Disney Lays Off Ike Perlmutter, Chairman of Marvel Entertainment | Hacker News Reader

Disney Lays Off Ike Perlmutter, Chairman of Marvel Entertainment

nytimes.com

62 pointsmfiguiere71 comments

Is "fired" just not a word anymore? Perlmutter was on the wrong side of a power struggle (he was fighting to get Nelson Peltz, an activist investor, a board seat, and had previously tried to fire Kevin Feige and take over control of Marvel Studios). This has nothing to do with layoffs, but is simply Bob Iger continuing to solidify his standing at the top of the hierarchy.

It does when it’s part of eliminating an entire division and 7,000 others are losing their jobs.

For clarity 7,000 jobs are being eliminated while the division is being folded into other business units and will no longer exist separately. Division being eliminated, while still correct in a way, can easily sound like the entire division is no more not moved around.

The division is eliminated. Some people are relocated to other divisions. This isn't really a confusing point.

When said with certain context absolutely. That is all I was trying to highlight - not that the concept itself is complex. There are, after all, plenty of times a division is truly just shut down instead of folded in. The article does a good job of putting in context and comments can lose that so I had to refer back to the article to make sure I understood what happened.

Being fired and being laid off have very different ramifications though, and generally different exit packages.

For top executives who have contracts and golden parachute clauses, not really.

Exactly. For top execs to get "fired" without a shit ton of money (like, more than your average person makes in a lifetime, sometimes more that a large group of people will make in their lifetimes) there is usually something pretty egregious, like sexual harassment or overt legal problems. Les Moonves was originally going to get $120 million in severance before there was a considerable uproar having to do with the Me Too movement, and CBS held firm on saying they were firing him for cause.

Arguably, everything that isn’t for a serious breach of contract or other cause which allows stripping the golden parachute is “laid off” for them.

But even with that, they occasionally do get “fired”.

right, I doubt this guy is worried about COBRA coverage

Because he wasn't fired for cause. It was a normal re-structure.

And Perlmutter was never a threat to Iger more just an annoyance for Feige who is critical to the future of Disney.

(Along with 7,000 people who still need to work for a living.)

Maybe I shouldn’t complain, though; laying off management alongside labor should be normalized.

> Maybe I shouldn’t complain, though; laying off management alongside labor should be normalized.

If that includes C-level, I'm all for it. By definition, they have failed.

I understand people feel differently, and layoffs can certainly be extremely disruptive to those affected, but I don't consider them a mark of "failure" of management.

What's better, to get hired, paid a great salary and gain experience and knowledge for a couple years, and then get laid off with 4 months severance+benefits, or never get hired at all? To be clear, I think there are some fair arguments (not necessarily ones I agree with) for "never get hired at all", but just be clear, that is what you are arguing for.

and then get laid off with 4 months severance+benefits

And a black mark on your record that every HR drone will pick up on like a bloodhound.

The thing that's "safer" about getting laid off when there are huge rounds throughout many different companies is that it is actually even more accurate to say that it had 0 to do with job performance.

True, obviously companies use layoffs to get rid of low performers, but there are just numerous cases where companies are canning entire divisions, e.g. the Alexa-device-focused teams at Amazon or the metaverse team at Disney.

I highly doubt these most recent layoffs will be treated as much of a black mark.

Following the Great Recession, there were job postings that literally said not to apply unless you already had a job. You wildly underestimate the degree to which HR will mindlessly inflict their uniformed bias on the rest of us.

Even if they don't make it an actual requirement, it's almost always easier to get a job while you have a job.

You have to look at the circumstances. If you were an airline laying off pilots in April 2020, no, this wasn't a C-level failure. Sometimes, the layoffs were because of bad C-level decisions, and leadership should take a hard look at how did performed and if they should still be there. And sometimes, even if leadership screwed up, the uncertainty if they leave isn't worth it.

Disney did just fire their CEO though.

Although he got a $20m exit package which undoubtedly softened the blow.

In theory, it should be prioritized since they are the largest overhead and are often times responsible for inefficiencies or getting into a bad position.

> laying off management alongside labor should be normalized.

In fact, it should probably be put into law: any layoff round of over 1000 people should require any direct supervisor to be laid off, recursively up to the CEO.

Companies are not improved by successive rounds of 997 people being laid off with whatever the zombie minimum waiting period in-between is.

There is the law and there is the spirit of the law. I'm sure a motivated lawmaker could write something a bit more ironclad than a one-line HN post.

I’m equally sure that wherever the line is placed in law, companies will often elect to run right up to, but not over, the line. This will often be worse for employees than just getting it over with.

I sincerely disagree. Even just slowing down the churn rate would give more employees a chance to find other jobs without a "can't make rent" gun pointed at their heads. It would also avoid flooding the market of this or that sector, which exacerbates all problems around joblessness.

