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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

#301

Post by kgoihawoerh »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #191
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…

Downturns is the best time to build a startup. When things turn around, you hopefully have found product market fit and can ride the up wave.

Don't start a startup as a business unless you know how startups work from the inside. Also, unrelated to startups but with products individuals are probably not "in" on the market, so will fail even with excellent products and marketing. You can't be an outside participant and succeed (although inside may notice outside and bring them in). Maybe if a small customer base is enough for you as an outsider you can succeed.

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

#302

Post by jannes »

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/…

That violent metaphor wasn’t necessary to make your point.

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

#304

Post by pjmlp »

nebula8804 wrote: post #196
solardev wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, in 20+ years doing this, I've never seen it this bad.

Were you around for the dot com crash? You said 20 years so it sounds like you started when the wave began right after the crash.

I was, quite similar in fact, maybe even worse.

It was quite common around 2002 to join a new company after being laid off from one, one to be laid off yet again a couple of months later.

Myself, I was living from savings with salaries delayed by a couple of months, while we were trying to find a new source of income.

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

#305

Post by BlueTemplar »

solardev wrote: post #286
BlueTemplar wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess technically Larian and GGG are "smaller" than even Activision-Blizzard before the buyout, but they aren't "small" either any more. (And GGG has been mostly owned by Tencent for a few years now.) Path of Exile 1 is a glorious mess that anyone remotely interested in the genre should try (don't give up in the first act like most players, it gets way better), but currently at least with quite ridiculously bad per…

> but they aren't "small" either any more OK, that's fair > And you aren't indie if you release on Steam (especially only !) Why not? It's the best marketplace for indie games... IMO it jump-started the PC indie gaming revolution! Before that, we only had shareware of limited reach, maybe distributed through PC Gamer floppies/CDs. And maybe Tucows. It was hard to find new indie games, much less buy them. Steam change…

Because Steam has taken over some of the most important features of publishers : dealing with distributors and (built-in) advertising. (See also Epic Store which even gives funding !)

I would expect almost all of the studios that release on Steam to quickly go bankrupt if prevented to use it. So, ironically, Activision-Blizzard would be more indie than them, but I guess that "indie" also requires a limitation of size.

----

GeForce Now, well duh, have you seen the kind of hardware it provides - that you're paying for ? (For reference, at release PoE1's minimum requirements were : 32-bit single core 1.4 GHz CPU, 2 Go RAM, 0.25 Go VRAM, 5 Go storage.)

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

#306

Post by djmips »

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

I have an former colleague that got laid off by Microsoft just over a year ago, joined Blizzard, and just got laid off by Microsoft... again.

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

#307

Post by flanbiscuit »

I know someone who was part of this layoff at Blizzard. His entire team of 200+ people were let go. He said he found out when he arrived at work and saw lots of people standing in front of the building not being able to swipe in. He tried his badge and it was denied so he turned around and went home. What a shit way to find out you've been laid off.

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

#308

Post by kraig911 »

fnimick wrote: post #162
kraig911 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> to some the price of the stock is the only thing that is a measure of value of a public company. Who are the people who invest in a public company for any reason other than to have their numbers go up? That's the entire point. They could be putting out absolute garbage, as long as it makes money (and more profit than your alternative of 'fun games'), that's all that matters.

I do. I still have belief in companies that to me are essentially important for what they’ve done for my family and friends. It’s not all about profit.

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

#309

Post by kraig911 »

pfdietz wrote: post #244
kraig911 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the product cycle for artistic endeavors isn’t compatible with modern day approaches for measuring business value. The fact that a mount in WoW made more money than StarCraft 2. I think management saw that and went all in.

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

#310

Post by johnnyanmac »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #300
johnnyanmac wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you're actively dragging your heels on the technologies that companies are hiring for. because only AI, cloud, and startups are hiring? What a weird interpretation to make of someone based off of a comment history on the internet. We don't even know what domain they work in.

No, because even if you are at a pretty standard company, you will be expected to deal with these technologies

Maybe in 10 years AI will be "standard", but as of now I'd be surprised if anyone meets the stereotypical HR requirements of "5 years of AI experience"

Personally haven't had to deal with Cloud. My domain leaves that to network engineers on the product and probably devops for the company servers. It's there but Ive never been expected to touch it.

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