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[diffusionx]

Yep. When the consequences for bad decisions arrive, it generally isn’t CEOs that pay the price. This is where the resentment and anger stems from.

This really isn’t true. Now don’t get me wrong, CEOs are very highly paid. But the average tenure of a CEO is like 4 years. They get shitcanned all the time we just rarely hear about it because it’s some metals or energy company.

 

[Yoboman]

Very few of these companies are not taking in ridiculous profits. It's just not as much profit as they expected in their moronic perpetual growth models

People are being fired because CEOs aren't getting their bonuses based on moronic perpetual growth models

Or better explained:.

 

[kiphalfton]

By all means, kiss the millionaires ass maybe they will share some of that wealth with you.
Maybe not.

Only if you got nice titties and/or ass.

The rest of us are SOL.

 

[IFireflyl]

Only if you got nice titties and/or ass.

The rest of us are SOL.

I have great cans and a fantastic ass. It's my dick that always becomes an issue.

 

[Fabieter]

CEO of EA making $20 million+ which is well over 200 times a $100k salary gets no sympathy from me.

These layoffs indicate a failure of his vision which means he should be laid off with them. He is the most expensive employee.

Yes- I hate how overcompensated these CEOs are. No one is worth that much money.

This is the case ib japan. If a ceo laid off 100 people he's definitely one of them. They say if the head is rotten than its the heads fault.

 

[BacklashWave534]

It's a noble thought to want to save the employees but i would wager that most people in this thread would be hesitant to cut their own pay if they found themselves in the CEO position.

 

[SoloCamo]

It's a noble thought to want to save the employees but i would wager that most people in this thread would be hesitant to cut their own pay if they found themselves in the CEO position.

 

[FunkMiller]

It's a noble thought to want to save the employees but i would wager that most people in this thread would be hesitant to cut their own pay if they found themselves in the CEO position.

If you're in a CEO position, a huge part of your success is down to the work of the people below you. So, if you have any morality whatsoever, you rightly take the benefits and dividends of their work when times are good, and accept cutbacks yourself when they are not.

You don't fire them, and retain your bonuses.

The fact that some people on this forum are dumb enough to think that it's okay to do this, shows an unhealthy level of corporate executive dick suckage that is frankly pretty damned weird.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

If you're in a CEO position, a huge part of your success is down to the work of the people below you. So, if you have any morality whatsoever, you rightly take the benefits and dividends of their work when times are good, and accept cutbacks yourself when they are not.

You don't fire them, and retain your bonuses.

The fact that some people on this forum are dumb enough to think that it's okay to do this, shows an unhealthy level of corporate executive dick suckage that is frankly pretty damned weird.

 

[justiceiro]

Every time a high profile executive open a game studios, we kinda talk about it. What more do you want?

 

[EviLore]

If you're in a CEO position, a huge part of your success is down to the work of the people below you. So, if you have any morality whatsoever, you rightly take the benefits and dividends of their work when times are good, and accept cutbacks yourself when they are not.

You don't fire them, and retain your bonuses.

The fact that some people on this forum are dumb enough to think that it's okay to do this, shows an unhealthy level of corporate executive dick suckage that is frankly pretty damned weird.

Yes. People will inherently respect when you have skin in the game.

There’s a huge difference between someone who leads the way taking risks along with the team, then reaps the rewards of success, vs someone who risks other people’s time and money and reaps the rewards of success but bails out with a golden parachute when things go wrong.

 

[SoloCamo]

Yes. People will inherently respect when you have skin in the game.

There’s a huge difference between someone who leads the way taking risks along with the team, then reaps the rewards of success, vs someone who risks other people’s time and money and reaps the rewards of success but bails out with a golden parachute when things go wrong.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Not all CEOs are created equally. Just like people. There's good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately many CEOs take a "group think" mentality to management, see: Jack Welch management style that was all the rage and yet turned GE and many other businesses into long-term losers.

The best CEOs are ones that weigh the balance of employees, customers, and shareholders equally in alignment, as these tend to lead to the best long term outcomes for everyone. The worst ones turn great businesses into something that simply sacrifices employees (talent) and customers (quality) just to primarily service shareholders. And they will lie, gaslight, and do everything in their power to tell their employees and customers that this is for the betterment of their interests when it's not.