Policy doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to push in directions different from naked market forces.

Maybe. I can certainly see a scenario where a vp/manager disagrees with growth in a new product area, is then proven right, but still must eliminate positions. Should they still be fired? Non rhetorical, I can see the case either way.

No, he should just find other, less-stupid jobs for the people who were hired to do something stupid.

This is perhaps the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. The goal of layoffs is to make the company stronger and survive, not kill it.

"Some of you may lose your jobs but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to save the company" is weak sauce to the thousands of people at Disney who had no influence over their corporate policy and will be out of a job.

Managers and executives are first in line for bonuses and praise so it follows that they are first in line for the chopping block. See: executive pay rates vs rank-and-file employee pay over the past 40+ years. You want increased reward? You get increased risk.

You are thinking of layoffs as a failure or punishment. It's not.

To understand it, you need to think of it from the businesses perspective. People are capital equipment that consume money and output productivity in a particular area.

There is a cost to hiring (recruiting, onboarding, training) and firing (severance, reallocation of responsibilities) these people, which is why corporations are not run like an Uber-style demand-based gig for the most part. There is "stickiness" to hiring someone.

However, when the required productivity or capital availability changes (external forces, bad forecasting, change in market conditions), as a company you decide whether the pain of changing the labor force is worth it. These may be the result of bad bets or dumb luck, but that doesn't matter. The goal is to adjust the companies' production to its ability to finance those production machines (people).

Imagine you're in the photocopying business, and you lease photocopiers from Xerox. Depending on demand, you may want to increase the number that you lease. Or maybe the market is in a economic downturn, and people are photocopying less. You try run the numbers and decide if paying the penalty for breaking the lease on x machines is worth it vs. paying the monthly fee for them. That's the simple calculus.

To summarize: It's not a punishment for your boss to treat you like a disused photocopier.

> You are thinking of layoffs as a failure or punishment. It's not.

It doesn't matter if that's the intent or not. If you're being laid off, the effect is identical to being punished. And most people will internalize it as failure.

You may as well have responded with "let them eat cake".

You can try to reason your way out of the position with your simple calculus but at the end of the day people are more than just a line item on a budget.

Interesting implications!

Care to elaborate?

Edit: Downvoted for expecting to hear more about how management never, ever, makes mistakes.

Nice, real nice

Does this mean the Marvel trash might finally slow down? They should can whoever does the Star Wars stuff too because it’s so bad. It’s turning our society into bigger morons than they already were.

Different part of Marvel. From the article:

"Disney confirmed the move. Mr. Perlmutter, 80, was told by phone on Wednesday that Marvel Entertainment, a small division centered on consumer products and run separately from Marvel Studios..."

Part of me wants to be hopeful, part of me just does not believe we're at a point in history where an organization like Disney can make good art.

Perlmutter was responsible for the good parts of the MCU. He wanted to focus on good storytelling. From here on out you can expect unabashedly preachy woke propaganda from Feige’s MCU.

I dunno who you get your info from, but Ike Perlmutter was acqui-hired from a toy company, constantly fought to fragment the heck out of MCU TV and movie properties, and chronically only cared about what would sell toys. His creative process was described by folks at Marvel Studio as "he just cares about what will make money." It was some solid great passion-for-storytelling on Perlmutter's part that led to recasting Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle, despite them not looking remotely similar, because (in Perlmutter's words) "black people look the same" -- causing a really jarring change to one of the most significant characters in Tony Stark's plotline (but with no attempt at explanation).

I don't think Ike Perlmutter is somehow the champion of good art against the forces of lazy pandering that you think he is. I think Ike Perlmutter _is_ the force of lazy pandering that constantly frustrated Marvel Studios' writers until he was finally kicked out back in 2015.

> "black people look the same"

Try providing a reference that doesn't say "reportedly" and pass the buck. Ditto the bit about him calling the three execs "the help".

> I dunno who you get your info from

From reading enough of the crappy sites that repeat the claim you posted and yet never point to anyone (even anonymous) willing to personally report it. The thing with false claims is that there is no disproof because there was no story until it was made up.

> Ike Perlmutter was acqui-hired from a toy company,

You make it sound like toy companies employ losers nobody else would want, and that he was just an employee there, and that Disney only kept him because he came with the building.

> chronically only cared about what would sell toys

He's thinking about what would make the most money in total, movies + toys.

> champion of good art against the forces of lazy pandering

Well, 'good art' is what fans want to buy and lazy pandering is just that.

Perlmutter reportedly said audiences wouldn't notice a replacement actor because "black people look the same," and was a major blocker to woman-led superhero movies because he thought they couldn't sell.

Wow, glad the She-hulk & Ms Marvel returns proved him wrong!

The MCU hasn’t been under Perlmutter’s control since 2015.

