Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? Microsoft is reportedly laying off 1,900 employees from its gaming division. The majority of the layoffs are at the recently-acquired game studio Activision Blizzard, although some workers at the company's Xbox and ZeniMax divisions will also be affected. Before the layoffs, Microsoft's gaming division had 22,000 employees, and the job cuts will impact around eight percent of the total workforce.

The Verge obtained an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirming the layoffs. Spencer mentioned that the downsizing is part of the company's plan to reduce overlap and establish a "sustainable cost structure." He assured that all affected workers will receive severance benefits in accordance with local employment laws. Looking ahead, Spencer expressed the company's commitment to investing in growth areas and bringing "more games to more players around the world."

It's not immediately clear whether most of the affected employees are based at the company's Redmond headquarters or in London, where Activision Blizzard has a sizable workforce. The company is renowned for several blockbuster gaming franchises, including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, among others.

In related news, Microsoft is losing key executives, including Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Chief Design Officer Allen Adham. Ybarra, who has been with Blizzard for over 20 years, will be departing, and the company plans to announce a new president next week.

Tech firms have been laying off tens of thousands of employees over the past couple of years, and 2024 is seemingly no exception. In the first few weeks of this year, Google cut around 1,000 jobs, Discord retrenched 17 percent of its employees, Unity laid off around 25 percent of its staff, and Twitch reduced its workforce by about 33 percent. Twitch's parent company, Amazon, also let go of hundreds of employees from Prime Video and MGM Studios.

Microsoft itself has significantly reduced its workforce over the past year, cutting 10,000 jobs in Q1 2023. The company had more than 220,000 employees globally before the job cuts, affecting around five percent of its workforce. The Xbox division has also seen major leadership changes in recent months, with Sarah Bond promoted to president and Matt Booty elevated to president of game content and studios.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101647-microsoft-laying-off-1900-employees-activision-blizzard-xbox.html

 

[yRaz]

Stories like this make me happy I didn't follow my passion for computers and worked outside of industry. I also wouldn't enjoy arguing with strangers on the internet nearly as much if I had.

Just any FYI, if you are one of those unfortunate souls that got laid off then call your local union hall. The US is short about 500,000 skilled tradesmen and they all offer paid apprenticeships.

 

[m4a4]

Still sounds like layoffs from the tech company "hiring wars".

 

[ScottSoapbox]

It’s almost like shutting down much of the nontech economy for 2 years and propping things up by printing* money we don’t have, had a negative impact on the overall economy (leading to lower overall demand) while creating a short-lived boom for the tech economy (that then ended).


*Printing here is shorthand for all of the ways monetary policy inceases the money supply.

 

[EdmondRC]

Blizzard, Activision employees 17K people, so they are likely trimming redundancy. This almost always happens during acquisitions. Not all of those are even going to be tech jobs, many of them are likely administrative.

 

[toooooot]

It’s almost like shutting down much of the nontech economy for 2 years and propping things up by printing* money we don’t have, had a negative impact on the overall economy (leading to lower overall demand) while creating a short-lived boom for the tech economy (that then ended).


*Printing here is shorthand for all of the ways monetary policy increases the money supply.

I like to think what I would do during covid. To not give them money would mean millions of people enraged and not being able to even pay their rent.
But to give them money meant to get them somewhere...
Damn you China. Commies one way or another always proove their are bad guys.

 

[erickmendes]

Activision buys Blizzard, MS buys Activision Blizzard.... Seems like there's very little Blizzard left in Blizzard...

 

[atomicgirl]

Stories like this make me happy I didn't follow my passion for computers and worked outside of industry. I also wouldn't enjoy arguing with strangers on the internet nearly as much if I had.

Just any FYI, if you are one of those unfortunate souls that got laid off then call your local union hall. The US is short about 500,000 skilled tradesmen and they all offer paid apprenticeships.

Why would a middle class, college-educated WASP who comes from a long line of engineers, computer scientists and other technical-based fields become a "tradesman?" And why would anyone want them to become one? Reminds me of what happened in the 1990s and 2000s, when people seemed to gloat over aviation engineers working as Walmart greeters or Judge Judy could be heard yelling at former ATC controllers to drive cabs. Instead of seeing these layoffs as an omen, they welcomed the demise of white collar technical jobs and seemed to look forward to a future in which the best any American can aspire to are plumbers and construction workers.

This celebration of the demise of tech and engineering jobs and telling people to go work as tradesman is exactly equivalent to China's mentality in the 1960s. China decided that it didn't need intellectuals, scientists, and tech-minded people anymore, so either started killing them or forcing them to work "real jobs" as field hands. This is what became the Cultural Revolution. Point is, the United States needs both tradesmen and techies, too. We should be pulling for both to do well, not gloating when the techies increasingly lose their position so we can tell them, "Good. You can work as a plumber now."

 

[yRaz]

Why would a middle class, college-educated WASP who comes from a long line of engineers, computer scientists and other technical-based fields become a "tradesman?" And why would anyone want them to become one? Reminds me of what happened in the 1990s and 2000s, when people seemed to gloat over aviation engineers working as Walmart greeters or Judge Judy could be heard yelling at former ATC controllers to drive cabs. Instead of seeing these layoffs as an omen, they welcomed the demise of white collar technical jobs and seemed to look forward to a future in which the best any American can aspire to are plumbers and construction workers.

