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Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

riotgames.com

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Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#81

Post by goosejuice »

atlas_hugged wrote: post #60
Imz4di wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of service, which was 8 weeks.

Name and shame please.

Curious, what would be a severance package HN would be satisfied with? I suspect the average US employee would be stunned to hear an offer of 6 months.

So much negativity around these statistical outliers. The majority of companies in the US don't offer severance and it's very rare in some industries. Not saying that it's fair, but name and shame? Maybe we're living in different worlds.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#83

Post by smt88 »

resolutebat wrote: post #12
smt88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block. Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact. While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expens…

Sales does not belong on that list, since their impact is the easiest of all to measure ($$$). Also, top-down layoffs tend to target expensive staff with large paychecks, without accounting for institutional knowledge or intangible value delivered.

Sales isn't easy to measure.

If you generate the same number of leads, do you need 300 salespeople to convert them? Or could your top 100 performers do it? Do you need separate salespeople for each product or can one person sell it all?

At the trough of interest rates, big companies had insane numbers of salespeople touching each deal (easily 10+ at some orgs) because they'd over-hired and the forced people to hyper-specialize to justify it.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#84

Post by goosejuice »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #71
goalonetwo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the intrusive question but if you make software engineer level salary how is it that you don't have multiple months/years saved to mitigate for those possible layoffs? Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries? I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that softw…

I have 3 kids. My grocery bill alone is 2.5k/month.

2.5k! That's definitely high for a family of five (assuming). Not that you should, I have expensive taste, but certainly you could bring that down?

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#85

Post by riffraff »

Blackthorn wrote: post #58
mjr00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know it has somebody with a foot fetish. Look at the footwear of all the female characters (at least the ones made before 2016, I haven't played it since then). ehh?? On the character models or splash arts? I've played for a long time and have never heard anyone else say this, outside of the French Maid Nidalee skin[0] which is obvious foot fetish bait. The most notable foot-related art commentary was always aro…

> ehh?? On the character models or splash arts? Splash arts generally. Almost every single one is wearing heels. Once you notice it you can't stop seeing it.

High heels are foot fetish? I thought it was about naked feet (e.g. all Tarantino movies).

This is the first time I hear of liking heels as having a foot fetish.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#86

Post by ocdtrekkie »

goalonetwo wrote: post #57
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah to be honest, a half-year sabbatical with time to job hunt non-frantically is a luxury I've never had. I love my current job, but I would probably look at a half year severance like a vacation.

Sorry for the intrusive question but if you make software engineer level salary how is it that you don't have multiple months/years saved to mitigate for those possible layoffs? Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries? I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that softw…

1. I'm not a software engineer, and don't live in or near the valley.

2. I'm married and I have two kids. It's amazing how fast multiple years of saving disappear when you have daycare.

Just to give you an idea of what childcare looks like: It's a very reasonable question whether we should pay for childcare, or hire a full-time staff member for the household to watch the kids: The price is about the same.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#87

Post by d4mi3n »

atlas_hugged wrote: post #60
Imz4di wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of service, which was 8 weeks.

Name and shame please.

Shopify is my guess; I was part of that layoff and the timing lines up. They had those exact terms and paid them out in addition to WARN act minimums contingent on signing of a severance agreement. I had the same offer but declined due to issues I had with the severance agreement.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#88

Post by gamblor956 »

kyrra wrote: post #80
jachee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…in order to appease shareholders and/or hit earnings numbers, right?

One possible reason is due to Section 174 tax issues. See: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/20/taxes-irs-startups-section1...

Given that the layoffs are hitting artists and content developers more heavily than the programmers, it is unlikely that Section 174 is the motivation for these layoffs.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#89

Post by uudecoded »

Has anyone noticed that there are now 78 comments on this post and no Rioters checking in? Have I missed something?

On any HN corporate layoff post, we should expect some volume of named company FTEs or impacted folks commenting. There seems to be a pattern here that has been ebbing and flowing over the last few years.

Should this be a titled phenomenon/effect? I see at least 3 options here:

1) Named company employees do not read/post on HN (if true, is this HN content? divergent topic...)

2) Named company employees are coerced or otherwise compensated to not comment on these matters, even if they do not directly impact them

3) Named company employees do not care about this n% layoff and are withholding comment

edit: formatting

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#90

Post by Spellman »

mdorazio wrote: post #75
stevage wrote: post #73

> This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity. They don't seem to explain in any way why it's a necessity.

I read that as they have negative cash flow and need to fix it ASAP.

Similarly.

And why is that bad? Because once you run out of money everything is cooked

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