaken), and forgive me for not having the exact story here, but he cut off his own salary, to avoid lay offs.

Caring about the well being of your company, and your employees, makes you a generous or good CEO/Company. That's also doing your job, but putting greed in second place. And that's a respectful thing to do.

Why does it feel like people never bring up the other side of the coin when these people create jobs?

Again, you don't get a cookie for doing your job.

Why is it acceptable to moralize others when things go bad, but not when things go good?

Because in this situation, "doing good", based on what you described, is doing your job.

"Doing bad", in this situation, is putting people's lives at risk or straight up ruining them for a lot of people, because you want more profits.

 

[Megatron]

I aint praising them for creating more wage slaves

Yeah it would be way better if nobody had jobs and we were all on food stamps.

 

[Sleepwalker]

But that's not the topic here.

I'm talking specifically about the idea that these companies are greedy & selfish during layoffs but no one calls them altruistic & benevolent during hiring sprees.

They are greedy during layoffs because they want to make the books look better

They are greedy during growth because they believe hires will support more growth and make the books look better.


Companies are greedy at all times, that's literally what they are supposed to be.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Yeah it would be way better if nobody had jobs and we were all on food stamps.

Better if they were ded

 

[username12]

Yeah it would be way better if nobody had jobs and we were all on food stamps.

That's the plan.

 

[Kataploom]

CEOs are just employees following orders, afaik they don't decide those important matters but directors board. Can be won't tho.

In any case, they can't be greedy for laying people off, the company is not theirs unless they are like Bobby kotic who bought Activision, raised it and managed it himself

 

[mdkirby]

But that's not the topic here.

I'm talking specifically about the idea that these companies are greedy & selfish during layoffs but no one calls them altruistic & benevolent during hiring sprees.

Hmm if you’re viewing this through a very narrow lens, specifically framed to this question. Then arguably both actions could be considered greed, or both actions altruistic.

Pretty much all businesses are created with the goal of creating money/wealth, for yourself and your family. This could be out of a desire purely for wealth, or as a means to be remunerated for a passion and building something YOU want to make vs fulfilling someone else’s dream. Some businesses such as my own may have a secondary goal of actually helping people, but at the end of the day it’s still to make money. That money can enrich you further and/or help more people. Thus growth is intimately tied to the former mentioned traits of greed/selfishness. As growth facilitates more revenue and more wealth. Conversely tho, laying people off can be considered benevolent/altruistic as those actions are generally taken to ensure the survival of the business itself, and thus preserve the jobs of those who remain, vs everybody losing their jobs, and if your secondary business goal was to bring joy or help millions of people, then the action of layoffs is also to enable you to continue to serve those goals and continue to serve your customers.

So it’s not a black and white matter, just as most things aren’t, no matter how much we as societies like to dilute things down to being,

 

[Woopah]

Because people don't create jobs to be good or benevolent. They do so because work needs to be done to create a profit.

 

[RedC]

Layoffs is as natural as growth and hiring. And it allows companies to bypass years of pain and the shitty employees that are hard to fire go first.

I wouldn't necessarily label them shitty employees that are hard to fire go first, it's typically the less essential positions in producing the product go first.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Generous, good or benevolent, would arguably apply to that one story about that one Nintendo CEO (Satoru Iwata, If I'm not mistaken), and forgive me for not having the exact story here, but he cut off his own salary, to avoid lay offs.

Caring about the well being of your company, and your employees, makes you a generous or good CEO/Company. That's also doing your job, but putting greed in second place. And that's a respectful thing to do.

Again, you don't get a cookie for doing your job.

Because in this situation, "doing good", based on what you described, is doing your job.

"Doing bad", in this situation, is putting people's lives at risk or straight up ruining them for a lot of people, because you want more profits.

So hiring people is their job but...laying people off is not their job?

Hmmmm...interesting.

It's almost like telling a baseball player that getting on base is his job and striking out is not his job.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Why does it feel like people never bring up the other side of the coin when these people create jobs? Why is it acceptable to moralize others when things go bad, but not when things go good?

Because of three main reasons.

1. People are self serving and just care about how much money and comp they got. The second they see or hear about other people who make more money they get whiney and want more. Even when a company is sinking or going broke and everyone is smart enough to know that, they know very well they are getting overpaid and lucky to even have a job. Getting paid while the company spirals down the toilet and they keep expecting to get paid top dollar doing poorly is some kind of entitlement.

