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Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

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Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#211

Post by adrianmonk »

bostonsre wrote: post #112
seydor wrote: post #87

Last time the stock market was surging, everyone was hiring. This time it's different

Is it all due to inflation and the interest rates? Shouldn't these companies be able to issue stock to get some cheap capital to continue growth/hiring? Or anyone know why this is happening?

One view is that it's related to labor hoarding.

A lot of people exited the labor market (disabled or killed by COVID, pulled the trigger on retiring, etc.). Unemployment was very low and it was very difficult to hire. And companies had opportunities for growth, but taking advantage of those opportunities required workers, which were hard to get.

So companies responded by hiring whenever possible and keeping more employees around than they normally would. If there was less work to do, they'd reduce hours instead of letting employees go. Better to pay more labor costs now than to be stuck unable to get employees later. You pay a cost (larger payrolls) to reduce a risk.

Hoarding can be kind of self-reinforcing because as everybody grabs what is available (job seekers), it becomes more scarce, so people want to grab up even more.

But hoarding tends to stop eventually. Companies don't want to pay more for payroll if they don't have to. Once they feel the risk is gone, they'll aim to adjust things back to normal.

Once layoffs start, they could have a domino effect on labor hoarding. If a bunch of companies do layoffs, then other companies think, "Well, if we did need to hire, we could get some of those laid off workers." And then they reevaluate their own situation.

If this is what's happening, then it will take some time for it to play out. Eventually all the hoarding-related layoffs will have been done.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#212

Post by Brybry »

theptip wrote: post #83
xnorswap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful what you wish for, the soul of Blizzard is long dead. You can see this with Diablo 4, which is a completely soulless ARPG. With the latest season 3 launched yesterday, it's just not a fun game and it's clear that whatever processes and people they have at Activision Blizzard, they haven't got something in place that lets someone say, "Wait, shouldn't this be fun?". While D3 had it's fair criticism at launc…

For me the big problems were 1) no power spikes, unique gear is mostly irrelevant except for a couple pieces that unlock certain builds. In D2 you’d find some crazy unique early on that makes you completely OP for a few levels, and those spikes really made things memorable. 2) too easy, and the auto-leveling on monsters. On WT2 where you start the game is just too easy and even the +2 level strongholds are not hard.…

1) You'll get pretty big power spikes (and some power drops) at WT3 (sacred) and WT4 (ancestral) gear jumps. One at 50(?) when you unlock paragon board and get to spend a bunch of points. Then your biggest power spike when you get item power 925 weapons (you could do this really fast from world bosses in season 2 but it's a bit slower in season 3).

Then, yes, gradual power increases from other gear/glyphs/paragon and potential big power spikes from uber uniques (but rough to farm).

2) Once you beat the main story/campaign you never do the campaign or side quests again, even during seasons with new characters. Same for renown.

Non-expert players hit WT4 in a day or two at season start... as long as they're playing one of the set of viable builds per class. And once you're in WT4 you can effectively pick how hard you want the content to be.

In comparison, the expert players hit level 100 in a day or two.

If you play D2 "as the game is presented" you'll have a bad time too, eventually. It's very easy to make non-viable builds in most dungeon crawl ARPG.

If you really want to have fun, unless you specifically have fun developing good builds, then my biggest suggestion is to play a meta build.

Season 2 ball lightning sorc was super fun. It had the full "build struggles" -> "build is now online" -> "build is *zooming*" experience. Yes, it was overpowered (at least until AoZ) and broke the servers during world bosses.

The game definitely has problems but each season has been an improvement as well, even if an individual season mechanic isn't the greatest.

In comparison, I think a game like Path of Exile is a much more interesting dungeon crawl ARPG but I think Path of Exile is also exhausting to play unless one makes it their main long-term game.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#213

Post by indymike »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #192
eek2121 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that people aren't hiring like mad with high interest rates. It seems like just parking a bunch of money somewhere and letting it accumulate interest would pay for salaries. Shoot, for 10 million dollars you could pay the entire salary of 2 developers without touching a dime of the actual money. Of course I know the economy doesn't work that way, but it is fun to think about.

the cost of borrowing that $10M has gone from 0.25 to 5.5 a 2100% increase. If inflation is above 4-5% then sitting on the money will lose purchasing power. Fear of depr/rec-ession means the products you build might see 0 traction as the economy contracts and the funding to survive dries up.

The's another factor: you now have to deal with getting 20% of the tax benefit from an engineering salary since R&D expenses are now amortized over five years.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#214

Post by saos »

JohnFen wrote: post #203
saos wrote: post #12

> It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft Always on the table after an acquisition. Especially close to earnings I hope severance is nice for all impacted

Having been through a few acquisitions, I have learned the truth of this. Eventually, I learned that if a company I work for announces they're being acquired, the best course of action for me is to start looking for other opportunities. Even if I'm not laid off (which I haven't been yet in these situations), I'm effectively being hired by a new company that I haven't vetted. It's the perfect opportunity to reassess t…

> the best course of action for me is to start looking for other opportunities.

Yeah there’s a level of discernment you get from that point on

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#215

Post by troynt »

true_religion wrote: post #207
hipadev23 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skimming your comments: You deeply detest everything related to AI, cloud, and startups. It’s not age discrimination per-se, but it’s because you're actively dragging your heels on the technologies that companies are hiring for. You can probably find a job doing maintenance on some PHP or Rails app that hasn't been updated since Obama’s first term, but the pay is likely also going to come from that era.

