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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

#131

Post by bduerst »

jlgreco wrote: post #85
bduerst wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that money rewards can be equal to in-game rewards, since Zynga players are obviously willing to part money for the latter, but that boils down to a matter of opinion. It will be interesting to see if management bails from Zynga over the coming quarters. Personally, I would watch and see if management unloads on any stock or options.

Without money awards I suspect you will see far fewer instances of Gambler's Ruin, or other more subtle profit-generating phenomenon. As far as I can tell, there can be no sense of "recouping losses".

But you do get the benefit of using arbitrary "point" conversions, i.e. $10 buys 8 coins, $20 buys 18 coins, etc. It makes it harder for the user to estimate the real value when purchasing, and thus easier to overspend.

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

#132

Post by freshhawk »

ghshephard wrote: post #98
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, th…

That is a good point, the job market for developers is great right now and they've just freed up some talent to hopefully work on something useful.

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

#133

Post by beedogs »

pud wrote: post #24

Startups are hard. Even big startups are hard. Zynga is startupy, even though they're public. There's a lot of schadenfreude on HN when it comes to Zynga. Articles about Zynga's problems regularly make it to the top of HN. Some people think games are frivolous. They're not. Entertainment is (almost) a basic human need. Some people think Zynga players are somehow being tricked. They're not. They're being entertained.…

> The other 1% should know that everyone steals from everyone.

This is an absurd justification for the kind of outright theft Zynga has built an entire public corporation on.

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

#134

Post by bduerst »

alaskamiller wrote: post #82

The irony of all this is that just less than 3 years ago Mark Pincus and Zynga was riding high. Pincus was voted as the CEO of the Year at the Crunchies. He was chosen to be the closer to Startup School, he projected Zynga as a place for people to want to go to there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041758 This is a story parallel to Lance Armstrong's own rise and fall. About how if you were to drill down, reall…

That's not what a ponzi scheme is.

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

#135

Post by freshhawk »

danilocampos wrote: post #59
pud wrote: post #24

Startups are hard. Even big startups are hard. Zynga is startupy, even though they're public. There's a lot of schadenfreude on HN when it comes to Zynga. Articles about Zynga's problems regularly make it to the top of HN. Some people think games are frivolous. They're not. Entertainment is (almost) a basic human need. Some people think Zynga players are somehow being tricked. They're not. They're being entertained.…

Games are not frivolous. Games are an incredible opportunity for artistic expression, self-expression (for players), exploration of complicated topics, and overall fun. But Zynga doesn't make games. They make shitty frontends on a spreadsheet. As to their theft of products, that's not hearsay. That's an ongoing, provable patterns of behavior: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/25/everything...

Precisely. Slot machines aren't games, no matter what kind of animations you put in front of the slot machine mechanic.

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

#136

Post by w1ntermute »

gdulli wrote: post #129
w1ntermute wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct. A developer with a full brain would know better than to extrapolate a few examples to an entire industry.

Doesn't matter if there are exceptions. When there are so many job opportunities out there for developers, why take the risk?

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

#137

Post by DrStalker »

w1ntermute wrote: post #107
hkmurakami wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget good apples like Valve :(

Doesn't it say in Valve's handbook (the one released earlier this year) that it doesn't actually consider itself to be a gaming company?

What sort of company does the handbook say they are?

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

#138

Post by diffeomorph »

ericabiz wrote: post #93
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.

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…

I'm a developer looking for a job that wants to move to Austin. What's a good place to start?

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

#139

Post by ericabiz »

StavrosK wrote: post #114
ericabiz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Python Web development is still niche? Are any of these companies looking for remote work, by any chance? :-P

Sent you an email. :)

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

#140

Post by dkrich »

gm wrote: post #118
dkrich wrote: post #106

I'm surprised to see so many people suggesting that Zynga's problems are purely moral. I think that gives them too much credit. I personally have no problem with their business practices from a strictly moral point of view. Caveat Emptor. No, for me the problem is much simpler. Its a shitty business run by very poor business minds. That may sound dramatic and sensational, but let's consider the facts: they paid $250…

I'm gonna call bullshit on your friend's claim of all expense paid trip purely as a one year anniversary gift from Zynga. Here is when you get such perks at Zynga: - You win some sort of company-wide award at the quarterly meeting. You (or your team) did something awesome and you are getting rewarded. - You get a big quarter-end cash bonus and you spend it on your trip. - It's not actually a vacation. You are on a bu…

I think if that's the only point in all that which you find fault with, then my point is pretty well proven.

Oh, and you can point at the board of directors and all of their past successes as if that somehow proves that the company is well run. I can point at the balance sheet and stock price. Facts are stubborn things.

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