This celebration of the demise of tech and engineering jobs and telling people to go work as tradesman is exactly equivalent to China's mentality in the 1960s. China decided that it didn't need intellectuals, scientists, and tech-minded people anymore, so either started killing them or forcing them to work "real jobs" as field hands. This is what became the Cultural Revolution. Point is, the United States needs both tradesmen and techies, too. We should be pulling for both to do well, not gloating when the techies increasingly lose their position so we can tell them, "Good. You can work as a plumber now."

We have an infustructure problem in the US and there aren't enough people to fix it. The world doesn't need walmart greeters but it does need people to build bridges, roads and houses. Your house is too expensive? Well, we have one solution, to build more houses.

And it took me 4 years of training and classes on the weekends. We did receive an education. Frankly, if every engineer is like you that looks down on the people who make the world go round then I'm glad they lost their job.

 

[atomicgirl]

We have an infustructure problem in the US and there aren't enough people to fix it. The world doesn't need walmart greeters but it does need people to build bridges, roads and houses. Your house is too expensive? Well, we have one solution, to build more houses.

And it took me 4 years of training and classes on the weekends. We did receive an education. Frankly, if every engineer is like you that looks down on the people who make the world go round then I'm glad they lost their job.

Man, you're missing the point.

We have a lack of young people filling infrastructure jobs for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there's a tech sector. A huge part of their refusal is cultural; millions of young people grew up with reality TV and social media looking to be the next influencer or side hustler. On top of that, many of them literally want to be able to make a career out of dead end jobs or simply to be handed a UBI. To make matters worse, there's an attitude that they should be managers, bosses and CEOs as soon as they enter the workforce. It was this generation that created "quiet quitting," because they couldn't handle the idea of starting out at the bottom or working for someone else.

Just to show you how bad it is, I have two relatives who have decent paying jobs in education. One makes something like $60K a year. They both became obsessed with side hustling. They're not millennials, either, and are old enough to know better but something about the current culture of "quiet quitting" that has convinced otherwise intelligent middle agers that they'll be stepping up in the world by being their own boss and not having to answer to "the man."

So, to reiterate, this lack of labor in the tradesman sector has nothing to do with the tech sector. It has to do with a large number of deeply-embedded cultural problems outside of that sector. A way to deal with the lack of a workforce is to counteract all the bad and mixed messages about side hustling, hoping to earn a UBI or make $20 as a pizza delivery person. You mentioned how we had an infrastructure problem. Well, we did back in the 1930s, and guess what we did? We created the WPA. We could do that today. We can launch a nationwide program to rebuild our infrastructure designed to lure these kids away from bad ideas. On top of making a decent living, this would create a sense of civic price and accomplishment. That is a proactive solution, IMO.

Celebrating the loss of jobs in tech--and implying that tech's loss is labor's gain--is not the way to solve the problem, because it wasn't the tech sector that poached laborers away from it. Nor is expressing giddiness that people whose lineage goes back to the days of Telstar and IBM should work in labor now. That definitely smacks of Cultural Revolution-type thinking to me, of resenting the idea that there are people who work in highly specialized intellectual fields because they should be working "real" jobs instead.

 

[yRaz]

Man, you're missing the point.

We have a lack of young people filling infrastructure jobs for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there's a tech sector. A huge part of their refusal is cultural; millions of young people grew up with reality TV and social media looking to be the next influencer or side hustler. On top of that, many of them literally want to be able to make a career out of dead end jobs or simply to be handed a UBI. To make matters worse, there's an attitude that they should be managers, bosses and CEOs as soon as they enter the workforce. It was this generation that created "quiet quitting," because they couldn't handle the idea of starting out at the bottom or working for someone else.

Just to show you how bad it is, I have two relatives who have decent paying jobs in education. One makes something like $60K a year. They both became obsessed with side hustling. They're not millennials, either, and are old enough to know better but something about the current culture of "quiet quitting" that has convinced otherwise intelligent middle agers that they'll be stepping up in the world by being their own boss and not having to answer to "the man."

So, to reiterate, this lack of labor in the tradesman sector has nothing to do with the tech sector. It has to do with a large number of deeply-embedded cultural problems outside of that sector. A way to deal with the lack of a workforce is to counteract all the bad and mixed messages about side hustling, hoping to earn a UBI or make $20 as a pizza delivery person. You mentioned how we had an infrastructure problem. Well, we did back in the 1930s, and guess what we did? We created the WPA. We could do that today. We can launch a nationwide program to rebuild our infrastructure designed to lure these kids away from bad ideas. On top of making a decent living, this would create a sense of civic price and accomplishment. That is a proactive solution, IMO.

Celebrating the loss of jobs in tech--and implying that tech's loss is labor's gain--is not the way to solve the problem, because it wasn't the tech sector that poached laborers away from it. Nor is expressing giddiness that people whose lineage goes back to the days of Telstar and IBM should work in labor now. That definitely smacks of Cultural Revolution-type thinking to me, of resenting the idea that there are people who work in highly specialized intellectual fields because they should be working "real" jobs instead.

My reply to yours was deleted. My inbox is open if you want to have a discussion.

 

[Disiw]

Activision buys Blizzard, MS buys Activision Blizzard.... Seems like there's very little Blizzard left in Blizzard...

Blizzard has not been Blizzard since 2015 or so