Maybe they should try applying in the east coast. There is no AI, cloud or startups here. You will have to stomach finance or the military industrial complex though.

False

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#216

Post by kirse »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #182
eek2121 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty old, and I've NEVER had issues finding a job. I've been unemployed for 6 months now. Thinking about getting out of software development TBH. It isn't that I'm a bad developer, I've almost always gotten good to great performance reviews, but nobody is hiring. The positions that do open up are swamped with tons of people. The culture also is pretty toxic, especially in the startup world, and with AI now ente…

Coming from both a place of kindness and a place of selfishness: 1. Please keep at it. We need more people with experience staying in software. I don’t know your financial situation, but software is huge and something will land! 2. Based on this comment, I highly recommend likely not ever starting a company. It’s fucking hard, and it’s not glamorous. And even though it’s hard times in the macro, it’s actually way har…

It’s fucking hard, and it’s not glamorous

"Fucking hard" compared to what? Things I'd qualify under the category of "fucking hard":

- Agricultural Farming

- Lifetime debilitating disease / health issue

- Being enslaved or a POW

- Living in a 3rd world country

- Moving West in the 1800s

- Fighting in the American Revolutionary or Civil War

This narrative that starting a company is "fucking hard" is all part of the SV/SF mythos that needs a smooth stone straight to the forehead.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#217

Post by hipadev23 »

ipaddr wrote: post #210
hipadev23 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skimming your comments: You deeply detest everything related to AI, cloud, and startups. It’s not age discrimination per-se, but it’s because you're actively dragging your heels on the technologies that companies are hiring for. You can probably find a job doing maintenance on some PHP or Rails app that hasn't been updated since Obama’s first term, but the pay is likely also going to come from that era.

What skill would you suggest he learn?

If he doesn't want to actually learn AI/ML itself, there's an endless number of adjacent jobs related to all the hype:

* web dev - today the majority of the jobs are very heavily ts/js, react, next.js, vercel, etc.

* data engineering - AI/ML is very hungry for clean, organized, and accessible data. so we're talking sql, data warehousing, spark, beam, kafka

* infra/devops - nearly every tech company needs these people: docker, kubernetes, terraform, ci/cd, gitops, metrics and monitoring tools like prometheus and grafana

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#218

Post by araes »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #192
eek2121 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that people aren't hiring like mad with high interest rates. It seems like just parking a bunch of money somewhere and letting it accumulate interest would pay for salaries. Shoot, for 10 million dollars you could pay the entire salary of 2 developers without touching a dime of the actual money. Of course I know the economy doesn't work that way, but it is fun to think about.

the cost of borrowing that $10M has gone from 0.25 to 5.5 a 2100% increase. If inflation is above 4-5% then sitting on the money will lose purchasing power. Fear of depr/rec-ession means the products you build might see 0 traction as the economy contracts and the funding to survive dries up.

Replying to below because of reply limit. Also, totally not a lawyer, take with that note.

Actual text: Emphasis the "be allowed" portion. From: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174

(a) In general - In the case of a taxpayer’s specified research or experimental expenditures for any taxable year—

(1) except as provided in paragraph (2), no deduction shall be allowed for such expenditures, and

(2) the taxpayer shall—

(A) charge such expenditures to capital account, and

(B) *be allowed* an amortization deduction of such expenditures ratably over the 5-year period (15-year period in the case of any specified research or experimental expenditures which are attributable to foreign research (within the meaning of section 41(d)(4)(F))) beginning with the midpoint of the taxable year in which such expenditures are paid or incurred.

Imply, the taxpayer "may" take a 20% amortized distribution. Similar to MtG cards that say "a player may look through their library" or similar. You don't have to (my reading).

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#219

Post by cj »

quonn wrote: post #173
cj wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister owns an etsy shop that sells customized items. They have a graphic designer who's in photoshop all day doing the same repetitive task for each item that's ordered. This is the first category of jobs to be killed off. It can't already be killed off because it requires some human judgement (at least right now) to make sure photographs on a custom ornament are centered and cropped in a visually appealing way.…

Couldn't conventional software have done this? And it didn't. So why would AI do it now?

They're not big enough to pay a developer to write and maintaining a software system.

From what I've heard, they were able to use ChatGPT to write applescript shortcuts to automate a lot of the tedious repetitive tasks, without knowing how to code.

Basic things like "Open file in photoshop" then "mark file as in-progress in google sheet", etc...

So basically the value add was being able to write applescript shortcuts without knowing how to code just by going back and forth with ChatGPT.

(This is a boring example but something us developers might take for granted re: use cases for non-developers)

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#220

Post by graphe »

ep103 wrote: post #209
graphe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did the homeworld series. Story isn't enough. AoE2 had online and so did StarCraft so they stayed. Homeworld never got that, without the story, multiplayer and mods it's not quite up there. I remember CoH2 was popular, but you're right it's hard for me to want to try something other than AoE2 or SC, when they're pretty perfect.

FWIW, Homeworld 3 is coming out in 2 months, and I, for one, and psyched up about it

I am too. After seeing what happened with the remake I'm not sure if the audience is still there. Most would be strategy games players play MOBA but I hope that HW3 can get lots of players if it has all those essentials.
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