3.8% is lower than most required attrition programs at FAANG
It's the 4th round of layoffs in under 2 years
Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
101–110 of 179 posts
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
>There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases Sure, but from what I saw a lot of these VFX/arts/game studios despite being international, still mandate their teams to be in-office a certain amount of days per week due to the nature of creative work. Especially that certain things like a games or VFX tend to not have their development spread internationally, but are us…
Yeah, games are in a weird place because console dev kits were paranoid as all hell when it came to usage. There'd be office mandates purely because you couldn't take those home, nor even remote into one without a bunch of red tape. There's still remnants of that to this day, which is probably why they couldn't be even more aggressive on remote status.
That is fortunately one big thing loosened over COVID, though; could never imagine having a devkit in my own house before 2020.
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can't speak too much for the vfx industry. I imagine its similar culture and NDA contracts in terms of where content can "stay".
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
Any cost cutting measure is silly when they choose to have their HQ in SF over Copenhagen.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases Sure, but from what I saw a lot of these VFX/arts/game studios despite being international, still mandate their teams to be in-office a certain amount of days per week due to the nature of creative work. Especially that certain things like a games or VFX tend to not have their development spread internationally, but are us…
Yeah, games are in a weird place because console dev kits were paranoid as all hell when it came to usage. There'd be office mandates purely because you couldn't take those home, nor even remote into one without a bunch of red tape. There's still remnants of that to this day, which is probably why they couldn't be even more aggressive on remote status. That is fortunately one big thing loosened over COVID, though; co…
Devkits have been software locked for a while now and need an always on internet connectivity to the mothership to work, so even if the HW kit would leak onto e-bay, there's nothing you can do with them as they would immediately be backlisted and usually that leads to the studio being blacklisted as well for the blunder so it's natural the studios don't want them to leave the office. You never know which disgruntled employee would rage-quit taking the devkit with him leaving you to deal with the wrath from the console manufacturer.
When I was doing some security evaluations on a gaming console it was mandatory to lock the HW samples in a vault at the end of the business day when the last person to leave the office was done with them. Naturally that made WFH impossible even during covid.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Same with unions, instead of starting one to fix a dystopian company
There is immense value in the company structures themself. You can't just bail and take them with you. The inertia of the customer base for example. It has to be really bad to not be worth fixing if the alternative is redo from the ground up.
Some fields have less moat though.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#106Earlier 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?
For a zoomed out view with tiny people walking around, that would be mostly be a case for LOD, not culling. That is, you wouldn't render a highly-detailed character model and cull out each tooth mesh individually, which would still be very expensive, but you should render a simplified mesh to begin with.
In the case of this game, the mouths were never open, the teeth were never visible at all. Which is obviously a massive failure of the developers (using a prefab model with a ton of completely unused detail is a waste of everyones bandwidth, storage and memory), but the teeth should at least never be rendered by the engine.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
Any cost cutting measure is silly when they choose to have their HQ in SF over Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is one of the most expensive cities in the world, also the employees are expensive and the candidate pool is smaller. And then there's the timezone issue as I assume most of the leadership is in the US.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#108unity 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
>there are slack channels practically devoted to political bickering What kind of political bickering? Internal company politics or government/social/identity politics?
Check his username for an answer
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm c-suite and the most important function of layoffs is to preserve the business as an ongoing concern, preserving what jobs I can. If the business fails, everyone loses their job, which is terrible! Now, if the reason for layoffs is due directly to poor decisions by someone who should not have reasonably made that decision given the variables in front of them, that person should probably be terminated. But layoffs…
It is your job to anticipate the market – you are responsible for all the business decisions! If you're allowed to shrug it off and say "we didn't see this coming, we did the best we can, by the way 3.8% of you are getting laid off because of this but not me, even though I made the calls", well, it sounds like you're just milking the business for yourself until it well and truly goes kaput.
What’s with the sense of entitlement towards jobs in HN?
Businesses will continue to employee you as long as they think it’s a net benefit to them. Their outlook can change at anytime and for nonsensical reasons.
I would suggest accepting this state of affairs. That might mean making sure you have savings, or up to date job skills. Refusing to believe this can happen to you because you have worked so hard or been so loyal will only lead to heartache.
Re: Unity Software to cut 3.8% of staff in 'company reset'
#110Unity are spending too much money to develop far too little. New engine features are almost universally half baked (DOTS, UI mess). They acquire in demand features from the community just to let them wither (pro builder). The only thing that's consistent between different Unity features is how unpolished they seem. Notably the mess they have made of DOTS seems to have been partially responsible for sinking Cities Sky…
Why did they use Unity for Cities Skylines 2? Unity is widely known for performance issues in game dev community right? (I am not a game developer).
Why not unreal engine etc?