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

reuters.com

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

#131

Post by WitCanStain »

monero-xmr wrote: post #51
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment. If you (anyone who reads this) are an employee, remember this is how c-suite people see you. You're cost . You're something that prevents the business from being "preserved". You're like water or electricity bills from the businesses' point of view. You'll be fired not because you did anything wrong: firing you is nothing different from using less water. Water, of course, can't be wrong or right. That's…

Businesses do not exist for making jobs. If we wanted jobs simply for jobs’ sake, then we would pay people to dig holes and fill them in (a lot of government jobs are glorified versions of this). Businesses exist to fulfill a market need, and every business fulfilling that market need competes in some axis of cost vs. quality. We are all human. I feel for people laid off. I have been laid off before, and businesses I…

Businesses exist to make money for their owners, full stop. Any needs they fulfill are largely incidental.

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

#132

Post by bluescrn »

vishwajeetv wrote: post #110
initplus wrote: post #31

Unity 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?

People underestimate the cost of switching game engines.

While a lot of concepts are transferrable between engines, if you've got a team of experienced C#/Unity developers who haven't touched UE, switching to C++/UE is likely to cost a lot of time/money. A new engine can still be a steep learning curve for experienced game developers. You might be able to pick up the basics over a weekend, but reaching expert levels of knowledge takes years.

That cost increases further if it means restarting a project from scratch rather than building on top of an existing codebase (which will likely include not just the game itself, but also an assortment of tools built within Unity for building content and improving workflows).

Unity's killer feature for many is still its C# support. If you're a small team or solo developer who doesn't need AAA levels of performance, it can be a big time-saver over working with C++.

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

bhouston wrote: post #5
dagmx wrote: post #3

Most notably, this is laying off their entire acquisition of Weta Digital which was an audacious $1.6B purchase. After which Unity did nothing to take the proposed products into the marketplace.

I think they were not easily commercialized. I was a VFX software developer and internal tools are both very advanced and also fragile foot guns if you try to do anything that isn’t exactly down the golden path. VFX devs are not the usual product guys, they are usually either R&D/math guys or hackers, with little in between. The way to commercialize WETA stuff would be to make new product teams and basically redo muc…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

bhouston wrote: post #5
dagmx wrote: post #3

Most notably, this is laying off their entire acquisition of Weta Digital which was an audacious $1.6B purchase. After which Unity did nothing to take the proposed products into the marketplace.

I think they were not easily commercialized. I was a VFX software developer and internal tools are both very advanced and also fragile foot guns if you try to do anything that isn’t exactly down the golden path. VFX devs are not the usual product guys, they are usually either R&D/math guys or hackers, with little in between. The way to commercialize WETA stuff would be to make new product teams and basically redo muc…

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by Vespasian »

bluescrn wrote: post #132
vishwajeetv wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

People underestimate the cost of switching game engines. While a lot of concepts are transferrable between engines, if you've got a team of experienced C#/Unity developers who haven't touched UE, switching to C++/UE is likely to cost a lot of time/money. A new engine can still be a steep learning curve for experienced game developers. You might be able to pick up the basics over a weekend, but reaching expert levels…

That's one of the reasons why Godot started brushing up their C# support recently.

For that that small/solo team it's also easier to switch engine and since they can't get custom license deals like the big boys having the same language may encourage some to invest the time and resources.

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

#137

Post by qwytw »

eloisant wrote: post #99
29athrowaway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you layoff large numbers of people, WFH makes it easier. When you need to start a company or do a hiring push, being in an office can help. In a company that only hires high seniority employees, WFH vs office doesn't matter much.

I think it's the other way around. When you want to layoff a large number of people: RTO will increase the number of employees quitting so you don't have to layoff as many When starting a company: WFH means you don't need offices, or at least smaller offices which makes a big difference When you do a hiring push: being open to WFH gives you a bigger pool to draw from

> When you do a hiring push: being open to WFH gives you a bigger pool to draw from

Onboarding a large number of new WFH employees at the same might easily turn into a disaster though (for example if you "need" to grow your headcount at 50-100% per year like Unity did... of course they didn't need to do that but that's different problem).

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

#138

Post by fisf »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
vore wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the compensation model is inherently unfair if the rank and file is forced to bear the brunt of bad leadership.

> the compensation model is inherently unfair if the rank and file is forced to bear the brunt of bad leadership Considering solely risk, sure. There are other relevant inputs. More pertinently, this is why we have public services and safety nets.

So we outsource bad decision making of overcompensated people to the public. Brilliant.

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

#139

Post by qwytw »

gumballindie wrote: post #120
starkparker wrote: post #2

Also notable: > Unity will shut down offices in 14 locations such as Berlin and Singapore, pending employee consultation in some countries, and significantly reduce its office footprint for the remaining offices, including in San Francisco and Bellevue, Washington. > Unity will no longer mandate that employees work from offices three a days a week and will reduce "full in-office services" to three days a week in most…

Whoa imagine the people they forced to relocate and now are telling them it was the wrong decision. I can only say that unity’s leadership are idiots, nothing else.

Well you can bounce them back and forth until they just quit on their own. Seems like a "great" way to reduce costs without having to "layoff" anyone and pay severance.

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

#140

Post by qwytw »

margorczynski wrote: post #107
rightbyte wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And then there's the timezone issue as I assume most of the leadership is in the US.

Well to be fair that didn't work out that well either...

> also the employees

Still almost dirt cheap by SF standards.

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