Firstly, I don't see the employees being let go as victims, most are getting 3 months severance. Secondly, I don't think there is any real evil going on by Zynga; they accidentally hired more people than they can afford, it sucks as I'm one of them, but I fundamentally agree with the notion of at-will employment in the US.
I think when people say Zynga is evil, they largely point to three things:
* spaminess of the games
* propensity to copy other products rather than come up with original ideas
* tuning of games to maximize revenues from individual players
Do you think these are fair judgments about Zynga's methods? Is Zynga more guilty of these tendencies than other gaming companies?
But I'm not Zynga's target audience, and that's okay. And there's a lot of sympathy for your point about the "spaminess."
However, going from spammy/over-monetizing to evil has always seemed a tad dramatic to me.
The reason I think they are evil is the way they treat their employees, beginning with forcing developers to give back stock before their IPO. This latest stunt is just piling on.
An employer must give notice 60-days prior to a plant closing, layoff or relocation. In addition to the notifications required under federal WARN, notice must also be given to the Local Workforce Investment Board, and the chief elected official of each city and county government within which the termination, relocation or mass layoff occurs. (California Labor Code Section 1401)
No one gives notice because of the risk that employees will do something malicious and instead just pay out the 60 days(with benefits including vacation accrual). I've done 3 sets of layoffs at my old company as a manager and was eventually layed off. At non California locations and offices that were too small to fall under WARN, we terminated employees with no severance except one month that was attached to an agreement not to sue. BTW, nothing i said was legal advice just simply stating that 3 months is standard for California.
Also, you did the exact same thing he/she did when you said you didn't think the warn act requires severance so even if what he/she did was giving legal advice, your comment would fall under the exact same category.
I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hiring a lot of developers, designers or whatever else.
Saying you accidentally hired people makes it sound softer than it really is. If Raytheon or Boeing hired 2,000 people ahead of a defense contract they were sure they'd get, and didn't that wouldn't be an "accident." That would be poor planning (counting your eggs before they hatch kind of thing.)
Either way, I don't really care either way about Zynga. I don't think I've ever played their games, but at the same time I'm not hoping they fail.
Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
It's also very backwards (government-level!) thinking to be playing the hiring quota game like that. I'd much rather hire a few members in a kick-ass team than participate in a headcount battle.
That's not a mass redundancy, that's a mass replacement.
Now, getting people and teams transferred once they are hired? That's a whole different story.