2. When companies lay off people, it's big news and often done in a big event. So it becomes news and easy to understand. Not very exciting if news gets out Google has been hiring on average lets say 50 people per day for the past 5 years. totaling 50,000 people. But it's big news if they chop 5,000 people. As an example, Google has almost 10x the employee count from 20,000 to 180,000 (was 190,000) since 2009. I have never seen one person or article applaud them for hiring 160,000 net high paying workers. That amount of people is more than some small towns.

Alphabet: Number of Employees 2010-2024 | GOOG

Interactive chart of Alphabet (GOOG) annual worldwide employee count from 2010 to 2024. <ul style='margin-top:10px;'> <li>Alphabet total number of employees in 2023 was <strong>182,502</strong>, a <strong>4.06% decline</strong> from 2022.</li> <li>Alphabet total number of...

www.macrotrends.net

3. People treat companies like charity. They dont expect their parents, schools or government to act this way. But once some people get hired, they expect the bosses to act like adult babysitters who will pay them good money even if they arent needed or do a bad job. Then ask them if they were in their shoes and in charge of a company with a budget and if they'd keep on the payroll redundancies or lazy tools and every one if them will say they'd gas them too.

 

[Hudo]

I think that if business isn't running well and you have to lay off people, the first thing you'd need to do as CEO is openly discuss why the business is in the shit and that you and the upper management have failed and take a 65%+ pay cut until shit is fixed. To at least reduce the amount of people that need to be laid off.
Most CEOs don't do that. Most CEOs don't take accountability.

 

[Meicyn]

Most CEOs don't take accountability.

Yep. When the consequences for bad decisions arrive, it generally isn’t CEOs that pay the price. This is where the resentment and anger stems from.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I think that if business isn't running well and you have to lay off people, the first thing you'd need to do as CEO is openly discuss why the business is in the shit and that you and the upper management have failed and take a 65%+ pay cut until shit is fixed. To at least reduce the amount of people that need to be laid off.
Most CEOs don't do that. Most CEOs don't take accountability.

But the CEO is significantly more valuable to the long term health of the company than the small number of low efficiency employees he/she would retain by taking that pay cut.

I see that it's a nice gesture but it doesn't really help you grow.

 

[ResilientBanana]

The PSVR2 is not wireless, costs $550, and doesn’t work on PC. The consumer value of this thing is absolute garbage. It’s not a good buy for those that have experience with VR and has no added value compared to the cheaper competition.

Quite frankly, the Meta Quest 2 surpasses its functionality and has far more content available to it.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

But the CEO is significantly more valuable to the long term health of the company than the small number of low efficiency employees he/she would retain by taking that pay cut.

I see that it's a nice gesture but it doesn't really help you grow.

Bare minimum they should cut off their pinky

 

[cireza]

The issue here is that actions taken during growth are unreasonable and uncontrolled. If companies were not totally dumb to begin with, they wouldn't invest like crazy in buying studios and recruiting more people.

This why it ends with layoffs. Simply because the people at the helm are totally dumb. This includes Jim Ryan and Phil Spencer, of course. Look at Nintendo and give it a second of thought.

 

[RoboFu]

Did you know if you made 1 million dollars in one year in the us you have to pay around 475k in taxes? That's almost half. If the federal governments were not so corrupted we wouldn't have as many layoffs. But right now they made it almost impossible for a company to make a lot of money steadily.

 

[Danjin44]

Men_in_Boxes I’m starting to think you don’t play games at all and instead sit your ass and look at market share see how CEOs and corporation can make more money.

 

[Hudo]

But the CEO is significantly more valuable to the long term health of the company than the small number of low efficiency employees he/she would retain by taking that pay cut.

It also doesn't help you grow if the CEO and the rest of the upper management (and the board of directors) getting paid like everything's fine. And a CEO can also be easily replaced, so it depends on how you define "valuable".

Imho, the most "valuable" people in a company are those who have intimate knowledge of the product/services and their inner workings and philosophies that are company offers. These people carry the company. And these people are also usually the ones getting booted quite early when shit doesn't work out. Not management. And that's why people hate CEOs and management. Because of the failure to take responsibility. Success gets spread from the top to the bottom (where the bottom gets nothing, really) but responsibility is taken from the bottom to the top (where the top doesn't suffer any consequences until shit REALLY goes sour. Meaning that the company is on its way toward bankruptcy).

 

[Meicyn]

But the CEO is significantly more valuable to the long term health of the company than the small number of low efficiency employees he/she would retain by taking that pay cut.

