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Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

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Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#91

Post by MartinCron »

benihana wrote: post #62
Karunamon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the software that Zynga makes a "game" is insulting to real games. Zynga's are usually different skins on top of a number incrementing simulator (for example, anything with "ville" in the name), that happen to increase a little bit faster if you bug your friends (often and repeatedly) and have them increment their numbers too, and you can only increment your numbers so often - but more if you pay real cash mo…

> Calling the software that Zynga makes a "game" is insulting to real games. No True Scotsman fallacy. Just because you don't think they're games doesn't make it fact. They make games, and people criticize them for it. The only thing your post did was help better prove OP's point.

No True Scotsman fallacy

It is, at least for me, more just transparent snobbery than the No True Scotsman fallacy. The same way some video game journalists don't like to cover Minecraft, as it's "not a real video game".

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#92

Post by dredmorbius »

LnxPrgr3 wrote: post #51
sbochins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could argue that Zynga employees have been dancing with the devil for the past couple of years. Any Zynga employee I ever talked to was very open about how they aren't really making games. They are just cynically generating revenue over flaws in the human condition. I think if you work for a screwy company like Zynga you should be very paranoid about cashing out of the company. If they have such a low opi…

> If they have such a low opinion of their customers, who is to say they won't have the same sentiment towards their employees. Anyone remember this from almost a year ago? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-emplo... I get the distinct impression Zynga only has a high opinion of money.

Oh yes, I remember.

How did that ever pan out? Were employees forced to renounce their prior options grants, or did the pressure change management's mind on this?

Otherwise, yes, Zynga's present situation's been a long time coming, pity it's the bastards who made off like bandits.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#93

Post by ericabiz »

jmsduran wrote: post #43
danilocampos wrote: post #23

Conceptually, I love every bit of bad Zynga news. I like to be reassured that a company will, in the long term, fail when its products are cynically designed to manipulate. That a company will fail when their strategy assumes it's okay to blatantly, consistently, continuously lift design from other firms and products. Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible . Because the guys who architected this repugnant…

As a software developer who lives in Austin, I find it disconcerting whenever I hear about developer layoffs, especially in our city. I hope this is just an isolated incident of bad company strategy than an overall industry trend.

Come to some meetups here in Austin. I can't get through a meetup here without a company announcing that they are hiring. Especially the more niche meetups like the Python Web Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/austinwebpythonusergroup/events/880678...

My startup is based out of Capital Factory, and if you even just walked in the door during Friday happy hour and announced that you were a developer here in Austin looking for a job, hungry funded startup owners would descend on you like wolves.

All that to say: You have nothing to be worried about. And also, come to more events...especially ones held at Capital Factory. :)

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#95

Post by malandrew »

chris123 wrote: post #65
jmsduran wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software developer who lives in Austin, I find it disconcerting whenever I hear about developer layoffs, especially in our city. I hope this is just an isolated incident of bad company strategy than an overall industry trend.

On the bright side, there may be some good people to be found in the ash pile.

Layoffs are horrible when they happen, but 6 months later after the dust has settled and smoke blown over, everyone who was talented and laid off is now better off because the number of weak ties they now have to people in other companies has multiplied dramatically in a short time.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#96

Post by gamble »

eekfuh wrote: post #5

The general consensus is that they timed it to coincide with Apple's announcement, so that the news of them laying off employees would be buried by all the Apple press.

I think it has more to do with getting the cuts out of the way before their Q3 earnings report comes out tomorrow. Facebook just mentioned in their earnings call this afternoon that they've been hit by a 20% YoY drop in revenue from Zynga, so you know Zynga's results are going to be bad.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#97

Post by ericabiz »

donretag wrote: post #61
duck wrote: post #32

Based on this I don't think they'll have a hard time finding new employment: https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=zynga+%22ping+me%22+OR...

Very few of those are for Austin. Many are from CA/NY companies.

Go to any developer meetup here in Austin and you'll find plenty of companies hiring. There are 50 startups here at Capital Factory (many funded) in downtown Austin and most of us are hiring. No one with decent talent at Zynga will have any problems finding another job here in Austin.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#98

Post by ghshephard »

danilocampos wrote: post #23

Conceptually, I love every bit of bad Zynga news. I like to be reassured that a company will, in the long term, fail when its products are cynically designed to manipulate. That a company will fail when their strategy assumes it's okay to blatantly, consistently, continuously lift design from other firms and products. Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible . Because the guys who architected this repugnant…

Well, if it makes you feel better, I had a conversation with a Zynga employee last night, who is pretty happy about leaving the company. In particular, he wants to go do something he believes in, and to quote him, "and i don't hugely believe in selling virtual cows"

So - to some degree, the crash and possible termination of Zynga's business model, enables these people to escape the company. If the stock had value, then they would be trapped in that really horrible (for some of them) career. When the stock has no value - they are all now free(er) to go - no handcuffs.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#99

Post by rictic »

w1ntermute wrote: post #77
Jach wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very hard to feel any pity for the employees that knowingly got involved with such a company, and I would be surprised if many of Zynga's best and most hardworking employees didn't jump ship long ago.

Any developer with half a brain should know that the game industry should be avoided like the plague. Long working hours, abusive management, racism (the Kixeye debacle), the issues just go on and on. Take patio11's advice and go into B2B, you'll make money hand over fist with much more manageable working hours.

Holy cow, how did I miss that Kixeye story? It read like a horror story. I guess they weren't exaggerating when they used insanity wolf to advertise for jobs, talk about a toxic environment.

Re: Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office

#100

Post by ChuckMcM »

danilocampos wrote: post #23

Conceptually, I love every bit of bad Zynga news. I like to be reassured that a company will, in the long term, fail when its products are cynically designed to manipulate. That a company will fail when their strategy assumes it's okay to blatantly, consistently, continuously lift design from other firms and products. Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible . Because the guys who architected this repugnant…

I get mixed emotions. Yes, companies that do 'bad things' ideally are corrected out of existence by the market. I never like to see anyone lose their jobs, because at some level the rank and file of the company is the blood coursing through its veins. And as Marissa Meyer and others have re-iterated over the last few months, companies don't do thing people do things. So people who are getting things done and fighting the good fight, its always painful to see them go.

On the money thing though you really need to come to terms with the fact that there is way more random chance than there is earned riches in the tech business. For every person who got rich being the most brilliant mind on the problem at the right time, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who got rich just because who ever was sitting in the seat they happened to be sitting in also got rich. The folks who just happened to be at Sun when it founded, or HP, or Google, or FaceBook. Randomness, not skill, plays a huge role there. There was a guy at Sun whom I helped manage out of the organization, he landed a job at a start up that two months later got bought with a full vesting of everyone. He walked away with several million dollars. It took a lot of thinking about that series of events to let it sit in my head without pissing me off.

Different people exploit their opportunities differently. I know that if I both knew how, and could have, shorted stock I held but was locked up but worth 'millions' I would have. I would have said "That's enough for me, sell it all, and when it dribbles out via my acquisition contract timed unlock I'll hand over the shares." That would have made me 'evil' in the eyes of the shareholders who bought stock during that time (and later sued the company) but my motivation would have been quite pure (FU money is a good thing). But I don't think of myself as an evil guy, and generally am pretty nice.

Bottom line is people with large holdings in a startup will look to 'liquify' a chunk of that to diversify and allow them to activate the wealth 'ratchet' (that is where you solidify your position by converting equity into real goods). If the value of the company continues to grow nobody ever remembers, if the value plunges, they get the short end of it. But its mostly randomness at work.

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