Charles Ryan (and others) out at WotC?

[qstor]

a "splat" book for KenzerCo's Kingdoms of Kalamar ("Stealth and Style").

Off topic but. I got that. Good book.

Good luck to all the fired employees. Hope the job market in the Seattle area is good.


Mike

 

[Warbringer]

I had lunch with him a month ago and he told me he had finally been hired back as a regular staffer with benefits and all that he was quite happy about it.

Companies that do this should be punished in a way the law won't allow. This layloff is clearly looking like either a hasbro strategy, or a knee jerk reaction by senior management at WoTC to cut costs and cut them fast.

Also, I little "miffed" to hear that they have a new person in the position. I cannot think that any off the name of the list were fired with cause. Turely, I cannot communicate my ire with WoTC at the moment.

Happy Monday

 

[StupidSmurf]

Companies that do this should be punished in a way the law won't allow. This layloff is clearly looking like either a hasbro strategy, or a knee jerk reaction by senior management at WoTC to cut costs and cut them fast.

Also, I little "miffed" to hear that they have a new person in the position. I cannot think that any off the name of the list were fired with cause. Turely, I cannot communicate my ire with WoTC at the moment.

Happy Monday

Sadly, that seems to be one the most irritating (and common) flaws in American business. The knee-jerk reaction layoff.

Second on that list is the causes-of-the-day that management pursues, believing that if they only solve that one thing, everything else will fall into place (e.g. "No wearing casual clothes to work! Doing so erodes professionalism!"). And so they make people miserable for a while, until something ELSE attracts their attention, and they forget the original cause and go after the new one!

 

[StupidSmurf]

Off topic but. I got that. Good book.

Good luck to all the fired employees. Hope the job market in the Seattle area is good.


Mike

Thanks! :-D

 

[WayneLigon]

Erik Mona's Blog mentions the layoffs, plus has some interesting insights. The part where he's talking about what his job is like is particularly illuminating:

I had the Polyhedron job for about two years before Wizards of the Coast sold itself to Hasbro and business life changed from endless joy about how cool your job was to endless horror about who was going to get laid off next or when the company was going to get moved to a different state. With the hindsight of a few years a lot of those fears were unfounded (Wizards is still in the same building where I worked in 1999), but the constant layoffs really drained the fun out of that place for a couple of solid years.

I think like a lot of gamers I might have once fantisized what it would be to work with The Big Dogs. After seeing quality people let go, that desire really dropped off. After this, and a couple other things... hmm.

 

[Staffan]

With the hindsight of a few years a lot of those fears were unfounded (Wizards is still in the same building where I worked in 1999), but the constant layoffs really drained the fun out of that place for a couple of solid years.

Ironically, WOTC moved to a different building only a couple of weeks ago.

 

[johnsemlak]

The Big Dogs. After seeing people like Monte and Sean Reynods let go, that desire really dropped off.

Monte has posted several times that he was not let go; he left on his own accord.

 

[diaglo]

I think like a lot of gamers I might have once fantisized what it would be to work with The Big Dogs.

i don't know many of those gamers. most of the gamers i knew were fantasizing about getting a job that paid real money. for us, we knew that the hobby wasn't going to support a family nor life.

 

[Kanegrundar]

While I would daydream about a job designing and playing games for a living, I always came back to Diaglo's point very quickly.

 

[johnsemlak]

As a Kid, I wasn't bothered by such inconvenient notions as 'reality'. I don't think I dreamed too much of being a RPG designer but I'm sure back then I would have thought it would be awesome. I do remember wanting to responed to an open call for adventure submissions in the old Polyhedron mag but I never got around to it.