A good CEO these days is unfortunately a very rare thing, imho. Sadly, a result of incentives where executives get massive short-term compensation bonuses but do not care one bit about the longevity of the company. Fuck you, got mine, I'm out type of thinking which is rampant.

 

[EviLore]

Not all CEOs are created equally. Just like people. There's good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately many CEOs take a "group think" mentality to management, see: Jack Welch management style that was all the rage and yet turned GE and many other businesses into long-term losers.

The best CEOs are ones that weigh the balance of employees, customers, and shareholders equally in alignment, as these tend to lead to the best long term outcomes for everyone. The worst ones turn great businesses into something that simply sacrifices employees (talent) and customers (quality) just to primarily service shareholders. And they will lie, gaslight, and do everything in their power to tell their employees and customers that this is for the betterment of their interests when it's not.

A good CEO these days is unfortunately a very rare thing, imho. Sadly, a result of incentives where executives get massive short-term compensation bonuses but do not care one bit about the longevity of the company. Fuck you, got mine, I'm out type of thinking which is rampant.

Three options for company alignment: shareholder first, customer first, or employee first.

You can build a very good company by prioritizing employees and customers. Long-term vision often involves setting aside short-term shareholder interests, particularly for a publicly traded company.

It doesn’t exactly matter if Amazon or Apple or MS had a bad quarter 10 years ago because they took a loss and shareholders were upset. A great CEO’s vision needs to reach far beyond three month windows.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

This really isn’t true. Now don’t get me wrong, CEOs are very highly paid. But the average tenure of a CEO is like 4 years. They get shitcanned all the time we just rarely hear about it because it’s some metals or energy company.

They also often leave with golden parachute after years of being insanely overpaid.

 

[SaintALia]

"CEOs + companies are good, generous, and benevolent when they hire employees and grow studios?"

What? That's their job and what companies need to do. They aren't hiring because of doing the country a solid or because of benevolence or the good of society or employees or people, They're plugging a need.

Pat CEOs, employees, the board etc for doing a good job when profits are on the rise and the company is healthy, but don't conflate that with doing 'good' or being 'generous'. They need employees, they hire them. When they don't, they fire them.

 

[Edgelord79]

I will never praise a corporation. But I’ll always criticize them.

It’s not our job as consumers to give praise. It is our job to hold them accountable though.

 

[Rentahamster]

But if that's true, then doesn't that mean CEOs + companies are good, generous, and benevolent when they hire employees and grow studios?

Why does it feel like people never bring up the other side of the coin when these people create jobs? Why is it acceptable to moralize others when things go bad, but not when things go good?

Are you serious? Companies hire people because they need the labor, not because they're feeling benevolent. If they were actually feeling generous, they'd let the employee set whatever salary they want instead of trying to hire workers at the lowest pay they can get away with.

When CEOs fire people in order to temporarily boost shareholder value at the expense of morale and talent retention, they value the money more than they value the labor. When they hire people due to an influx of new demand, it's also because they value the money that new labor brings. If they could get away with doing more without hiring new people they would.

Whether hiring or firing, a company does it for its own self-interest, not out of benevolence either way. The moralizing on some actions over others comes in to play because it's become more and more commonplace for CEOs to reap the benefits for themselves in times of plenty and also reap the benefits for themselves in times of famine, while the people on the lower end of the totem pole have to eat shit either way because they have no power otherwise.

 

[Scotty W]

If CEO’s are greedy and selfish for laying off employees, then gamers are greedy and selfish for not buying games. Greedy gamers are forcing the CEO’s to do it!

 

[Rentahamster]

BTW look here at all these examples of silence during periods of growth

Miyamoto Says Nintendo Looking To Increase Internal Staff To Create More Projects

Weve been working on what we can do to increase our internal staff in a way that will allow us to have more projects going at the same time, Miyamoto said, when I had asked him about why some franchises like Wave Race and F-Zero seem trapped in past generations. Miyamoto noted that an...

www.neogaf.com

News - Nintendo is raising wages for its Japanese workforce by 10%

https://globalnews.ca/news/9469968/nintendo-wage-raise/#:~:text=President%20Shuntaro%20Furukawa%20said%20the,this%20week%2C%20according%20to%20Reuters The president of Nintendo is promising to boost wages at the Japanese video game maker despite a slight dip in profit and a lower outlook for...

