Activision to be hit with Layoffs

[Spect3r]

Happens in every industry, restructuring, firing up to 10% of your work force, etc are almost daily happening in the world economy, nothing new really.

Economically speaking every company needs to restructure every now and then, of course there are more than 1 way to do it and not all involv firing people, but most of the times it does.
Markets, customer habits, etc, can change a lot in 10/15 years, and much faster than what big companies can actually update themselves to, so if they dont end up closing, in 10/15 years there will be another round like this.

[Aidy]

There is always slack to take up, everyone has something that they used to handle, that they need to dump on someone else, unless you're living in "office space" where nobody does anything of worth.

And just because they aren't needed at this minute doesn't mean they aren't needed at all. a company can't lay off their people at a whim then re-hire them 2 months later when they're needed. With the training and productivity reductions it costs more than keeping the already trained staff on even if there is no work momentarily. This is not like a factory where their job was automated away thus no longer needed.

There are a lot of laws and regulations around redundancy to ensure companies don't just use it to fire people. If making a person redundant would result in an increased workload for someone else then the legality of their redundancy could probably be called into question. Let's say I hire someone to maintain the printers in the office then decide to outsource that work to an external company, then the job of printer maintenance is now redundant, the person who is hired to do it effectively no longer has a job to do so can be let go. Him leaving does not increase workload elsewhere. If you have three receptionists answering calls and letting one go means the others have far more calls to answer then you could argue the job is not redundant at all but still required. Companies don't make redundancies lightly, the process takes a long time.

[MadMummy76]

People are made redundant when their jobs are redundant, ie not needed any more. So in theory there won't be any slack to take up.

There is always slack to take up, everyone has something that they used to handle, that they need to dump on someone else, unless you're living in "office space" where nobody does anything of worth.

And just because they aren't needed at this minute doesn't mean they aren't needed at all. a company can't lay off their people at a whim then re-hire them 2 months later when they're needed. With the training and productivity reductions it costs more than keeping the already trained staff on even if there is no work momentarily. This is not like a factory where their job was automated away thus no longer needed.

[Aidy]

Next year's news will be reports of thousands of people working in the game industry suffering from 'the Crunch'.
They are going to have to do some long ass hours to make up for the staff that is gone.

I don't know if there are laws on this, but I'm hoping that there will be whistleblowers and reports that can help bring these CEO's to justice.

People are made redundant when their jobs are redundant, ie not needed any more. So in theory there won't be any slack to take up.

[Borghir]

Next year's news will be reports of thousands of people working in the game industry suffering from 'the Crunch'.
They are going to have to do some long ass hours to make up for the staff that is gone.

I don't know if there are laws on this, but I'm hoping that there will be whistleblowers and reports that can help bring these CEO's to justice.

[Thomas_JCG]

Update 12/02: Activision will be laying off around 8% of their staff, which amounts to 770 people of their 9625 employees. In addition to it all, Activision has also confirmed that Blizzard will not be releasing any new games this year, which is certainly not very reassuring.

[Animusisters]

Not surprising. Those CFO's needs their bonuses.

[The Chosen One]

It appears Activision is cleaning house. (Note: Not defending Activision) Companies like this tend to reduce payroll by 15%-20% or more in order to reduce expenses for the purpose of restructuring, to allocate resources in order to hedge future expenditures for the restructure, to put itself in a good position financially in order to continue to secure working capital credit facilities (i.e. loans) from the Company's current creditors ( and/or maintain it's profitability and leverage covenants, if any) (Lenders/NPs), and assure risk averse Investors (stock holders) that they will be a good investment long term when valuating their stock price.

Truth be told one of the biggest signs a Company has the ability to bounce back is in how it can reduce it's expenses and not completely fall apart, then begin to grow again. This is Activision's pull back or receding tide in the wake of the poor decision making of management, or if they're really incompetent the net effect will be musical chairs.

It's not a fun situation to be in if you're an employee that just was laid off, but it happens from time to time. I've worked at jobs that merged with other companies that didn't need the department I was in and offered to buy me out (luckily), and I worked at a company that made piss poor decisions that ultimately led to restructure. Having said that these workers will just have to find jobs somewhere else, and in some cases they can re-apply for their jobs later on down the road.

What this is supposed to mean is that Activision is having a "Come to Jesus moment(s)" and is getting their house in order to turn the tide going forward from a "going concern" standpoint. As a business they can structure salaries, bonuses, and corporate incentives how they like and fire the low hanging fruit off the company org chart, but ultimately they either fail or succeed based on the customer base. Plus if they keep struggling, I wouldn't be surprised if another company came and offered to buy them out.

It is my hope (more doubt than hope though) that this restructure will lead to quality content, better paid (even though fewer) top talent in each respective department, and place a focus on how best to promote practices that are pro-consumer. I hope that these fertile fundamentals are what springs up after the crop burning that just occurred.

Either way I don't have very much confidence in the Company to change overnight because it's a big ship to turn around. My jaded self thinks at this point the Company is so big and set in it's ways that all it will do is pull back for a time, wait it out, and then start ramping up it's old ways again.

Regardless we shall see.

[Thomas_JCG]

Their CEO Bobby Kotick earned around $28 million in 2018. They could have easily taken salary cuts to keep those people employed.

Which is exactly what Saint Satoru Iwata did when the Wii U under-performed, he cut down his own salary to avoid staff reduction.

[Jokerthefoolio]

Activision cares more about paying off their so they'll stick around and get rid of the people who actually make activision blizzard capable of being a good stable company

[MrFon]

Their CEO Bobby Kotick earned around $28 million in 2018. They could have easily taken salary cuts to keep those people employed.

[Zoltor]

Activision is pure evil, they're doing poorly on their side, but instead of taking responsibility for their faults, they punish Blizzard who had nothing to do with any of that.

I personally hate Blizzrd, they're run by arrogant asshole who takes advantage of their fanbase in the most scummy ways possible, but in this situation, they did nothing to deserve this BS. Meanwhile you have scumbag activision giving satonic bastards 15m just for a signup bonus, and nearly 1m a year salary.

WTF, do you know how many employees that could've went to instead, yikes.

[AlexKidd]

I feel bad for the employees, but let Activision suffer. It's time their greed comes to an end and maybe Blizzard will finally split.

[Irritablesquid]

It does seem strange to give your top level management a huge sum of money but then to payoff loads of low level employees.

I'm not surprised by this, it's been happening for many years and is just a part of business. To be as big as Activision the executives have had to step on the bodies of lesser beings and destroy the passion of others, standard business really.

Look at the banking sector, in the UK they give themselves millions in bonuses every year but then tell everyone they are making a loss year after year. What they do is look at the last year they made a huge profit and class any year they don't beat that as a loss even though it's still a profit.

I feel sorry for the employees who are going to lose their jobs but it happens.

If it's true ofcourse, we will find out soon.

[OzzieArcane]

Corporate bonuses are always beyond stupid. Let's pay our employee a single sum that means they'll never need to work again. That'll ensure they strive to do a good job.