Jeff Grubb on WotC and layoffs

[Morrus]

Jeff Grubb, who left TSR (the company eventually bought by WotC) in 1994, has blogged about the layoffs at WotC in an article titled "The Titanic Had A Band" (a reference to an old joke: "What is the difference between TSR and The Titanic?"). He mentions that the timing (frequently Christmas) of the layoffs is due to the fact that management tries to put off the layoffs for as long as possible in the hope that the numbers will balance out, with the fiscal year end in December being the hard deadline after which they cannot delay what is often the inevitable.

He also portrays a rather dismal picture of how it appears from the inside: "And for the long-term employed, here's the warning sign. After a slew of good reviews and standard raises, you get a warning flag. Nothing major, but a mild disapproval in your performance. Congratulations, you've gotten as much salary as they want to give you, and you have pitched over into a new box - candidates for dismissal." As for why veterans seem to be ripe targets, he says "Now, you will see early layoffs when companies get into this downward spiral where they lay the new guys off, the equivalent of eating the seed corn, But when you can lay one guy off instead of two, its a better idea. And ditching a veteran frees up more investment."

Jeff Grubb worked at TSR from 1982 until 1994, and was heavily involved in the Marvel Super Heroes game, and the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms campaign settings, as well as authoring the first Manual of the Planes and designing the Spelljammer setting. More recently he has been working on video games.

The image to the right is Dork Tower's comic strip for December 15th. Click through to see the original.

 

[Matt James]

Jeff Grubb on the WotC layoffs

Thanks to Logan Bonner for pointing this piece out. Jeff Grubb wrote today on the WotC layoffs and put it into a perspective that I thought was worth sharing.

GRUBB STREET: The Titanic Had A Band

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't want to get too political here on ENWorld, but I do find it rather amazing that inhuman investment portfolios control so much of whether or not Rich Baker deserves a job.

I also find it frustrating (though not surprising) that there is no individual accountability in the upper management.

Anyway, I'd really like to know the places Grubb has seen stakeholders into account. Those sound like places I'd like to patronize!

 

[FireLance]

Anyway, I'd really like to know the places Grubb has seen stakeholders into account. Those sound like places I'd like to patronize!

That's exactly what we need: stakeholders to get rid of the bloodsuckers!

 

[Celtavian]

re

Yet another reason to support Paizo. The little corporation that is run by STAKEholders that care about the game as much as the profit.

Screw Hasbro! Free WotC from the clutches of the evil mega-corporation.

 

[Iosue]

Well, TSR was once a small company run by people who cared about the game, too. As was Wizards of the Coast. The more successful Paizo becomes, the more likely that it will have the same problems.

 

[Stormonu]

Yet another reason to support Paizo. The little corporation that is run by STAKEholders that care about the game as much as the profit.

Screw Hasbro! Free WotC from the clutches of the evil mega-corporation.

Sadly, these sort of layoffs started back in the TSR days, and just became tradition up through WotC and Hasbro. It's the tradition that needs to die.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The TSR designer in this article is Jeff Grubb. He has two b's in his last name.

 

[Shayuri]

It's worth pointing out that in a standard stakeholder-owner/management relationship, these layoffs are exactly what stakeholders WANT their proxies (ie - company officers and board) to do. They raise stock value, or at least keep it stable if revnues are falling. Improving stock value is the job description of the officers and board. That's it. Not preserving human equity. Not even providing quality product.

This is not my defense of the corporate model, by the way. Just my observation. In my experience, the dissonance we feel that focuses so heavily on the corporate officers and boards is often (not always) misplaced. The real culprit is impersonal, and hard to direct blame at.

Street-level employees typically work at a company like an RPG company (as distinct from, say, fast food) because they have some desire, or passion, for what the job entails. They write, and design, and work like demons, and have a ball doing it because it's what they love.

The officers and board have little to nothing to do with any of that. What they do is largely accounting. They work in a world of numbers, where every staff member; every paycheck written, is a financial liability that reduces stock value. The odds are strong they don't know anyone by name outside their own circle. The employees are represented by a set of statistics that compare their value to the company (frequently very hard to quantify) with their liability to the company (very EASY to quantify).

Under those circumstances, it becomes easier to see why great people are laid off. It is, as the mobsters say, "just business." The owners of the company, the stockholders, are completely removed from the actual people who make the company run. Or, to put it better, from the labor that makes the company run. They don't know, don't care...they didn't invest in Hasbrow/WotC because they admire the work of Monte Cook and Ryan Dancy. They invested because its performance, by whatever metric they chose, looked good and they want a piece of that pie. In short...accounting.

The model is very effective at collecting large amounts of investment capital, which in some cases is an absolute requirement for a new venture...but it results in the schizophrenic, quasi-psychotic kind of corporate mentality whose pitfalls are well documented.

And it's why good people are laid off at Christmas.

 

[Morrus]

I wonder how current Grubb's insights into how it comes about are? He left the company a long, long time ago; but he is in contact with a lot of past (and, I'd guess, present) employees.

It's interesting to read. You don't see much comment from recent ex-employees on the subject (for obvious reasons - one doesn't publicly criticize one's ex-employer while looking for a new job).