[no_wizard]

My heart goes out to those affected. Thats very rough.

I know this isn't directly related to the article at hand or anything either, but I feel like I'm seeing a real uptick in November / December layoffs. Is it just me or was it really not a thing companies did with such frequency around the holidays?

I feel like its as much a shedding of costs as it is a flex of big business trying to show strength because they all hate any inch of worker gains in the past 3 years that were made.

In other news: It appears that Hasbro is shifting to become a trading card and video game company, per the article:

>Meanwhile, Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, which publishes both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is experiencing all-time highs for both revenue earned and the number of players engaged in those brands

>One area of investment for Hasbro appears to be the video game sector. Its latest project, Exodus, made a big splash last week at The Game Awards.

Seems like they're trying to gear up those divisions while winding down their toy division at least somewhat. Its unclear if their stragetic growth with WOTC will also include investments in table top games there or if they will be primarily focused on the core money makers around Magic: The Gathering.

If they can hit big in video games that will certainly bolster revenue though. We shall see if Hasbro is about to be an unexpected giant entrant into that industry

[sbrother]

I am still taken aback when they do these holiday layoffs. My employer (Nextdoor) cut 25% of the company in November, and it's hard not to see the timing as a particularly brutal power play.

[hotpotamus]

I hope that people will remember the callousness that these employers show when talk of unionization/worker's rights happens again.

[fullshark]

Perhaps it's a case of improved forecasting/data methods. Hasbro knows already this holiday season will be disastrous for them apparently, and previously companies that needed the holiday season to make their numbers had to wait until after it ended to really make decisions.

[teitoklien]

If enough of these companies start doing these “forecastings”, what are the odds that these forecasts end up causing the very event to happen.

Some stats in an index goes down, companies forecast annual sales downfall, starts cutting workforce in every industry, consumption tanks, makes the sales downfall a reality.

Also, really ? Being laid of at Christmas time ?, to save a few bucks, its not like hasbro’s going bankrupt or anything.

Humans do trade to improve each other’s quality of life, and not do things just for profit. It’s a means to an end, not the end. Too many companies are making their eyes into excel sheets, and ending up causing the very downfall by preparing for the downfall that they “anticipate”.

[christkv]

They have known for a couple of months Christmas toy orders from retailers are done months in advance.

[WillPostForFood]

They will have to take returns from retailers if things aren't selling. Retail orders are half the battle for a company like Hasbro - the products still need to sell.

[jay_kyburz]

I'm really surprised magic is still so strong. The designers must be doing a great job of keeping the game fresh and interesting.

[cuongfu]

I wonder if it's companies trying to inflate their year-end numbers to appease shareholders. I agree that it feels like more layoffs this month than I expected, but none of them are necessarily due to 'market conditions' per se, like the layoffs that happened at the end of last year and earlier this year.

Spotify and Hasbro seem like they just made bad investments and focused on the wrong areas for their business and now they (or rather their employees) are paying for it. With Hasbro specifically laying people off right now, I bet it's a way to cut down the numbers of payroll ahead of the Christmas sales rush, which I think probably inflates their overall profit margin.

[andrewxdiamond]

If a company provides a severance package, then a Dec layoff is almost certainly too late to have any impact on the bottom line.

[macintux]

I haven't looked at Hasbro, but the impression I've gotten is that fiscal years and calendar years rarely align for larger companies. No one wants to be spending the Christmas/New Year holidays working on end-of-year accounting.

[no_wizard]

A completely unenforcable concept, but an interesting thought exercise: if executives (and with that, SVP/VPs) were as likely to experience the recieving end of a layoff the same as those below them on the org chart, how would that affect how often they happen in the first place?

For instance, if the VPs and SVPs in charge of the toy division were guaranteed to be part of the layoff, do you think the calculus would have changed? You rarely hear about it actually having reprocusssions on the C-Suite or their immediate peers (VP / SVP).