www.neogaf.com

Business - Game Dev - Nintendo promises 10% pay hike even as it trims profit outlook

https://www.reuters.com/technology/nintendo-trims-annual-profit-outlook-firmer-yen-2023-02-07/ Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.T) said on Tuesday it plans to lift workers' base pay by 10% even though a firmer yen forced it to trim its full-year profit forecast. The hefty pay...

www.neogaf.com

News - Sony to pay record bonuses in FY2021 (Sony expected to net 10B profit)

Sony employees be eating. Sony says it will pay its employees record-high bonuses, even higher than what their union asked for. The compensation from the Japanese electronics giant is equivalent of seven months' salary. The union demanded a bonus equivalent to 6.9 months of basic salary in...

www.neogaf.com

 

[BacklashWave534]

If you're in a CEO position, a huge part of your success is down to the work of the people below you. So, if you have any morality whatsoever, you rightly take the benefits and dividends of their work when times are good, and accept cutbacks yourself when they are not.

You don't fire them, and retain your bonuses.

The fact that some people on this forum are dumb enough to think that it's okay to do this, shows an unhealthy level of corporate executive dick suckage that is frankly pretty damned weird.

I don't disagree with you. Just saying that when it came time to sign the paper that cut millions off your pay i don't think many would go through with it. I think compensation based on performance solves the issue. If your company underperforms your pay gets cut. If it does above expectations you get an increase. However, i don't think slashing the CEOs pay negates layoffs. It may save a couple dozen people's jobs but not hundreds.

 

[FunkMiller]

I don't disagree with you. Just saying that when it came time to sign the paper that cut millions off your pay i don't think many would go through with it. I think compensation based on performance solves the issue. If your company underperforms your pay gets cut. If it does above expectations you get an increase. However, i don't think slashing the CEOs pay negates layoffs. It may save a few people's jobs but not hundreds.

A CEO who is invested in the long term stability and growth of a company will indeed take a pay cut in leaner times, because they are betting on themselves and their staff to see them through to better times. That's how a good CEO should - and does - operate. If I'm a CEO invested in the long term success of the company I run, I would indeed take the hit. But if I'm the type of person who just wants to make as much personal dollar as possible, with no real passion for the industry I'm in, then I wouldn't.

I don't believe for one second people like Andrew Wilson, Bobby Kotick or Strauss Zelnick have any real love or passion for video games and the people that make them.

Tying a CEO's pay and bonuses to the overall health of the company (in a way that's regulated by law) would be a sure fire way to prevent these high paid ghouls from continuing to earn multi-millions while simultaneously sacking their staff. It would probably lead to a better class of executive as well.

 

[Rentahamster]

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/30/nyregion/arch-patton-88-devised-first-survey-of-top-executives-pay.html

Mr. Patton used the survey to help companies develop bonus plans and stock option programs to improve executive performance. He published a book on the subject, ''Men, Money and Motivation,'' in 1961.
Later, the compensation survey was increasingly criticized as a major contributor to skyrocketing executive pay. In the mid-1980's, a reporter asked Mr. Patton how he felt about the effect the survey appeared to be having on executive compensation. ''Guilty,'' he replied.

He said that managers had badly abused his survey and that ''this resulted largely from management assuming that all of its executives were above-average performers,'' while the survey included a wide range of executives.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

A CEO who is invested in the long term stability and growth of a company will indeed take a pay cut in leaner times, because they are betting on themselves and their staff to see them through to better times. That's how a good CEO should - and does - operate. If I'm a CEO invested in the long term success of the company I run, I would indeed take the hit. But if I'm the type of person who just wants to make as much personal dollar as possible, with no real passion for the industry I'm in, then I wouldn't.

I don't believe for one second people like Andrew Wilson, Bobby Kotick or Strauss Zelnick have any real love or passion for video games and the people that make them.

Tying a CEO's pay and bonuses to the overall health of the company (in a way that's regulated by law) would be a sure fire way to prevent these high paid ghouls from continuing to earn multi-millions while simultaneously sacking their staff. It would probably lead to a better class of executive as well.

That’s why I respect a company like Nintendo a whole lot from a business standpoint

The executives generally feel a real sense of guilt when things don’t go so well, reduce their own personal pay, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a NOJ layoff situation even in the darkest of times.

