Earlier quoted context omitted.
"At-will"?! I had no idea that in California you could just terminate employment for no reason. Coming from Australia where you can't fire anybody without good reason (even demoting people can be considered unfair dismissal) this just sounds insane.
I think this is illustrative of a fundamental difference in philosophy between employment in the USA versus elsewhere, and one which favors economic growth and innovation over social stability. Requiring cause to fire someone is business-hostile at best. Business can not improve efficiency, pivot, or generally adapt to changing markets if they are not free to hire and fire at will. The one major point most "liberals"…
Generally, in countries which require reasons for dismissal, there is a distinction between a redundancy and a dismissal. A redundancy means that the position someone is working in is declared not to exist (and so no one will be hired to replace the redundant employee), while a dismissal means the position continues but the employment of the employee filling that position is ended by the company.
Changing the size of a workforce to "improve efficiency, pivot, or generally adapt to changing markets" is done through redundancies, not through dismissals, and redundancies can generally happen on whatever terms are agreed to in the employment agreement.
If an employee genuinely isn't working out in a no-fire-at-will country, the employee generally has to be treated fairly and given an opportunity to correct the problems, but they can still be dismissed if they are unable to rectify the problems.
The cost of a dismissal might be slightly higher in a non-fire-at-will company, due to the time period when the employee is given a chance to correct the problems, but not significantly, and businesses can still adapt to changing conditions through redundancies. Non-fire-at-will is therefore not a significant barrier to business.
However, it protects employees against abusive practices like those of Zynga in this instance - employees who do not have anything like the same bargaining power as the companies they are working for.