I see that it's a nice gesture but it doesn't really help you grow.

The CEO’s value is debatable if they put the company into a position where they’re having to make large cuts in the first place. If they positioned the company in a manner that makes them unable to weather a storm, they aren’t focused on long term health. They’re chasing short term shareholder value.

 

[MikeM]

As an entrepreneur for 20 years (partner never ceo, I’m a creative), with multiple companies, and whom most my friends are also business owners, at least from my experience no ceo wants to lay off good people, unless there’s very good reasons. Most would be pretty heartbroken having to do so, unless you’re a sociopath, it’s not pleasant even letting go people who underperform.

When you occasionally read emotional linked in posts from CEO’s following layoffs, whilst coming off pretty tone deaf, many will be really genuine and heartfelt.

A lot of the current wave will be finance departments taking a long hard look at the books, relaying that to the ceo and them then having to make difficult decisions.

I’m not entirely sure exactly what is going on in the games industry specifically the last couple of years, it’s certainly unusual, sometimes it’s obvious, such as embracer but some come from seemingly very profitable companies making massive cuts. At some point the picture will become clear, but there’ll 100% good reasons.

If it was genuinely heartfelt, they ask for a pay cut to save 100 or so jobs. Lets be real- CEOs making massive amounts of money are not there because theu care about employees. You need certain traits to value dollars infinitely more over lives.

But the CEO is significantly more valuable to the long term health of the company than the small number of low efficiency employees he/she would retain by taking that pay cut.

I see that it's a nice gesture but it doesn't really help you grow.

Imagine this: CEO takes a vacation, business still runs.

Every single employee disappears for a week. Nothing runs.

This idea that CEOs are more valuable long term than normal employees is just flat out wrong. A captain without good sailors is going to have a bad time.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I just don't like millionaires.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

If it was genuinely heartfelt, they ask for a pay cut to save 100 or so jobs. Lets be real- CEOs making massive amounts of money are not there because theu care about employees. You need certain traits to value dollars infinitely more over lives.

Why do you want to save 100 jobs if you deem those people as being a drain on the trajectory of the company?

You want to lose inefficiency for the wellbeing of the whole.

Imagine this: CEO takes a vacation, business still runs.

Every single employee disappears for a week. Nothing runs.

This idea that CEOs are more valuable long term than normal employees is just flat out wrong. A captain without good sailors is going to have a bad time.

You just equated one person taking a vacation to...all the people taking a vacation.

This almost feels like an admission that the CEO is worth exponentially more than any single employee.

 

[balls of snow]

By all means, kiss the millionaires ass maybe they will share some of that wealth with you.
Maybe not.

 

[PropellerEar]

Because of three main reasons.

1. People are self serving and just care about how much money and comp they got. The second they see or hear about other people who make more money they get whiney and want more. Even when a company is sinking or going broke and everyone is smart enough to know that, they know very well they are getting overpaid and lucky to even have a job. Getting paid while the company spirals down the toilet and they keep expecting to get paid top dollar doing poorly is some kind of entitlement.

2. When companies lay off people, it's big news and often done in a big event. So it becomes news and easy to understand. Not very exciting if news gets out Google has been hiring on average lets say 50 people per day for the past 5 years. totaling 50,000 people. But it's big news if they chop 5,000 people. As an example, Google has almost 10x the employee count from 20,000 to 180,000 (was 190,000) since 2009. I have never seen one person or article applaud them for hiring 160,000 net high paying workers. That amount of people is more than some small towns.

Alphabet: Number of Employees 2010-2024 | GOOG

Interactive chart of Alphabet (GOOG) annual worldwide employee count from 2010 to 2024. <ul style='margin-top:10px;'> <li>Alphabet total number of employees in 2023 was <strong>182,502</strong>, a <strong>4.06% decline</strong> from 2022.</li> <li>Alphabet total number of...

www.macrotrends.net

3. People treat companies like charity. They dont expect their parents, schools or government to act this way. But once some people get hired, they expect the bosses to act like adult babysitters who will pay them good money even if they arent needed or do a bad job. Then ask them if they were in their shoes and in charge of a company with a budget and if they'd keep on the payroll redundancies or lazy tools and every one if them will say they'd gas them too.

Spoken like a dead weight low level middle management.

 

[Wildebeest]

It is also selfish to hire them because if you have a lot of staff you can easily let go of, who don't seem to do much, it means you hired them to make your empire look bigger and more impressive to investors. Which is greedy.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The CEO’s value is debatable if they put the company into a position where they’re having to make large cuts in the first place. If they positioned the company in a manner that makes them unable to weather a storm, they aren’t focused on long term health. They’re chasing short term shareholder value.

