Sad to hear about good people losing (or voluntarily leaving) jobs they loved. I hope Bill, Michele, and Shoe all land on their feet working on something they love. One can NOT underestimate their individual contributions to the hobby game category (and games industry).
Clear up a couple things I read that are not correct.
Hasbro fiscal is January - December.
This has nothing to do with an upcoming earnings call. Hasbro is a 4 billion dollar a year company with a market cap of 5.95 billion. Wall Street does not care about a layoff of a handful of employees.
Hah...I doubt they care. My company did it.....twice. Got my manager and his wife on the same day years ago, and then two of my coworkers who'd just announced they were dating and moving in together, right before Christmas, two years ago.
Relationships at work can sometimes be a bad idea for survivability. Probably managers figure that if they lay off one half of a couple, will that leave them with the second half of the couple becoming a disgruntled employee or security risk?
Sorry to hear about this turn of events. I'm confident you all will land on your feet, whether in games or elsewhere. I know this may sounds dumb, but from personal experience, allow this parting to free you into pursuing new and exciting directions in your life and not limit you.
Good luck to those moving on! Thanks for everything you've done for our favourite hobby during your tenure at TSR/WotC, and I look forward to seeing you hired by certain other players in the gaming space real soon.
I'm going to be slightly (possibly) controversial here and say that I don't understand the funereal cloud that overtakes these boards when someone is laid off at Wizards. Bill, especially, has been there a long time. He's done his bit (and done it well). WotC are reputedly very generous with their severance schemes. He's a talented guy with a wealth of experience and, I'm sure, many doors will open both for him and his fellows.