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

Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 322 posts

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

#241

Post by yterdy »

eek2121 wrote: post #175
e40 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest rates and fear of recession. Big tech fuels R&D via very low-interest loans. This is what everyone in the financial community has been saying for a long time.

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.

They're servicing loads of cheap debt, they don't have the capital.

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

#242

Post by whatinthenote »

ryandrake wrote: post #178
ohhnoodont wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the case for all large tech companies. Headcount increases in software engineering projects result in diminishing returns per-individual, but the increase is still there (if managed correctly). For example a 100 person team may not be 10x as productive as a 10 person team, but they may be 5x as productive. A 1000 person team may only be 3x as productive as 100. And so on until you have many thousands of engineer…

Also, development headcount begets support headcount. For every 10 new engineers you hire, you will need to also hire a manager for them. For every 20-30 engineers, you'll probably need a PM to steer the product and a PjM to handle all the additional communication/process overhead. For every 2-3 managers, you'll need an admin who manages their schedule and meetings. As the team grows, you'll need more people purely w…

Same people that thinks they can build an Uber/Lyft/Instagram competitor by themselves over the weekend.

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

#243

Post by kirse »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #229
kirse wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Compared to a 9-5 in tech? Which is what they're suggesting instead. What is the point of moralizing?

What is the point of moralizing?

Because the guy is framing his discouragement as "coming from a place of love" when in reality it takes roughly 2-3 weeks to go from zero-to-[LLC accepting payments on Stripe]. Which means it's really not that "fucking hard" at all to start small and begin the search for paying customers.

I've been on this board for 17 years back when it was originally called "Startup News" and full of new-company founders, sold 2 small SW apps back in 2009, and have also done the F100 corporate adventure. The emotional challenges of starting your own company can be easier than the 9-5.

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

#244

Post by pfdietz »

kraig911 wrote: post #149
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…

It's just sad I guess this is an example of post consumerism. Maybe making games for the sake of profit and not fun it was just a matter of time. I was an avid Overwatch player and just seeing how Kotick essentially destroyed that team from within at Blizzard because to some the price of the stock is the only thing that is a measure of value of a public company.

The problem isn't making games for money, it's doing it in a stupid and shortsighted way that sabotages the goal of making money.

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

#245

Post by pfdietz »

picadores wrote: post #103
doktrin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need Starcarft 3 badly This feels at least tangentially relevant : https://battlechat.co/15-wow-mount-outearned-starcraft-2/ I haven't personally double checked the math behind this claim, but it does broadly track and makes me slightly apprehensive. I don't mean this as an absolute because there are clear and obvious exceptions, like From, but it increasingly feels like the market is actively disinsentivizing de…

Behavioural hacking people is certainly cheaper then making them happy, and the ultimate hack - is heroine. The final form of all unchecked buisnesses is virtual drug dealing. Invest now into the ultimate society meltdown..

Or, consumers grow more and more resistant to the BS. Ultimately, we insist on authentic experiences, not virtual fakery.

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

#246

Post by iammjm »

super256 wrote: post #48
iammjm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the art that LLMs are generating is already amazing and getting better each month. There's even LLMs that generate whole videos.

I think you are confusing large language models with diffusion models.

You are right. Anyway, I was intending to respond not necessarily to the LLM part of the post, but to the AI "don't compete with artists" -part. My point being: I think current generative AI capabilities to be VERY much competing vs artists (or at least people, who "manufacture art", like creating illustrations, graphics etc.)

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

#248

Post by exclusiv »

kirse wrote: post #216
vhiremath4 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

I understand your sentiment, but one's experience does not need to manifest like the ones you listed to be considered hard.

You listed one career choice and agriculture is actually the easiest industry. #2 lowest failure rate in 1 year, #1 lowest after 5 and after 10 years [1]. What you thought was fucking hard is objectively not compared to every other industry from BLS data. Although I'd still say it's a startup and is thus fucking hard personally.

Starting a company is very easy. Building a successful and sustainable one is fucking hard.

I've built a few successful companies but did it while having income (both active and passive). I recommend the same for anyone's first endeavor. I also recommend having a partner or two and maybe ONLY go solo after you've built a successful business. It's not glamorous being a startup CEO and can be very lonely without partners.

50% of businesses fail by year 5

And 80% of small businesses have no employees. Most of the 50% that survive to year 5 are just paying bills and aren't self-sustaining businesses that have enterprise value and can be sold.

If you want to be a one person show, yeah that's not hard in a service business. If you are average, 50% shot to make it 5 years.

If we're talking about building something that kicks off actual profit and has employees, and outperforms the opportunity cost of working for someone else or taking an equity stake in existing business, it is most certainly fucking hard.

To the parent - if you have savings and get a partner or two - I say keep applying but go for the startup too. The best businesses in my opinion are ones that make money closer to day 1 than year X. Figure that path out. Riches in niches. Don't worry about the macro environment.

[1] https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/

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

#249

Post by coryfklein »

seydor wrote: post #87

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

Saying the stock market is surging is a bit of an oversimplification. If you compare trough (Oct '22) to peak (Jan '24) you get a 65% annualized rate of increase.

But if you compare peak (Nov '21) to peak (Jan '24) we're essentially flat at 1.4% annualized.

If a business accustomed to double digit growth every year instead saw 1.4% growth annualized over 2 years then the numbers simply can't work out to keep doing what they've always done.

The fact that equity valuations are WAY better than they were in Oct '22 doesn't really help because nobody was raising money during the down turn in the first place! Everyone is priced in on pre-pandemic valuations, which for the most part are unchanged.

Note: I used the NASDAQ-100 Technology Sector, ticker NDXT to calculate these numbers [0].

[0] https://www.tradingview.com/chart/34OYpFIv

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

#250

Post by exclusiv »

kirse wrote: post #243
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to a 9-5 in tech? Which is what they're suggesting instead. What is the point of moralizing?

What is the point of moralizing? Because the guy is framing his discouragement as "coming from a place of love" when in reality it takes roughly 2-3 weeks to go from zero-to-[LLC accepting payments on Stripe]. Which means it's really not that "fucking hard" at all to start small and begin the search for paying customers. I've been on this board for 17 years back when it was originally called "Startup News" and full o…

Starting is easy. I don't think the parent you replied to was talking about that procedural part of it. The parent is weighing working for someone or starting a newco.

Also it's a completely different ballgame when you build a company that has employees versus an app.

We don't know what path the parent was talking about or what their business would be. We don't know their financial position.

Regardless, it's hard to build a successful business. Especially on your first attempt.

Post reply on HN