Jeff Grubb on WotC and layoffs

[Celtavian]

It's a little apples and oranges. It's also hard for me to take "evil mega-corporation" invective seriously, since, even if WotC was a mega-corporation, calling an artificial entity "evil" makes no sense to me. Kind of like calling your car evil. The car might be broken, but its not really capable of making a moral choice. Of course, the guys who drive a broken car and then shrug their shoulders when its breaks don't work and it kills some pedestrian might be in a different moral camp...

Anyway, when Paizo makes a product I want, I'll be happy to patronize them further.

WotC isn't a mega-corporation. Hasbro is.

The current corporate structure is poisonous to capitalism. The current corporate structure is more alike to feudalism. You have mega-corporations purchasing assets they have no passion or interest in other than to milk the maximum amount of profit from the product and eliminate it as a competitor through acquisition rather than competition.

These corporations have been destroying product lines for many years now. Everything from Snapple and Breyer's Ice Cream to games like D&D to the movie and publishing industry.

I prefer to spend my hobby dollars at a smaller company run by people that enjoy the game as well as want to make a profit off it like Paizo. Hasbro could care less about D&D or the RPG industry unless they are meeting their profit margins and making as much money as possible regardless of quality or creativity.

When a company lacks passionate leadership when it comes to their product, I don't want to support that company unless it's something like toilet paper that I need and does't really require a great deal of creativity. When it comes to my RPG games, I want a company that cares.

Even take a company like Blizzard. They really care about their games. They won't put a game out until they really feel it is ready to go the majority of the time. That's why when they do put out a game, it is usually high quality. Those are the types of companies I like to support.

Not the creativity destroying black hole mega-corporations buying up everything, sanitizing it, and shoving it down our throats with their voracious acquisition-to-destroy competition strategies that are destroying the benefits of capitalism. Makes me sick to see it.

I hope WotC/D&D is freed from the tyranny of Hasbro one day. They don't love D&D. It's just a product line to them. Free WotC! I say. Free them.

 

[DaveMage]

That was in July 2011. Half a year later he gets the sack. I'd hate to work in a company where a major promotion like this must come across as a 'generous redundancy package' (to use a UK euphemism).

Yikes!

 

[Celebrim]

WotC isn't a mega-corporation. Hasbro is.

The current corporate structure is poisonous to capitalism. The current corporate structure is more alike to feudalism. You have mega-corporations purchasing assets they have no passion or interest in other than to milk the maximum amount of profit from the product and eliminate it as a competitor through acquisition rather than competition.

This is called 'rent seeking' - economic activity which seeks to wring larger profits out of an existing product while not in itself doing anything productive like improving the product or increasing efficiency.

I blame the modern University system. It's possible now to get a Liberal Arts degree without having actually read a single Liberal text or even being able to define the term Liberal. Equally, I'm willing to bet that most MBAs have no first hand acquaintance with the words of Adam Smith.

 

[Umbran]

Look at the comics industry, where a writer+artist team can increase the appeal of a book.

I'm not arguing that name recognition *can't* sell stuff. I'm saying that I don't think it does so strongly in the current market.

I think it is easier to sell by name recognition in other media, though. While some of us around here play many games, and have done so for decades such that we have the scope to differentiate one designer from another, many gamers have one game, and that's all they play.

Game designers don't get to put out a major work each week, month or year (like a TV actor, or comic-artist, a novelist, or movie actor). They get what, one major shot at it a decade? That makes it rough to sell on name.

 

[Umbran]

I'm not comfortable with the premise that layoffs are a cyclical option that can only be held at bay so long each year and only left out of the equation in rare times.

Well, before you consider that, look outside. The unemployment rate is still over 8%. Last year at this time, and the year before that, things were worse. Places that normally hold onto their people like they were superglued in place had to let people go. Whatever their historical behavior, the past few years have been rare times for everyone, and if WotC had issues with retention when times were good, they sure as heck can't be expected to suddenly fix that when times are rough.

And, honestly, the days when a career was built working in one place have been long-gone in many (probably most) employment sectors.

