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Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

bloomberg.com

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Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#101

Post by Tainnor »

hiddencost wrote: post #82
mjr00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder also how much of a driver new programmer productivity tools like copilot and ChatGPT are factoring into this. If your top 10% productivity workers just got a 30%+ productivity boost, that means you can easily shed the bottom 20% productive workers and still be ahead of the game. I can confidently say that this factors in 0%. Layoffs were happening in the industry even before the LLM craze. And a 30% overal…

A lot of big shops are choking under bureaucracy and process right now, which is the sort of things LLMs are good at.

How does an LLM help when you can't get anyone to sign off on a change, or when QA is understaffed, or when there's too many stakeholders making conflicting and sometimes nonsensical requirements?

That kind of stuff can't be solved by technology.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#102

Post by spywaregorilla »

bpiche wrote: post #40
voisin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Sweeney would like us all to agree that it is Apple’s fault for their App Store policies.

And he'd blame Valve, too. EGS might be great for devs, but it's not good for users. It's not a big conspiracy against him. People just don't want to use the store! Whining in the face of obvious failure makes you look like a real loser.

Can you show evidence of him "blaming" Valve? I'm not aware of that. And it appears as though you are criticizing his character based on a behavior he didn't do.

Off the top of my head I can think of him saying the Valve Steamdeck is great: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/141575567884990054...

And him saying that Valve not demanding crossplay is bad.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#104

Post by mulmen »

eigenvalue wrote: post #26

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

I’d love to know how these top developers are identified. What’s this mythical productivity metric? If Epic has one that accurately models productivity they should 1) share individual scores with their employees and 2) stop wasting time on games and start selling it to every other corporation.

If they really did over-hire during the pandemic and fail to plan for the future that was either 1) intentional and they lied to recruits about the duration of employment or 2) incompetence on the part of leadership and recruiting. Have heads rolled in the responsible departments?

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#106

Post by gumballindie »

eigenvalue wrote: post #26

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

> ChatGPT are factoring into this

Likely not a reason for layoffs. If someone was fired due to llms it was probably due to the incompetence to think the chat bot is more than a data leaking search engine.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#107

Post by rstat1 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #84
voisin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Sweeney would like us all to agree that it is Apple’s fault for their App Store policies.

How much revenue do we believe Epic Games lost due to them not being on iOS or Android anymore?

They're still on Android because of side-loading, so probably not as much as they'd want you to believe.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#108

Post by pgeorgi »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #79
5g45h45j wrote: post #66

[flagged]

When it's not ridiculously easy to get rehired at a stupidly high salary relative to median wages. Unions happen in industries that are both not fighting for employees and not particularly well paid.

Pilots are pretty well paid and sought after, and have a US/Canada union that is 74000 members strong...

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#110

Post by jayd16 »

hiddencost wrote: post #82
mjr00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder also how much of a driver new programmer productivity tools like copilot and ChatGPT are factoring into this. If your top 10% productivity workers just got a 30%+ productivity boost, that means you can easily shed the bottom 20% productive workers and still be ahead of the game. I can confidently say that this factors in 0%. Layoffs were happening in the industry even before the LLM craze. And a 30% overal…

A lot of big shops are choking under bureaucracy and process right now, which is the sort of things LLMs are good at.

Wait until Atlassian starts adding AI generated tickets.
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