layoffs?

[Jonathan Tweet]

thanks for the kind words

Thanks for all the kind words and thoughts. Personally, I'm in good shape financially and emotionally. Wizards has offered me a generous severance package, things are in good shape on the home front, and work hasn't exactly been wine and roses for me lately. No one needs to worry about me.

The next thing I plan to do is nothing, and when I'm through doing that I'll look around for something new. Maybe RPGs, maybe games of some other stripe, maybe something entirely different.

Someone asked what I've been doing in the last however many years, so here's a list: Chainmail (metal D&D minis game), D&D Minis, Star Wars Minis, Axis & Allies Minis, Omega World, beginner products for Magic, and various unpublished new business efforts. I've been involved with D&DI for a little over a year, led the Bonus Tools effort, and recently started working on the Compendium.

-Jonathan

 

[seankreynolds]

Given some thought on this subject overnight, I believe this was inevitable. Not only because of the economy, but the push for WotC to reduce costs on material production by moving their share of effort into the digital market.

No, it was inevitable because Wizards does this every year around this time They lay off people, switch to using more freelancers, realize that they need more in-house people to help things run smoothly, hire more in-house people, then have a layoff when your projected budget starts looking wrong. It's a crappy way to run a company, and a crappy way to treat your employees. I have friends there that have been laid off and rehired by Wizards two or more times now ... Wizards just keeps repeating the cycle.

See, Hasbro is a dying company. They don't produce anything new or innovative, they're too "east coast" and set in their "old business" mindset. What they do is find interesting, profitable young companies, buy them, squeeze as much money as they can out of them, crush everything that is unique and innovative about them, and then discard them when they're no longer profitable. As a former Wizards person pointed out to me, Wizards of the Coast (and other Hasbro acquisitions like Galoob) are "chemotherapy" to Hasbro. In a year where every division of Hasbro lost money except for Wizards, Hasbro had a company-wide flat headcount reduction, even for Wizards (still flush with money from Pokemon, Magic, and 3e). Hasbro started "fun alerts" in its daughter companies, pushing the employees to have fun at work (net result: "fun alert" Mr Potato Head posters popped up at the Wizards office), ignoring that people at Wizards were already having fun making great games. So when you see things like these layoffs, it's corporate types saying, "making $8 million profit per year on this brand isn't enough, you have to make $10 million profit," and then letting go of the people who make your profit in order to cut costs (i.e., salaries) and give the appearance of extra profit. Far too many companies act this way, whether it's cutting benefits, shipping jobs to cheaper workers overseas, etc. ... it looks good on paper in the short term, but 1, 2, 5, or 10 years down the road you look at the ruins of your business and wonder why profits are still down and your employees have no loyalty.

That really depends on the circumstances.
Hasbro is a publicly traded company. The company has an ethical obligation to put the interests of the shareholders ahead of the personal interests of both management and employees.

You can be fair and responsible in your treatment of your employees and fair and responsible to the financial interests of your investors. You don't have to maximize one at the expense of the other. Netting $8 million every year for the next 10 years is better than netting $10 million this year, $9 million the next, then $8m, etc., all the way down to $1 on the 10th year ($80 million vs. $55 million).

From time to time at TSR people would talk about forming a union of designers and editors. I've heard that Lorraine's response was, "If you form a union, I'll fire you all and replace you with college students happy to do this work for half the pay, or even free." While she could do such a thing, the quality of your products would suffer (much like how the quality of the D&D minis has gone downhill), and that would alienate your customers, and that eventually makes up for the "savings" of hiring cheaper workers. It's stupid and shortsighted.

And to repeat: this is an annual thing for Wizards. And doing this right before the holidays is especially sleazy.

To use a potential example (and I have no idea if this is actually happening at WotC, but something similar could), if I'm Bruce Cordell (3E Psionics Guru), and I'm tasked with writing Psionics for 4E, and that book hasn't yet been completed, I have to wonder if upon its completion that I'm now suddenly "expendable".

You just described the TSR layoffs of late 1996: if you were finished with your project, you were laid off because you weren't needed in the immediate future. So, yes, it happens.

 

[drothgery]

And to repeat: this is an annual thing for Wizards. And doing this right before the holidays is especially sleazy.

Layoffs right before the holidays are quite commonplace, as is deciding to end indefinite-term contract employee's contracts (I've had both happen to me, for one). Nobody likes it, but companies don't lay off people before the holidays just to be mean; they do it because laying people off early the next year would be considerably more costly.

