This. Working at EA punching out the next version of Madden, featuring roster updates, UI changes, and tinkering with a few settings isn't exactly work designing the new Unreal engine.
Your average Java CRUDster could probably do a lot of that work. Gamedev isn't the black art it used to be.
Sometimes layoffs are designed to give air cover for execs that want to get rid of "networks of detractors" who are causing problems, like how in a game company there might be a network of influential luddites who oppose use of LLMs over ideological reasons, even if the use case is good.
IMO those are virtuous layoffs, sometimes you need to clear your company culture of troublemakers who are getting in the way of company strategy.
I suppose there are firms large enough to make that work.
Having worked at a smaller firm with 15 SWEs that employed this strategy, they lost their 3 critics and proceeded to lose another 8, myself included, due to loss of confidence in leadership in the immediate (3-6 months) of the initial culling.
sorry to hear that. curious if the product's approach was a fuck you to Workday though as in you can't even put them side by side and compare (they are so different) or if it was simply that Workday sucks, we will do better
People of all genders do this all the time, group up and rat-fuck the reputation of someone they don't like for all sorts of reasons, not all of them particularly good.
Throw in a bit of bandwagoning during the height of #metoo when we decided that having a bad date where the wrong kind of wine was ordered with Asis Ansari or having a jokey boob photo from 30 years ago with Al Franken was somehow worthy of Thou Shalt Never Work Again, and I can totally understand how all this went down.
When I see VCs make this argument, all I hear is "oh shit, we're late to the party" and doing something like this as a desperate attempt to bring valuations down.
You know what is more controversial than letting robot cars drive around? Trying to make a new train line literally anywhere in the US.
You are better off buying a bunch of robot cars, tying them together with a rope, and starting a company to run hacker trains on city streets and charge money.
In fact, in SF, if the protestors were clever, they'd just get together tie a bunch of cars together and create their own train. What are they going to do, arrest you?
I think that robot cars are likely the end of cars. They will lure people off of public transportation, especially those that don't have the up-front capital / borrowing ability to buy their own car, but whose commute times can be improved by driving. This will lead to a lot of congestion. And then congestion ruins it for everyone, humans and AIs alike. (Congestion is already what enables public transportation. No commuter rail system can compete with the speeds of a car on the freeway at 3am. But, people start work at 8am, and EVERYTHING competes with the speed of a car at 8am.)
Eventually people will say "you know what, I guess I'll just live closer to work". Congratulations, you just invented cities. With land being used for humans and not automobile storage, mass transit becomes more viable. Thus, the car's death warrant is signed.
That was one car. The thing with hacking is that it's incredibly scalable. Imagine a million cars going haywire at the same time. It could be worse than being hit by a nuke, and it could be dropped by a single talented extremist.
Your average Java CRUDster could probably do a lot of that work. Gamedev isn't the black art it used to be.