Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 179 posts

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#81

Post by thfuran »

hnlmorg wrote: post #80
thfuran wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbyists don't exist to accurately inform the populace or to profess sincerely held beliefs but to effect advantageous political change.

Indeed. My point is that the “job creator” argument is flip flopped depending on whatever is convenient.

There's not even a contradiction there, let alone flip flopping: That businesses create jobs doesn't imply that job creation is their primary purpose, and getting two different answers to two different questions from two different people simply is not flip flopping.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#82

Post by wddkcs »

yorf89 wrote: post #16
jibe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This started with the CEO being removed, so I think, Yes!

Except he's still getting paid until April. I doubt the employees getting the sack because of this will be extended the same sweet deal. Pretty messed up that you can fuck up and make hundreds lose their jobs, and get paid for several months afterwards to do literally nothing.

There's one CEO, and n employees. The one will always receive preferred treatment, over the many. Is it pretty fucked up that 1+1=2? Both are constants in the universe.

Whether he did a good job is irrelevant, he did a job and got paid for it. It'd be pretty fucked up if the board hired him, then didn't pay him per contract.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#83

Post by DeathArrow »

Unity promised much but never delivered. DOTS is a mess. For AAA you are better with Unreal and for small games Godot might be enough.

Unity's only advantage is the huge community and the tons of stuff in their store and the huge number of tutorials.

Anyway, I am glad I exited game de few years ago and I am much happier doing web development and microservices.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#84

Post by johnnyanmac »

initplus wrote: post #45
luaKmua wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No love for Unity here, their licensing debacle was horrendous, but I've seen no indications that DOTS is responsible for CS2 perf issues. Everything I've seen points to other things lacking in the engine (a decent LODing system for example), general optimization issues that'd be present in any game shipped too early, and inefficiencies in the rendering pipeline.

"Unfortunately a lot of the graphics-related issues are indirectly caused by the game’s use of DOTS" "The cause for unnecessary geometry is both the lack of simplified LOD variants for many of the game’s meshes, as well as the simplistic and seemingly untuned culling implementation. And the reason why the game has its own culling implementation instead of using Unity’s built in solution (which should at least in theo…

I was wondering if and how they were using DOTS with HDRP since (from brief pokes, I of course can't speak for all of DOTS) to my knowledge, there was no major work done integrating HDRP/URP. Both were moving targets that were probably moving even faster than DOTS.

I guess the answer is an unfortunate "we did not" as of now. Real shame because the ideas of a proper DOTS renderer (not a literal renderer, moreso an ECS oriented way to deliver data to the GPU. Likely HDRP/URP) was one rumbling for years. And probably still is. And with all the industry layoffs/leavings I hope they don't drain too much of the brain to get that off the ground.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#85

Post by vasco »

thfuran wrote: post #79
vasco wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one view of the world. One people try to push for but I don't agree with. It's OK for companies to have a lifecycle associated with what they do. There's no need for companies to be behemots that last forever. If you are a hat company, to me there's no direct implications that tells me it's better for society if the hat company starts making shoes vs the company ending and different cohorts of employees going…

But a company deciding "okay, were done" and just shutting down is effectively laying off 100% of the staff. This company's leadership is already getting flak for laying off under 4%.

Sure and laying off 100% of staff might be better for society if you can replace the jobs with higher productivity ones somewhere else.

Same with unions, instead of starting one to fix a dystopian company with bad leadership, could be better to have the employees leave and have the company go downhill than trying to fix something that isn't worth fixing.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#86

Post by johnnyanmac »

bob1029 wrote: post #69
Stevvo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues with CS:2 are well documented and nothing do with DOTS; it was entirely the game developers fault.

The vendor of the tools should always try to empathize with the users of their tools and make the experience better. Even if the user insists on being a little bit weird. Perhaps especially so. We like to chase the most difficult customers. It forces us to have the best products.

Unity isn't one tool, however. DOTS does a lot of amazing things, but most of its job is done on the CPU. and issues here sound like GPU laden issues. DOTS could certainly do a better job talking to HDRP but DOTS has always been talked about as "in alpha/beta" until mid 2022. those integrations and polish are the exact reasons why, and I argue that it came out of beta much too early as is.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#87

Post by johnnyanmac »

lmm wrote: post #22
dsgnr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more like its to save money on office real estate and the fees that come with that like cleaning services, security, etc than it is about being employee friendly.

Whatever their reasons, the end result sounds good for employees.

Unity is a worldwide company and while the HQ is now in San francisco, the origins lie in Copenhagen. There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases, and Unity was adjusted to telecommuncations well before the pandemic due to that.

So I'm not too surprised it chose to size down physical locations when push came to shove, compared to other tech companies in SV doubling down on their billion dollar real estate they built.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#88

Post by CaptainFever »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #6

>and end an agreement with a digital video effects company [Weta Digital] Man, what did I even get laid off for if they were gonna cut off their billion dollar acquisition anyway? Thought they'd at least leverage that talent and tech to properly compete with Unreal in the Film space. But alas. More unfulfilled dreams.

I was intending to join Unity as an intern, only to realise that the entire office had closed.

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#89

Post by quit-the-woke »

unity is a mess on the inside

there are slack channels practically devoted to political bickering

i was disgusted with what I saw there (outside of my own engineering team which was actually quite decent with the exception of one person) and left within 3 months

Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'

#90

Post by ThatPlayer »

kfarr wrote: post #62
kalleboo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have assumed the game engine would be responsible for culling occluded objects. Isn't that one of the most basic parts of a 3D renderer?

Yes I would expect that from a 3d engine that I pay a license fee towards, but I also expect the developer to performance test and fix some of these things before release

Developer prioritize features and fixes. You don't know if there were worse issues before release. It should be on the managers and the publisher to set reasonable timelines and delay release when it can't meet expectations.
Post reply on HN