Ex-Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Chris Deering does not believe recent layoffs across the games industry have been a result of corporate greed. Instead, workers who have lost their jobs should “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year” until employment settles.
Deering was a guest on games writer Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, where the pair discussed games industry layoffs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed,” said Deering. “I always tried to minimise the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in Electronics.”
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just go to the beach for a year.
I am advocating violence against this man. This post is a call to violence.
They should go to the sun for a year
I’ll donate his yearly salary for this cause
At the very least they should be left outside in the sun for a year.
That would at least be on par with what he’s suggesting to his former employees.
There is a precedent where someone said hungry people should just eat cake.
That was the most out of touch thing to say. Clearly these execs have never sweat from actual work in their lives that they think people can get comfortable with no income.
Perfectly reasonable statements made by an individual very much in-tune with the video game development community and its members.
Every year another stable genius is born
I don’t get why executives need all this money.
If they are hungry, can’t they just eat shit?
C-Suite pay precludes equitable worker pay. They are always lying through their teeth.
The fact that CEO compensation has grown far faster than the pay of the top 0.1% of wage earners indicates that CEO compensation growth does not simply reflect a competitive race for skills (the “market for talent”) that also increases the value of highly paid professionals more generally. Rather, the growing pay differential between CEOs and top 0.1% earners suggests the growth of substantial economic rents (income not related to a corresponding growth of productivity) in CEO compensation. CEO compensation, it appears, does not reflect the greater productivity of executives but the specific power of CEOs to extract concessions.
Totally tracks with the idea that the eventual destination here isn’t capitalism, it’s actually worse than that…it’s fucking neofeudalism.
They don’t want to produce a better product than the competitors, they want to extract rents from anyone unlucky enough to need to use the tools or knowledge in their fiefdom, and they want to use those rents to buy up more tools and knowledge to charge rents on.
I mean, rent seeking is the best case scenario for a capitalist. You just insert yourself in the supply chain without much investment and get money for simply being in the chain.
You’re right that every capitalist wants to be a landlord, but the distinction between the two groups is that capitalists aren’t there yet, and capitalists are largely also subjected to rents by those that already are.
A lot of the recent movements in software has been away from selling products and toward rents (i.e. away from capitalism and toward neofeudalism / technofeudalism). That is why everything has become a subscription service (even things that you used to pay once and be able to use as is until you wanted to “upgrade” like, for instance, Adobe Photoshop).
Doctorow explains the difference in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Tl6yIsCoY
I see the nuance you are making now and I agree.
SaaS does feel like technofeudalism where you pay but don’t own shit, a bit like fiefs working in the field and giving wheat in exchange for a land that they don’t own.
It’s amazing how incentives at high levels can absolutely twist someone.
Rather than discuss or investigate the situations that lead to these hire/fire cycles, potentially find a better way, they accept it as inevitable and build off of that.
They get to take the lazy route and still have room to internally satisfy their withered conscience that they are somehow “doing good” by making vague attempts to offset the shit situation, rather than trying to eliminate said situation entirely.
Fucking hell why does this explain so much of the bullshit I am dealing with at work right now?
It doesn’t hurt them. Why the hell should they care? Their massive bonuses go through whether Dave gets to give presents to his kids this year or not!
At some point, companies completely absolved themselves of a large part of their purpose…which is to provide employment.
Of course money can buy anything and sometimes for very little.
This is the most out of touch bullshit I’ve heard in a long while. Normally I’d ask you kindly to go fuck yourself, but that seems a little too nice.
Every time some dumbass C- Suite moron opens bis mouth, I think what you just said.
Don’t know why society tolerates these dumbass parasites.
What a greedy and corporatist thing to say.
Oops, I just accidentally yoinked your meme.
It is our meme. Yeet it as you see fit, fam.
Can all these execs just fuck off and die already? Or at the very least never say anything, at all. Ever.
They are lucky and rich, and they mistakenly think that equates to being smart.
The American public also elects them to office so they get to run your entire life.
So how does one start a Technology and Information workers union. Asking for a friend.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union
Yes, I know, sarcastic, rhetorical post but we should all know how to start the process because fuck these companies and these leeches constantly screwing us over with their greed.
Honestly, not really all that sarcastic. I work in the tech industry and… Well we’re all getting fucked aren’t we?
Just imagine the power that we would have if we all stood together everyone in the help desk all the engineers all the developers…
The Earth stands still if we stand still.
E: … I’m too much of a coward though.
This is helpful, but the legal process is very much “the easy part” in my experience.
The hardest part is getting everyone riled enough to actually do something about it without getting singled out yourself, because everywhere is full of cowering servants who “don’t wanna rock the boat” and say things like “It is what it is.” and “I’ve only got a few more years.”
These days feels like you gotta grokk leaked psy-ops manuals from various intelligence agencies to form the kind of proper coordination to find yourself not just standing there alone, a pitiful “distruntled employee”.
Follow this link I got from a friend https://code-cwa.org/organizer-training
Thank you!
Well, you know, that’s life.
These are the words of a man that totally deserves to be gunned down by a malfunctioning ED-209 prototype.
So malpractice then?
“But I gave you a job in the first place, what made you think you could keep it? I’ll call you when I need you geez”
I wonder if Sony has a grant program that will allow me to chill at the beach for a year?
But Waymo exists… So I guess drive as much as you can right now and don’t spend any of it!