Hey, can you explain exactly what you mean by preachy woke propaganda with some specific examples?

Social and cultural advancement beyond where society was roughly when I entered adulthood.

Most on the nose description I've seen.

A lot of the "anti woke" brigade might want to try reading the source material, it was woke before that word was co-opted as a pejorative.

Brie Larsen's charecter being shoehorned in at the 11th hour is the most widely-cited example. But personally, the way the secret police (SHIELD) is cast in the most favourable terms possible is much worse. The political stance called 'Woke' is authoritarian despite pretending rebellion it's important to remember.

This isn't the movies/Studios division. More likely has to do with the relative failures of "Marvel's Avengers" (the video game) and Marvel Snap.

> More likely has to do with the relative failures of "Marvel's Avengers" (the video game)

That was really striking while the iron was luke warm. I'd gleefully followed Marvel up to Endgame, watching all my childhood geeky dreams come true, but by the time that game came out I was over it and didn't want to run around with knock-off versions of the characters I loved in loot box, live service hell.

It really felt like the game should have focused on different characters and storylines. After, what, a decade of the movies establishing the faces and voices of the characters we get a warmed over bunch of lookalikes and voice impersonators? Since its not realistic to get all the stars to come in and do voice lines for the game, lets look at what the B-team is doing while the mainline folks fight the big bad!

I like the idea of a B-Team, but let's take it all the way - open the game with a cinematic of Korg and Miek sitting on the couch, and then some Taika witty dialogue ending in him finding an old cartridge of some sort on the ground, and with a "oh, let's give this a go". We hear a click of the cartridge being seated, and the camera pans in to a TV glowing with the start screen "8-Bit Avenger's: the Game". No need for celebrity voices (beside Taika, he can show up for an afternoon), no need to make sure the actors all the look the same, just a licensed game that doesn't try to suck all the money out of the gamer, like the latest TMNT game.

Or something, anything other than weird waxworks copied of a plot line that tries to take itself seriously.

I like it!

> relative failures of "Marvel's Avengers" (the video game) and Marvel Snap

Was Marvel Snap a failure? I saw it got talked about a lot, but the conversation didn't feel particularly organic.

Joke is on you when you lay off someone worth $4 billion

https://www.forbes.com/profile/isaac-perlmutter/

At 80 with his money I hope he enjoys retirement.

His job sounded more interesting than playing golf or gardening.

If I was offered enough money that I could quit my job and garden for the next 50 years, I would not hesitate to take that deal

Working until 80 seems like hell. I would love to run a community garden that grows fresh food and gives away the harvest to people who need or want it. Corn, it has the juice!

Because executives don’t actually perform labor or work hard. If they did, Elon Musk wouldn’t be able to hold down 3 CEO jobs.

The biggest myth in the business world is that top executives work long hours.

It’s funny, if it was public knowledge that I worked two other engineering jobs, they would all fire me.

Mirror: https://archive.ph/iDUru

The war between Perlmutter and Feige comes to a close.

> In April 2017, Perlmutter was categorized by The New York Times as one of the "Clubgoers" among twenty people whom President Trump consults "outside the White House gates". He "has been informally advising ... on veterans issues [and] ... has been a presence" at Mar-a-Lago, according to the account.[29]

> In August 2018 non-profit news organization ProPublica reported that Trump had informally authorized three members of his Mar-a-Lago club to direct policy at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and issue instructions to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Peter O'Rourke. Perlmutter was named among the three, collective known as the Mar-a-Lago Crowd.[30] The author of the article obtained "hundreds of documents" through the Freedom of Information Act that show the three were in daily contact with the agency, "reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions" and that "they prodded the VA to start new programs, and officials travelled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views."[30] VA staffers have claimed that the three men got control over the department as "spoils" to reward them for their support of Trump. Their influence over the VA, including VA staff traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet with them, carried on into 2019.[31]

Huh (Wikipedia)

Maybe now that the GOP seems to be at war with Disney, this makes a little more sense now, given the above.

I can't believe how little traction that story got. Trump sold the VA to his golf buddies and just nobody seemed to care.

Trump mocked veterans, POWs and casualties of war several times during his presidency. I think we just decided that doesn’t matter.

Oh no, not the heckin’ capeshit head dude! Is Disney even capable of making non-superhero films, or doing anything else aside from remaking old successful films that flop even before they debut any more?

Well, the newest Avatar movie made a cool $2.25 billion, so... yes?

That's ticket sales, not profit. And it also counts the enormous volume of tickets actually given away by the PR company. People figured out how this all works with Captain Marvel, a dull film which was pumped artificially in any number of ways. It's simple Hollywood accounting.

Sure, but that's every movie. Hollywood accounting is always bogus, and yet Avatar still pulled in a ton of money.

There is no one left to throw under the bus Kevin.

Sounds like a villain origin story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com