Look at it from another angle: if the layoff has to happen due to poor planning or lack of direction etc. Thats set from the top but only the bottom layers of your company is affected by the layoff. Shouldn't actually be in the reverse, where executives, SVPs and VPs should be booted as a matter of course, as they are the ones that set the direction after all and supposedly "bare the responsibility" of the company.

This reminds me of a book I was reading, The Hard Things About Hard Things. Its an interesting book, full of alot of useful information, but one thing that grinded my gears is how he talked about layoffs vs removing executives (defined as VP and up)

With layoffs, he says to do it successfully, you need to train you managers to do the following:

- Be able toexplain briefly about what happend, and that it is a company rather than a personal [employee] failure

- Be clear how the employee is impacted and that the decision is non-negotiable

- Be fully prepared about the benefits and support the company plans to provide.

Okay, on the surface, this seems good, but the first two bullets are extremely specific and targeted, while the last one uses more lax language regarding benefits and support the company plans to provide. Which is to say, it does not say serverance, it does not say what good support should look like.

Follow so far? Okay, so its pretty open ended, particularly that last part.

Then, in the exact next chapter, he talks about firing an executive, and it is suppose to work as follows:

- Be clear on the reasons

- Use decisive language

- Have the severange package approved and ready

As you can see, clearly, to fire an executive, you must clearly provide a serverance package and make sure its approved and ready

In a nutshell, this is how they see it. The executive class does not play by our rules, and never has to take the same ownership the rest of us do, period. Its explicitly spelled out that the executive must have a severance package, approved and ready where as supporting frontline employees in a layoff is left to the readers imagination as to what you should be doing for benefits and support.

I want everyone to remember this. Ben Horowitz has said outloud that what we're all thinking is true. Executives see themselves as above non executives, and expect to be treated as such.

This is in a nutshell is why the average worker should never trust the executive class and should unionize

[ryandrake]

I mean, of course. A lot of things would happen differently in business if the decision makers shared consequences and downside with the worker bees. Our system unfortunately is set up such that the executive class reaps the majority of the rewards and upside, while the workers primarily shoulder the downside.

[no_wizard]

This is what makes unions more necessary than ever, in all industries

[maCDzP]

A colleague that used to work in the aviation industry told me that they always had layoffs on the 23:rd or 24:th.

I believe it had something to do with the yearly reporting and the people doing the reporting being on holy day between Christmas and new year.

[Macha]

Video games are a better market than toys for children, sure, but it still doesn't feel like a reliable bet for Hasbro to get into.

Particularly the mention of video game licensing rather than development just screams execs amazed at how well that did, but I think they're overestimating how much they can make that repeatable. What with Pathfinder and Divinity games having laid the foundation for a CRPG comeback, Baldur's Gate 2 being one of those games still talked about nearly 25 years later, the wave of growth TTRPGs and derivatives got over the pandemic (see also the critical role amazon shows), there was a lot weighing in favour of BG3 that I don't think is repeatable on a more frequent basis. Not to mention Hasbro being relatively hands off and probably having forgotten they licensed it out.

I think Hasbro think they're going to knock out Baldur Gate 3's and that it was their brand that provided all the value so they can charge the next people more, and maybe stuff it full of microtransactions. But I think much more likely is an outcome like the opening of Warhammer, a bunch of "ehh, it did ok I guess" mid tier games, and if they try to extract too much value from it they'll crush it.

[WillPostForFood]

Hasbro tried the video game business back in the 1990s. They bought Atari assets and name in 1998, and Microprose as well, and became a pretty major player, but it flamed out. Video game development/publishing is a tough business.

[unnamed76ri]

I forgot about them buying Microprose. I feel like that was all part of the two cancelled X-Com games that were in development around 2000 or so.

[passwordoops]

Layoffs usually happen around the financial year-end so holiday layoffs are par for the course.

Just noticeable because we're in a downturn, so more layoffs