You know what the problem here is? There is no material difference between a 10 person game studio and a 3000 person game studio. Zynga likes to pretend that their Z-Cloud gives them an advantage over their competitors. Maybe it does in terms of operations, but games isn't an operations business, it's a hits business. All of the optimization in the world doesn't help if you can't keep making wins and Zynga can't make wins because they're too cluttered with layers of middle management FUD.
520 employees is a lot of people out of work, but I have to think they saw it coming. My advice to people in similar positions all throughout tech is this: there are three signs that indicate an impending downsizing.
* Depressed Stock Value over long periods of time
* An Acceleration of secrecy and fiefdom claiming within the culture
* You look around and no one wants to come to work anymore
If you find yourself in this situation, leave. Find another job. Being caught in a downsizing sucks, but if you pay attention you can avoid them. It's important to make friends and to be able to tell the temperature of your local environment to avoid such devastation.
Edit: This can best be summarized as the well known phenomenon: "There's no such thing as a Free Lunch".
Or it can be a great. Severance packages can be quite lucrative.
The better advice I give people is "always be looking for job opportunities". The best job opportunities come when you least expect them, and the worst jobs are taken when you're desperate.
I took a really shitty job so I could be close to someone in a country. I had it for almost two years. The job wasn't worth it. But the person in question was.. ten folds. Now, we're trying to settle down, but fixing the job/security situation.
That being said, I am always skeptical at things pointed out as job security.
Didn't we just go through a deep recession? Decent programmers in big cities had nothing to worry about!
Nothing is absolute, if our society collapses, then yeah, programmers might not have an easy time finding a decent job. Short of catastrophic problems, I think programmers are in good shape for a long time.
It's a generous payout. The cuts seem indiscriminate when I look at all the talented people being cut. I imagine that it is hard to surgically remove 20% of your workforce.
Right now, I'm torn between looking for work immediately and asking for a delayed start, or going on vacation now and looking for work when I get back.
All I know is that Mars Bar (the local bar) will be busy tonight.
I took a few months after my last resignation and it allowed me to really think clearly without the daily distractions of corporate life. It really let me reexamine my priorities and how I want to live going forward, so if you're (a) comfortable financially (I had few if any financial obligations) and (b) are confident in your ability to find a good role in the future, I can vouch for the mental benefits of just taking it easy for a few months, even if you don't do anything "special".
Oh, and thanks for sharing your perspective with us!
I'm not sure what 3+ months' salary is for you, but I was able to live for a year in NW Thailand for $20k. I wouldn't be the person I am today had I not done that.
As an aside, this is why the US should have longer mandatory holiday. Taking a vacation would be the last thing on my mind if I was laid off, but our country has 5 weeks of semi-paid holidays a year.
Good luck with your decision, I'm sure you'll land on your feet.
I would say get stuck in a downsizing. It is great. You are either going to get a salary increase, acceleration, or more equity so they can retain you. You can often negotiate a bit here.
Or, you are going to be let go where you get a good severance. Take some time off, understand your mistake, and move on.
Packages are great when you can take a whole package then walk across the street and get a new job the day after. The main problem with this strategy is when the year is 2001 and every company in the tech-industry is going bust at the same time.
When I resigned from my last job, my last day coincided with a "reorg" that laid off maybe 3% of the workforce that very day (not a very big company though). I remember a coworker telling me, "Hey man, you should get in on that (so you can get severance)" :P
This same exact thing happened to me. Literally on my last day, first thing in the morning was a company wide meeting announcing a 10% layoff, my whole team included. Hard to imagine a more depressing last day. No severance for me, but at least I had a job to go to next.
Severance packages can be good, but you don't want to be the last to leave. I stayed at a company until the bitter end (Chap 11) and got almost no severance. I would have made more money in absolute terms if I had been sacked in the last round of layoffs. I thought I was skilled to avoid the layoffs but really it cost me money.
I'm wondering: is it better to be one of the first to get sacked or the second to last?
It'd seem like the company would have more resources to "pay out" for the earlier rounds, gradually decreasing as the rounds go on. Besides, you probably want to get out of a failing company, and provided that you are competent (though increased competence would in reality lessen the chances of your getting sacked in the first round) I'd think that you'd prefer to get your severance and get out asap.
Heh. Yeah, that's an irony I've seen up close. The worst employees get the best severance, because the company still has money in the first round of layoffs.
My uncle was recently laid off and given severance of a year's salary ($150k). He got another $150k job soon after. He'll make $300k this year. This is in Missouri, where that's a lot of money.
That's great to hear and it's a wonderful turn of events, but I shudder thinking about the tax bill (though obviously you're coming out ahead no matter what)
There's nothing wrong with taking a job when you're desperate. It gives you breathing room to look for another job, and companies are more willing to bargain when you have a job.
The problem comes when you take a job because you're desperate and then stay because you're lazy.
Couldn't possibly be a better time to be laid off. Free money, severance package, AND the pick of the litter as to what job you want! Surely anyone who was hired at Zynga would be at least capable of most programming jobs in the country. The world is theirs.
