Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bjartr | Hacker News Reader

Here's some additional context for these layoffs:

As of June 2018 Blizzard employeed around 9,800 people[1]. So this layoff represents a turnover of ~8% of staff. Depending on Blizzard's base turnover rate, which I couldn't find, they may be better or worse overall than the industry turnover rate of ~15% [2]

Blizzard was considered one of the best companies to work for in 2018, at least by Forbes, though you can absolutely find examples of poor working conditions and unreasonable expectations as is the unfortunate par for the course in the games industry.

The 78 person studio mentioned in the article (Z2Live) was a second degree acquisition (acquired by King who was then acquired by Blizzard), with their last release being in 2012[3].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/companies/activision-blizzard/#2a4ede...

[2] https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(company)

View on HN

If your company is acquired, it is reasonable to expect that you'll be laid off, no matter how talented. Acquisition = layoffs - general rule of thumb.

This seems like the real answer to what folks are wondering about here. If they just acquired a bunch of companies there are going to be redundant roles to eliminate.

Members of the acquired company had a 7 year run between King and Activision, so not sure it is fair to attribute layoffs to either acquisition.

There is always overlap. No need for two HR departments.

I wonder how much "has recently had or is planning on having massive layoffs" affects employer satisfaction rates. How could Blizzard possibly be considered one of the best companies to work for next year if they just canned so many people this year? That's gotta be terrible for morale, no? I've fortunately never worked at a company that's had big layoffs (ever, not just while I've worked there), but I can imagine that even if I wasn't laid off, I'd start looking for another job, because who knows? I could be next.

reeeeallly depends.

You've asked a broad, general question - I have no knowledge of Blizzard whatsoever.

But while in many (most?) cases layoffs have negative impact on morale, it's not necessarily the case. High performing teams and individuals can have their morale boosted if they perceive that unproductive employees have been trimmed. While perhaps less common in startups, I'd venture that in large corporations, there will be team members who are perceived to not be pulling their weight or are downright drain on the team; layers of management, not to mention bureaucracy and administration, that average employees would gleefully see removed; or branches that are perceived as diluting focus of the company -- etc etc.

I was thinking about that, but it's hard to imagine a large lay-off being surgical enough to reliably target just the under-performers. They usually target entire under-performing product areas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com