[Schreier] As one illustration of just how sloppy and chaotic today’s mass Xbox layoff has been, some employees at Zenimax Online Studios are now watching their Slack accounts abruptly get locked out. No message from HR, no word on whether they still have a job, just an ominous Slack deactivation
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Today is going to be a bloodbath.
Sucks for everyone involved…except for the studio heads who will probably keep their jobs.
Right now, my company will let people go…and the only way the rest of the members of the team know is when their Slack account gets deactivated.
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This is how companies do it now a days. It’s sad, corporate sucks the life and empathy out of everything it touches.
So a Microsoft company is using Slack instead of Teams? Interesting.
you’d think the amount of layoffs they’ve gotten used to, they would have learnt the basic decency of letting people know they are being laid off, in a respectful and courteous manner. My fucking bad for expecting corpos to have a soul ig
Most companies see you as a number, nothing more. Repeatedly we’ve seen this, and here’s yet another example that loyalty and hard work don’t guarantee anything. The moment you’re not needed, you’re gone. Do what’s required, but don’t give more than you should.
That’s pretty insane since we knew layoffs were coming for the last week! So they must have known before today who they were gonna get rid of.
Imagine going to log in to find out what’s going on and if you still have a job only to find you’re locked out and fired.
What a fucking shitshow.
Just before a holiday weekend too. Ouch.
My job is substantially smaller in scale and scope, and every time we’ve had a wave of layoffs, it’s always been sudden with no indication of who’s being laid off until a few hours later. That only happens when someone from HR says the layoff meetings have been completed. It’s a pretty shitty way for people to have to spend a few hours, but at least no one was randomly locked out of their Slack account without having a meeting with their team lead and HR.
It kind off makes sense to be deactivated everywhere before you’re informed. Plenty of times have people quickly performed malicious actions.
The “Deslacking” as one would call it. Seriously though fuck MS for this shit.
So the management cuts didn’t touch management. So surprised. /S
The middle class is dead. We are all being squeezed down into poverty so that there can only be masters and slaves.
I’m suprised Playstation seemingly has had less major layoffs than Xbox considering so mant aspects of Playstations live services games strategy failed. Besides console sales Xbox doesn’t seem in the worst of spots right now
No loyalty or trust with ANY big gaming company anymore. Xbox and phil sphincter lie through their teeth to their employees. Who would pursue a career in gaming if most of the time they get thrown out like trash after only a few years with a studio and have to do it all over again and again.
Didn’t they unionize?
Exactly. This is Evil and Evil is the complete lack of empathy.
I used to work at a lizard themed auto insurance company and I remember randomly one day our supervisor told us, apparently shit is going down and you’ll get a DM sometime before 10 asking you to join a meeting. If you don’t get that invite you may get one for 12, then 2, etc.
So we sat there without even logging in, waiting to get a message. As the time passed you would hear people start to get loud and yell and cry, all in waves. Entire teams were let go one by one. Everyone tried to draw a pattern but it was people that were new to the company, poeple that were there for a decade, top performers, ass kissers, and just straight up average adjusters. All in all something like 8% of staff was let go, 4,000 people. And this was after months of more targeted department based cuts.
We ended up not logging into our computers at all and went to Dave and Busters and drank for a few hours until we considered ourselves safe.
That shit was traumatizing and I ended up leaving a few months later anyways, and since then I believe there’s been two more heavy rounds of layoffs like that.
Even if you survive layoffs you wake up and go into work everyday more aware of the fact that you’re dispensable, and any sense of stability is 100% out the window. Even if you love what you do, I can’t imagine being able to stick it out when this is a common occurrence.
the real clue is receiving a partial paycheck the previous night.
I remember when a bunch of us got laid off from my old job. I came back from lunch and my login information no longer worked. It was eerie.
I feel bad for these employees.
Getting laid off is bad enough, but getting laid of in such a disrespectful, trashy way makes it even worse.
It really seems like if some rich guy who is actually interested in games can set up a studio, they’ll have a ton of devs available for free picking.
Meanwhile that asshat Phil Spencer is still somehow employed despite running things into the ground
Really bad
I’d leave Slack, OneDrive, Teams, VPN, any other access they need all active. And let people know two weeks ahead of time so they can make plans.
Ms is slackin
Sadly that’s How’s it was for me too, shitty behaviour, but that’s how it goes.
Corporate America continuing to be the worst as it slowly destroys society.
Not a new process. Worked for a tech startup 10 years ago, heard rumors of layoffs. Got a text from a few people wondering they couldn’t log into their slack accounts. Took 4 hours for an overall meeting to happen “announcing” it. Scummy, place went under 3 months later.
Ahhh, America… but not like anyone’s doing anything to change things away from companies have complete and absolute control over just how shitty they get to treat their employees.
I really hope its not any of the community people at Zenimax.
Those and qa have almost always been on the chopping block on these layoffs. 🙁
RIP ESO, it was nice knowing you.
Take with a grain of salt. Jason Schrier is known for publishing unverified rumors as fact.
The next time you read his work, take note of how many sources of his are unnammed.
Reddit: What a horrible, horrible company.
Also Reddit: let me re-sub to gamepass, gotta have my games, amirite?
And thats why 2 week notice is bullshit
If the US wasn’t a country ran by big business and actually had government that cared about citizens, this kind of practice wouldn’t take place as often as it does. Wishful thinking though because we know nothing is gonna change smfh
Microsoft is worse than incompetent at this point – the brand is just absolutely toxic to me.
I don’t even think they could get me to support Gamepass now.
Excuse the fuck me?
“”Our platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger,”
You have no upcoming games. All the ones you showed either got cancelled today or are in limbo like elder scrolls 6, your hardware sales are down, your gamepass sub is stagnant, you’re laying off people left right and center — the ones who made you money, you have no market control in any territory. How does any of this look stronger?
“Spencer said, adding that Xbox was only able to get to this place due to some of the “tough decisions” it made previously.”
THEN YOU ARENT IN THAT GOOD OF A POSITION AT ALL IF YOU HAVE TO RELY ON LAYOFFS AND GAME CANCELLATIONS.
can’t wait to hear fable get canceled…
Spencer said, adding that Xbox was only able to get to this place due to some of the “tough decisions” it made previously.
That’s just disorganization. Helpdesk was first to know.