That is, unless Mark Pincus decides to fuck them over. There's always that aspect. (see Tribe.net)
I googled around for a good 10 minutes and read a few TC articles and Pincus' wikipedia article and couldn't figure out what had happened regarding tribe.net (other than an issuing a TRO to a former colleague in 2009). Would you care to elaborate?
Just basically let it die even though there were paying customers. I remember people paying for premium service feeling pretty shitty when the people who ran Tribe couldn't even give a shit to keep the site up for more than a few hours. Tribe died right around the time Zynga's games like FarmVille exploded. It just seemed like he didn't really care about the people who made Tribe a good place to hang out and who kept the site going, and only cared about expanding his own personal portfolio with a game that most people frankly found annoying, especially those who didn't play it.
He didn't do anything all that shitty, but it was enough for me to recognize him as someone who doesn't care about the community-building aspect as much as the "making money" aspect. Because of that, when he does things like this, I don't feel all that surprised.
Or it can be a great. Severance packages can be quite lucrative.
YMMV. I was part of a "10% workforce reduction", which included no severance packages. They gave us advanced notice, but I would have preferred the cash equivalent for that time instead.
I'm sure there's a rant about at will in there somewhere...
One of my favorite breweries (Strange Brewing Company - http://www.strangebrewingco.com/) essentially started on two severance packages from the Rocky Mountain News. Those guys definitely won when they lost their jobs.
The one sign for impending bankruptcy, sellout, or similar forms of doom: desperate last measures by top management to raise the stock price, presumably so they can make a last profit. E.g. SUNW changing its stock symbol to JAVA just before selling out to Oracle.
I think a comparable change on Apple's part would have been renaming themselves to MacBook with a stock symbol of $MBP (or something equally narrow, as opposed to dropping computer to go after a bigger market).
My 1st thought was that the difference here is that Apple were broadening their focus, the other two examples were pinning all their hopes on a single product.
While this is fair -- and I don't think there's a strong positive outlook on BlackBerry's future -- there were internal discussions for years about whether to change the name of the company or not since BlackBerry was really the only product and was far more recognizable externally than RIM.
The "untracked" WFH days suddenly come under scrutiny.
This can also be an indicator of rampant abuse. That is, too many people work at home and don't work much. In my experience, even in small companies, there's a lot of me-too-ism with WFH, which leads to people asking for and being approved to work at home, when they really shouldn't be. Over time, this can lead to a measurable drop in productivity.
I wonder which is a better approach: an unilateral barring of WFH days, or an effort to improve team morale to the point where people actually want to come to work.
Yahoo is unilaterally cancelling all work at home plans, but my friend's manager was organically trying to get his team to come in on the WFH Fridays with Friday team events centered around alcohol, and other ways to build camraderie and morale.
Ah, point taken... but this may be a chicken-or-egg problem. If things are such in a company that a significant group of people start abusing WFH, that seems to imply morale has somehow been damaged and people aren't excited about their work(anymore?).
Is WFH-abuse causing low morale/productivity at work, or did something else cause the decline in morale/productivity thus resulting in WFH-abuse.... I dunno.
A long time ago I read an article about companies would actually use rumor and gossip to signal to it's employees that layoffs are pending without actually explicitly saying that. In theory you should be able to use signals to predict things.
In practice I've seen friends completely blindsided by layoffs and I've dodged many a bullet but still didn't see it coming for the other people. I think it can be real difficult to predict these things other than to use your gut if you think something's afoot and be prepared to act preemptively.
There's usually signs, if you're sufficiently attuned to see them. Another thread on HN a few days back led me to write a blog post about one reliable type of "warm up the résumé" indicator:
"... if you’re in a client-services business, when you visit your clients, make sure to go with them to grab a beverage from their break room before your meeting".
So true. Another good point is to ask to use the restrooms even if you don't really have to go.
I interviewed at one place where I was told over and over how well the company was doing and how the owner loved racing his Porsches at the local road track. Then I saw the restrooms, which looked like they hadn't been updated or fixed in twenty years. I figured out where the money was going... and it wasn't to employees.
Sure enough, the offer came in and it was a lowball. That confirmed my theory.
It's interesting that you mention the Porsche thing. I've always found looking in the company car park on the way into a job interview a pretty reliable measure of how a company is doing and in particular how it treats its staff. Seeing reserved spaces for senior management full of high end executive cars and SUVs, and then a handful of unreserved spaces for everyone else full of much older vehicles without a single high-end or enthusiast model is not a good sign.
Keep in mind that restrooms are often the one part of an office that a company can't upgrade because they're under the control of the landlord and not the tenant. I've worked at a number of companies where we were doing fine, but the bathrooms were terrible because the landlord never, ever updated them from the original build.
That is what the bad companies will always say, even when it is not true.
Landlords will happily allow the tenant to pay the cost of renovating the bathroom. Good companies understand that certain basic creature comforts for employees are a cost of doing business, and it is very little money in the long haul. Penny-pinching here is a bad sign (unless it is a very early start up, or the company anticipates moving offices within a couple years for some reason).
