Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead • Hacker News Board

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#171

Post by johnnyanmac » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 8:53 PM UTC

goalonetwo wrote: post #69

thenewwazoo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between multiple months/years of emergency savings and retirement savings is intent (and timeline). I could afford to take months or years off, but I’d rather let that money grow in an interest-bearing account for decades and spend it later.

Sure, but in any case having savings (even retirement savings) allows you to not "frantically" look for a job and be slightly more selective.

It's relative, but having to dig into your 401k isn't an attractive alternative, one I'd only consider in truly dire straits. You are capped in how much you can put in a year so it's not like a savings account you can aggressively make up for after getting hired.

I'd much rather resort to temp work than dig deeply into my future if I had a choice.

If I could help it I'd rather invest in

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#172

Post by johnnyanmac » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 8:58 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #77

mlhpdx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? Unemployment is still very, very low and there are hundreds of thousand of open positions out there. Not sure about game companies, hence my asking.

I read an article about this recently, but can’t find it to officially cite it. However, the thrust was something like this: Despite unemployment being low, the reality is that many of those “thousands of positions” are either geographically-distributed duplicates of the same position, eternally-open cattle calls, or open-but-basically-a-formality for either getting a visa or an internal move. This makes the number o…

Yeah, that's my feeling. I see plenty of positions and still get maybe 5 calls a week for work. But it really does feel like most aren't even looking at my resume, nor do recruiters get much farther through a hiring manager.

Of course I could simply be unlucky and swamped by other more attractive candidates. Apparently seniors are swamping Junior roles, so maybe I'm just competing with a bunch of staff/principals now in mid/senior roles.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#173

Post by johnnyanmac » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #40

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone overhired the last 3 years thinking the good times were forever. They’re probably overloaded with roles they don’t need anymore and have needs in other places so it really doesn’t make sense to keep folks.

I assume video-game sales went up during the stay-at-home pandemic years; with that now behind us, this isn’t surprising at all. In fact, I’m surprised this didn’t already happen a year ago.

It did indeed start a year ago. Main reason it's ramping up so rapidly in the last 6 months is that games were released (in what many would consider an amazing years for games in 2023) and layoffs tend to happen a bit after shipping (to get launch bugs). But with the current economy the layoffs are more severe.

Another less talked about point is GaaS. Many, many studios were trying to ramp up games with continuous revenue streams, and that needs a big investment and risk. It's not ubcommon to launch 10 GaaS expecting 7 to fail and 1 to easily pay for the other 9's developments. That's a great strategy with free money. Awful when you need to weather a storm. And now we're on that storm. Even studios with successful GaaS have to reel back, so most games in development are SoL.

So, not surprising but the volume this year is immense.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#174

Post by johnnyanmac » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 9:08 PM UTC

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #102

krainboltgreene wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone overhired the last 3 years thinking the good times were forever. It's very convenient that this isn't measurable and if you asked anyone in the industry at the time they most likely would have said "We don't have nearly enough" people.

That’s how overhiring occurs a lot of the time.

I don't like the term "overhiring" in these discussions because it implies that these studios didn't estimate the costs of development and see layoffs as a mark of failure.

Neither are true. They took a gamble with low risk and the low risk became normal risk. Layoffs often come with a small stock rise, so they aren't even shamed by shareholders for trimming down. It's devastating for employee morale but that's rarely a factor in these decisions.