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by keidian 5049 days ago
Honestly? Doing a mass layoff will suck regardless, but doing it by shutting down the company and making a brand new one immediately rubs me the wrong way. While no one likes to be laid off, I think people would have been able to at least hold their head high about the work they had been doing rather than the stigma of being remembered as working at OnLive before AND being out of a job.

Side note: Wonder just how low my karma will sink after this post and my original one lol. Seems like people don't agree with me, which is fine :)
3 comments
ConstantineXVI 5049 days ago
The shutting down/new company business is essentially a convoluted form of bankruptcy[0] that allowed them to keep the lights on; out of context it looks bad but it could have been much worse.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_assignment (note this technically/legally isn't bankruptcy, but has a rather similar effect)

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zizee 5048 days ago
I don't know the full situation, but if each of those who were laid off owned part of the company it seems a little unfair for the majority shareholder to be able to sell the company to himself, leaving everyone else with nothing. What should have happened is that the company should go up for auction and the proceeds split by percentage owned.
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sp332 5048 days ago
They didn't own stock in the company. They had stock options which were cancelled. Which is just as well maybe since they would have also owned a piece of the debt.
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wmf 5048 days ago
You're forgetting liquidation preference.
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dpe82 5048 days ago
Brad Feld has a great blog post on what he suspects happened at OnLive, given his experience with similar situations in the past: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/08/what-just-happened-w...
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ghshephard 5048 days ago
So, you believe they should have just gone bankrupt, liquidated, and left everyone out of a job? I'm trying to parse your response to see what you would have done, and it seems that the part that upsets you is the "shutting down the company and making a brand new one immediately" - I'm wondering whether you would have preferred just shutting everything down? From my reading, it appears they were out of cash.
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