That's a fair question and I don't mind answering it. First of all, my job was not in jeopardy, and it wasn't a Cartmanesque "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" In fact, I gave them a month notice and continued to do a good amount of freelance work for them after I left.
There were decisions that were made at the highest level that I disagreed with. Some of them affected me personally while others just annoyed me, but none of them were the types of things that would have ended my job or put me on the short list for termination. I'd delve into details, but they really aren't the types of things that need to be aired, and they weren't deal breakers.
The main issue for me was layoffs. I highly doubt that anyone working there has any sense of job security. In the four years I worked there, I didn't see any. At the time, my second child had just been born and the one thing that I needed was job security. The stress levels caused by the uncertainty were increasing and it was taking a toll on my health. Having worked for places that weren't so random and unpredictable when eliminating employees, I knew that there were more stable places to be, so I made arrangements to leave.
Ultimately my path led me back to school to finish up my undergrad degree (I'll have it in a couple weeks. Thanks in advance for your congratulations). The next question for me is whether to go to grad school, which I'm being urged to do by two of the three people who sit on the grad school admissions panel, or do something else. Right now I'm leaning towards more school, as academia tends to have the security that I'm looking for, not to mention the opportunity to shape the minds of the next generation of up and comers.
At any rate, when I left WotC, I was asked if I was certain that it was what I wanted to do by my supervisors, I gave them more than a month's notice, and I continued to do freelance work for them for a couple years after I left. My separation from the company was on fine terms. The reason that I'm critical of them today has to do with the fact that I've seen several more of my friends laid off, many of whom struggled to find quality employment after they left, and because of many of the decisions that were made regarding the rollout of 4E. I'm not going to rehash all of that as I'm sure that my posting history speaks for itself, but I feel that a number of those decisions had harmful effects on the industry at the time.
But, there's also evidence that the industry has recovered over this past year and I'm not particularly worried about the way things have realigned. In fact, it looks as though things are healthier now than they have been for several years. I haven't been this busy as a freelancer in about three years. In other words, the reason I speak up when WotC lays people off is because these are talented people, many of them have families, I consider these yearly cuts mostly unnecessary, and there is a human toll when this happens. It is possible to operate a company ethically and profitably, and while this year is particularly hard on most businesses, yesterday's layoffs are part of a well established and easy to track pattern with WotC. I have nothing but good wishes and respect for the few people I know who still work there.
