this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
575 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

55964 readers
4433 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

ActiBlizz finance, accounting, HR, etc is no longer needed. Microsoft already has all those needs covered.

That's not 1900 people, that's like 50.

I've been part of these before; they cut by pay. Junior artist? You stay. Senior artist? Bye. It goes all the way down to QA. A place I used to work at had massive layoffs, and were left with a QA team of 15 whose most senior member had 6 months in the industry.

This is phase 2. Phase one was last year when they laid of 10,000. those were the finance/accounting/etc people. This is specifically the games area which at this point, according to my friends caught in said layoff, says it’s mostly seniors across all (gaming) divisions.

EDIT: To be clear to the downvoters: 1. I worked at Microsoft (gaming) 5 years ago, and was caught in one of these layoffs. 2. It won't be areas like accounting/HR/finance because that was last year. I know people caught in these layoffs, and it's seniors in each department.

Microsoft uses, especially in Canada, a system to bypass hiring full-time employees, which they have to do here legally after 5 years of employment every X years (I forget how many). They hire from 3rd party contractors, and then refuse to rehire you after you've worked 4+ years, until a six month gap has occurred and you change 3rd party vendors. They do this with over half of their employees, so their gaming division has a TINY HR department because most of the staff don't technically work for Microsoft. I met 'our' HR at a meeting shortly before we were all laid off, and had never had any contact with any of them (nor anyone in payroll, etc, because that was all done by our 3rd party vendors.)

[–] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

lol no. 50 might just cover ActiBlizz accounts payable department.

I work for a similar sized company now. We have around 300 just in Finance. Another nearly that many in accounting. When companies get this big they have a lot of spending and assets to track.

Then you get into Marketing, Sales, HR, etc. I'd confidently bet 90% of the 1900 roles were corporate administration. I've personally gone through this process multiple times. I've even been part of making consolidation decisions for a few of them.

Edit: What you experienced will happen. But as phase 2.

[–] TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world -4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is phase 2. Phase one was last year when they laid of 10,000. those were the finance/accounting/etc people. This is specifically the games area which at this point, according to my friends caught in said layoff, says it's mostly seniors across all (gaming) divisions.

[–] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What you posted was at Microsoft itself. That story is from January 2023.

The ActiBlizz deal didn't close until October 2023.

[–] Marin_Rider@aussie.zone 10 points 5 months ago

not a chance thats 50 people. it could be 50 HR business partners alone. that 1900 could easily be entirely backoffice positions