Many other companies simply deflect blame onto their employees, even though they don’t outright say it in many cases their actions speak louder than words

 

[FunkMiller]

That’s why I respect a company like Nintendo a whole lot from a business standpoint

The executives generally feel a real sense of guilt when things don’t go so well, reduce their own personal pay, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a NOJ layoff situation even in the darkest of times.

Many other companies simply deflect blame onto their employees, even though they don’t outright say it in many cases their actions speak louder than words

That's a Japanese thing. They have a very strong sense of morality and shame, so it follows that their CEOs wouldn't be the greedy bottom feeders, like the ones at western games companies.

Can't be a coincidence that we're seeing a massive decline in the quality of western video games, while Japanese ones maintain a good level of quality.

The problems with modern western video games development start at CEO level. I know the whole woke, Sweet Baby Inc thing is fashionable to criticise... but that's a typical culture war thing that draws focus from where the real problems are.

And that's something going on across most western industries in general at the moment...

 

[The artful mincer]

But that's the system that has created the most jobs and the best games.

I'm not into the moralizing as much as the structure and its results.

EA and Activision have not made the best games...

If anything Activision (Not including blizzard) especially has demonstrated chasing growth can be terrible for games.

They made record profits for years while releasing less games per year and have basically ended up as a Call of Duty Factory.

 

[hyperbertha]

Yes, somehow all of this filters down to America's fault. Face it, greed it everywhere, every country, every continent. It's human nature. You and I are not immune from it - we just haven't been in the position to realize it yet.

But certain countries have better systems in place to curb that and aren't all the way capitalistic. Like in europe.

 

[ProtoByte]

Because ceos often get a very low salary pay and instead opt for large stock payouts as compensation. This allows them to avoid a lot of taxes.

It's also a mechanism to sustain some liquidity and to ensure investors that the executives working on their behalf have a stake in the company.

That is why they are criticized. The layoffs they are doing isn’t because the company would be in trouble otherwise. In fact most of the layoffs are coming from companies reporting record breaking profits.

Record breaking profits accounting for profit margin changes and inflation?
Also, you say that as if companies should wait until they're well in the red before they take action.

Not saying you should feel bad for them or that it's existential at the moment, but these realities are why the big publishers are looking to make less [insert high prestige game] and more Apex Legends/Fortnite/GTAO etc. Incentive structures affect what type of games will get greenlit.

These layoffs hurt the company in the long run.

How? It's a correction. Business is cyclical.

But certain countries have better systems in place to curb that and aren't all the way capitalistic. Like in europe.

Ubisoft and Yves Guillemot are European. Andrew Wilson is more culturally European than he is American.
The gaming industry's current devil is Embracer is European. But they're headquarters are in the continents most business-successful country Sweden, which happens to be even more harshly capitalistic than the US.

However much of this fake business decorum or non-capitalistic drive Europe does have is holding it back, not helping it.

 

[hyperbertha]

Ubisoft and Yves Guillemot are European. Andrew Wilson is more culturally European than he is American.
The gaming industry's current devil is Embracer is European. But they're headquarters are in the continents most business-successful country Sweden, which happens to be even more harshly capitalistic than the US.

However much of this fake business decorum or non-capitalistic drive Europe does have is holding it back, not helping it.

The people in europe seem to have significantly better work life balance to me. How exactly are they held back?

 

[darrylgorn]

 

[ahtlas7]

Black or white? Doubt that works in many corporate decisions.

 

[PropellerEar]

most business-successful country Sweden, which happens to be even more harshly capitalistic than the US.

 

[AmuroChan]

Three options for company alignment: shareholder first, customer first, or employee first.

You can build a very good company by prioritizing employees and customers. Long-term vision often involves setting aside short-term shareholder interests, particularly for a publicly traded company.

It doesn’t exactly matter if Amazon or Apple or MS had a bad quarter 10 years ago because they took a loss and shareholders were upset. A great CEO’s vision needs to reach far beyond three month windows.

I would argue that it depends on the company and industry. Take Disney for example. They aligned with their activist employees first and put the customers last. That has done irreparable damage to their brand that will take a looong time to repair.

 

[MrRibeye]

I marry my CEO and be called CEOpatra, together we build pyramids and are beloved by everyone.