I guess I could have added this to the original story, but the company owned and built the building themselves. In the late 70s. And the interior apparently hasn't changed since.
But it's important that the Variation is indicative. Like if you get baller snacks for a year and lame snacks start coming in, that's a very bad sign. But if you've always had lame snacks that's not a bad sign, your company is just frugal.
At Kaleida, the upper management stopped showing up for work all at once, because they were under non-disclosure not to say anything about the impending layoff, and didn't want to encounter anybody in the hallway who wanted to chat.
Internally, a big leading indicator is usually a constant series of reorgs. Reorgs goeth before the layoffs.
Last-ditch attempts to shuffle the deck chairs usually mean that shit's about to hit the fan. These are usually coupled with the secrecy/fiefdom mentality you mention.
There are only two types of employees in a reorg: those doing the reorganizing, and those being reorganized. If you're frequently among the latter, know that you're also considered expendable enough in a layoff scenario. If your company's gone through several reorgs in rapid succession (more than 2 in a 6-month period, say), it's probably not a bad idea to start planning accordingly.
There are many companies that do reorgs regularly each year as kind of a habitual "churn" process. Do you think this is indicative of anything, or is it just case by case in this case?
Without knowing more about the specific company you are referring to, it's hard to tell, but I would propose that in _most_ situations, it's indicative of a systemic problem.
I'm talking less about planned or regular reorgs. Talking more about multiple reorgs over a shorter-than-usual timeframe. Yearly reorg as a matter of course? Probably nothing to worry about. Two reorgs in the same quarter? Red flag.
I was involved downsize a couple years back, and it turned out well for me. At least with my company they gave a severance package at departure. Better deal then just leaving for a new job.
If you can, negotiate your new job just before the layoff. Then stay around for the severance package. I was lucky enough to have done that when Kaleida shut down, so I didn't have to compete with everybody else I was working with for a new job in the same field at the same time. (A bunch of them went to Netscape, and I'm sure glad I avoided that trap!)
Not for engineers though. There will be multiple offers in the case of Zynga engineers, so negotiating isn't the issue. It's better financially to get severance.
This is nonsensical. What exactly did Zynga do that was so bad? They are still making hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. That's something most companies will never do. It's not like they committed fraud or anything illegal.
As well, regardless of what you think of Zynga's games or their business strategy, the engineers have really great skills in dealing with some very great technology and high-load situations. They will be extremely marketable.
To paint every single employee with the same paintbrush just because their business isn't something you particularly enjoy is dumb.
That's unfair on the employees. Sure, Zynga has a reputation as a scummy company with low morals, but I don't think it has a bad technical reputation. And the day-to-day programmers, architects and designers won't have had much influence on the behaviour of the company. I don't think they'll be tarnished, and it would be dumb for a potential employer to reject them just because they worked there.
In the 90s when boo.com imploded (you might not remember them but they were huge) my company wanted to hire some of them. I prevailed against it then. Boo collapsed because they partied their way through their investor's money. Regardless of any other skills, they all had a spectactularly poor attitude to other people's money. You don't want that kind of culture to take root in an organization.
That looks narrow-minded for those particular employers though. The leadership might have made a lot of questionable decisions, but I don't think that should affect the quality of the engineers from that company.
That doesn't make sense, just because a company has a history of making bad management and product decisions doesn't mean the engineering talent is subpar.
> ...games isn't an operations business, it's a hits business.
It depends on the game. Low-engagement games like Zynga titles are definitely hits businesses. However, game companies are starting to figure out that hits aren't sustainable. You have to create lifestyles that make people say, "I'm a X game player," not just "I play X game," and that means exceptional, reliable game experiences that extend outside the game. Creating a great Games as a Service company REQUIRES really awesome operational expertise. Game studios and publishers that want to provide those kinds of experiences really do need to have solid operations, and not just in their technology. The entire experience, from their support to their online presence to their in-person events, has to be buttoned up tight.
>...* that means exceptional, reliable game experiences that extend outside the game.*
This is something Zynga has never, will never understand. They don't have a deep understanding of games - they have a deep understanding of rapid ~~~thievery~~~ emulation and deployment.
Fear - uncertainty - doubt. Basically when people kill good ideas by focusing on only the bad aspects and risks. It can happen when people are too conservative and want to keep the status quo, or aggressively to undermine competing interests.
Bashing z-cloud is unwarranted and irrelevant to the point you make. A piece of technology that saves a company millions of dollars has no place in your diatribe against its management or creative output.
520 employees is a lot of people out of work, but I have to think they saw it coming. My advice to people in similar positions all throughout tech is this: there are three signs that indicate an impending downsizing.
* Depressed Stock Value over long periods of time
* An Acceleration of secrecy and fiefdom claiming within the culture
* You look around and no one wants to come to work anymore
If you find yourself in this situation, leave. Find another job. Being caught in a downsizing sucks, but if you pay attention you can avoid them. It's important to make friends and to be able to tell the temperature of your local environment to avoid such devastation.
Edit: This can best be summarized as the well known phenomenon: "There's no such thing as a Free Lunch".