But shouldn't we all be looking at this through a strategic lense rather than a moral lense?

If your CEO is positioning your company towards short term shareholder value, then your company is going to lose out to the one's focused on long term health over time.

The companies currently being criticized for being immoral are the ones who have historically valued long term health over short term shareholder value. PlayStation, EA, ABK have created thousands of well paying jobs over the last 25+ years.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

By all means, kiss the millionaires ass maybe they will share some of that wealth with you.
Maybe not.

I'm more interested in learning how systems work and why our current system has produced the best games and created the most jobs over the last 30 years.

 

[mdkirby]

If it was genuinely heartfelt, they ask for a pay cut to save 100 or so jobs. Lets be real- CEOs making massive amounts of money are not there because theu care about employees. You need certain traits to value dollars infinitely more over lives.

Imagine this: CEO takes a vacation, business still runs.

Every single employee disappears for a week. Nothing runs.

This idea that CEOs are more valuable long term than normal employees is just flat out wrong. A captain without good sailors is going to have a bad time.

Most CEO’s aren’t making 100x, you’re talking about a much rarer class of ceo/company. Most are SME’s, where the CEO is the founder, they are passionate about their company and often their staff. What you’re talking about is a company like activision. The CEO was brought in externally, likely by a board vote, quite often the founding CEO would have been voted out of their position to achieve this. They’ll have been brought in due to their expertise in delivering substantial growth, and revenue. They’ll be attracted to the role exclusively by money, so they are offered huge sums to facilitate that, the CEO of activision, for all his many failings was excellent at that, which is what justified his obscene wage. CEO’s like that for companies of that size (thousands) yes will care much less and yes are likely motivated primarily by greed, they will know very few of the employees. Activision for instance had many companies under their wing, the ceo of those smaller companies would know their employees and may well be the founders, they will likely care very much. I expect the recent news about toys for Bob is exactly due to that reason, and is likely the ceo / management using their own money to secure their independence in part to protect their employees.

You can’t paint all CEOs with the same brush that can be used for the much rarer mega corps, most of the world companies are SMEs not mega corps.

 

[Dazraell]

 

[SoloCamo]

Yes- I hate how overcompensated these CEOs are. No one is worth that much money.

I've worked in multiple large companies and I've yet to meet one who was.

 

[VolticArchangel]

Day by day, I'm more and more convinced that Men_in_Boxes is one among the 100's of John Ritticiello's GAF alts used for shilling.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Spoken like a dead weight low level middle management.

LOL. Maybe, maybe not.

But I got a job and just got the highest bonus ever for 2023, a pay increase, and my annual bonus % got increased too. Do a good job and keep your job.

Random thoughts.

I’m always amazed at how long people are willing to drive around a parking lot looking for a “good” spot when there are plenty of spots open towards the back that they’re too lazy to walk from.

www.neogaf.com

 

[Robb]

That’s just how it is in any high position, be it at a company, in politics, or anything else.

Do everything perfectly and no one bats an eye or even knows who you are outside of work. Fuck up or do something that is largely frowned upon and suddenly people care and will walk through fire to tell you how awful you are with disregard for, and likely lack of knowledge of, anything positive you ever done prior.

 

[metaru_geah_sorrido]

There is growth and there is mis-management. CEO's should be able to redirect their labor efficiently for the companies best interest, not just shareholders.
Cutting all your staff because you have been sold on the idea that AI will replace your software engineers seems short sighted to me, but also, highly profitable, up until the point where they have to hire them back at less that what they were paying them before.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Obviously we're hearing a lot of people call companies and CEOs evil, greedy, and selfish for laying employees off right now.

I don't even want to challenge that concept. I'll accept that idea for the sake of the discussion.

But if that's true, then doesn't that mean CEOs + companies are good, generous, and benevolent when they hire employees and grow studios?

Why does it feel like people never bring up the other side of the coin when these people create jobs? Why is it acceptable to moralize others when things go bad, but not when things go good?

We wouldn't have these kind of layoffs if C-Suite didn't worship at the false altar of perpetual growth and actually acted responsibly in the first place.


Oh and didn't have such nonsensically huge compensation packages to begin with.

 

[AV]

Because it's a company, not a dog.

 

[intbal]

Because you're taking too long making your awesome threads.

I don't care about this thread, but I approve of this rapid clap back.