 

[xechnao]

From time to time at TSR people would talk about forming a union of designers and editors.

Very interesting. Why isn't there such a thing yet?

 

[justanobody]

See, you can never stop the conspiracy folks.

The cake is a lie!

Can anyone tell me what products have had Johnathan Tweet's design credits on them in the last couple of years? Genuinely curious, and slightly out of the loop.

DDI Bonus tools....

 

[mudbunny]

Very interesting. Why isn't there such a thing yet?

Because the person who ends up being the driving force in a plan like this gets known as the person who brought a union into a non-union workplace. That is a big black mark on your reputation that gets you labelled "troublemaker".

 

[Primal]

Thanks for the kind words, folks. They mean a great deal. And my wife was reading over my shoulder, and they cheered her up _immensely_.

I can confirm the essential truth of what's been reported, and I am indeed one of the ones let go today. When you're in the midst of the process, you don't really get a sense of what's going on elsewhere in the building. Thus I didn't know some of the names until I read them here. They're quality people. In a weird way, I'm proud to be among them. (I'd rather be employed, sure, but you take the solace you can at a moment like this.)

I'll leave the prognosticating and "...but what does this MEAN?!?" stuff to others. I think the game is in good shape--and I think it's in good hands. In my 10 years at Wizards, I survived a lot of these layoffs--including cuts deeper than this. More to the point for you guys, the _game_ survived deeper cuts than this.

Maybe I didn't say this enough when I was part of "the Man," but the ENWorld community is absolutely terrific. The level of discourse here continues to be top-notch, and there's always an interesting thread sitting right there, begging to be read. But if you're already a regular here, you've already figured that out, huh?

--David Noonan, who should probably get a new user name.

Dave,

you could always apply for a job at Paizo, right? They've hired a lot of talented designers and freelancers WoTC has laid off. The only caveat would be to "refocus" your thinking and Design Fu from 4E to Pathfinder RPG.

When I heard of this, I was shocked that you and Jonathan (Tweet) were on that list. I mean, you guys have done a lot for WoTC and 4E -- I've kind of pictured you two as being almost Lead Designers yourselves. And, even though I don't like 4E, I've come to respect you guys over the years as very talented designers.

Anyway, best of luck to the both of you in the future!

(*Primal teleports back to the Paizo forums*)

 

[themaxx]

Thanks

Great job Dave, I appreciate your work and look forward to following your output wherever you end up next.

 

[Fifth Element]

No, it was inevitable because Wizards does this every year around this time They lay off people, switch to using more freelancers, realize that they need more in-house people to help things run smoothly, hire more in-house people, then have a layoff when your projected budget starts looking wrong. It's a crappy way to run a company, and a crappy way to treat your employees. I have friends there that have been laid off and rehired by Wizards two or more times now ... Wizards just keeps repeating the cycle.

See, Hasbro is a dying company. They don't produce anything new or innovative, they're too "east coast" and set in their "old business" mindset. What they do is find interesting, profitable young companies, buy them, squeeze as much money as they can out of them, crush everything that is unique and innovative about them, and then discard them when they're no longer profitable. As a former Wizards person pointed out to me, Wizards of the Coast (and other Hasbro acquisitions like Galoob) are "chemotherapy" to Hasbro. In a year where every division of Hasbro lost money except for Wizards, Hasbro had a company-wide flat headcount reduction, even for Wizards (still flush with money from Pokemon, Magic, and 3e). Hasbro started "fun alerts" in its daughter companies, pushing the employees to have fun at work (net result: "fun alert" Mr Potato Head posters popped up at the Wizards office), ignoring that people at Wizards were already having fun making great games. So when you see things like these layoffs, it's corporate types saying, "making $8 million profit per year on this brand isn't enough, you have to make $10 million profit," and then letting go of the people who make your profit in order to cut costs (i.e., salaries) and give the appearance of extra profit. Far too many companies act this way, whether it's cutting benefits, shipping jobs to cheaper workers overseas, etc. ... it looks good on paper in the short term, but 1, 2, 5, or 10 years down the road you look at the ruins of your business and wonder why profits are still down and your employees have no loyalty.

Now this here? There is some evidence in here that WotC is a badly run company, though it seems some of it comes trickle-down from Hasbro. Assuming this isn't all cynical misrepresentations, which I doubt it is.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

See, Hasbro is a dying company.

Assuming this isn't all cynical misrepresentations, which I doubt it is.

CEO of the Year.