 

[Mark CMG]

Well, before you consider that, look outside. The unemployment rate is still over 8%. Last year at this time, and the year before that, things were worse. Places that normally hold onto their people like they were superglued in place had to let people go. Whatever their historical behavior, the past few years have been rare times for everyone, and if WotC had issues with retention when times were good, they sure as heck can't be expected to suddenly fix that when times are rough.

And, honestly, the days when a career was built working in one place have been long-gone in many (probably most) employment sectors.

If you want to open that can of worms I direct you to look toward the rise in CEO salaries and packages and the decimation of many pension plans before defending the above corporate business practices as a way of justifying cyclical layoffs. Short-term employment is not a viable alternative to the longterm employment that was once the backbone of middle class strength in the USA. The paradigm shift you cite as typical correlates closely to career expectation decay and the resultant decline in the overall economy. Long term economic growth requires a thriving middle class not an eye to short term profits while bolstering CEO-to-common-employee inequities. Rare times don't stay rare when the underpinnings are continually weakened by short term business practices.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

If you want to open that can of worms I direct you to look toward the rise in CEO salaries and packages and the decimation of many pension plans before defending the above corporate business practices as a way of justifying cyclical layoffs. Short-term employment is not a viable alternative to the longterm employment that was once the backbone of middle class strength in the USA. The paradigm shift you cite as typical correlates closely to career expectation decay and the resultant decline in the overall economy. Long term economic growth requires a thriving middle class not an eye to short term profits while bolstering CEO-to-common-employee inequities. Rare times don't stay rare when the underpinnings are continually weakened by short term business practices.

*Must spread XP*

Oh my brother, testify!

 

[Umbran]

If you want to open that can of worms I direct you to look toward the rise in CEO salaries and packages and the decimation of many pension plans before defending the above corporate business practices as a way of justifying cyclical layoffs.

If you can demonstrate that those issues apply specifically to WotC, then you'll have a point. Do you know Greg Leeds' compensation package, and how it compares to those of his employees?

Let us assume that what we've heard from many quarters is true - while Hasbro owns WotC, and thereby drives their fiscal cycle, Hasbro is largely hands-off on the details of management. WotC is then, for most intents and purposes a small-to-medium sized company, not a large one, and the issue you note above is unlikely to apply.

Edit: This statement didn't say what I wanted - I was not trying to defend corporate practices in the broad sense. I was noting that in lean times, companies, like people, sometimes have to make hard decisions, whether or not their CEOs have inflated compensation. When they're struggling to make ends meet, many folks don't stick to ideal practices, no matter the size of their business. If for no other reason than nobody really knows that's ideal.

Short-term employment is not a viable alternative to the longterm employment that was once the backbone of middle class strength in the USA.

This isn't the thread that allows political discussion. So, I'll say that I think that in many sectors, the advent of the Information Age has rendered that an outmoded way of thinking about employment, and I'll leave it at that.

More specifically, WotC is not in a business that lends itself well to steady-state staffing in the long term, especially in the RPG quarter. The life-cycle of the product lines just don't behave that way in practice.

 

[Mark CMG]

If you can demonstrate (. . .)

Let us assume that (. . .)

I won't have a discussion where you can make assumptions and my generalizations about corporate business practices are forbidden.

This isn't the thread that allows political discussion.

That's why I stuck with economics as it pertains to corporate business practices (after you opened that door) and not politics but I've said my piece and am not interested in further discussion under your parameters as dictated above anyway. Besides, your circular arguments regarding how things are done justifying how things are done doesn't ring true.

 

[billd91]

If you want to open that can of worms I direct you to look toward the rise in CEO salaries and packages and the decimation of many pension plans before defending the above corporate business practices as a way of justifying cyclical layoffs. Short-term employment is not a viable alternative to the longterm employment that was once the backbone of middle class strength in the USA. The paradigm shift you cite as typical correlates closely to career expectation decay and the resultant decline in the overall economy. Long term economic growth requires a thriving middle class not an eye to short term profits while bolstering CEO-to-common-employee inequities. Rare times don't stay rare when the underpinnings are continually weakened by short term business practices.

Dang it, I'm in the same boat as Vyvyan Basterd. Must spread XP as well.