Nintendo CEO once halved his salary to prevent layoffs, and it worked

M

ManaByte

Banned
www.cnbc.com

Nintendo CEO once halved his salary to prevent layoffs, and it worked—why that's so uncommon today

Nintendo's CEO once took a 50% pay cut to avoid layoffs. Here's why it worked for the video game company, says expert — and why it's not always a perfect fix.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com

To avoid layoffs, Iwata took a 50% pay cut to help pay for employee salaries, saying a fully-staffed Nintendo would have a better chance of rebounding.

"If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world," Iwata reportedly said at the time.
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For Iwata, taking a pay cut over layoffs centered around his employees' ability to bounce back, Verma says. Slashing his own salary allowed existing talent to keep working on upcoming projects — which were intended to turn Nintendo's financial fortunes around — in a stress-free, high-morale environment.
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Now you understand why Iwata is revered to this day at Nintendo, even crediting him in the Super Mario Movie.
 
US CEOs:

Mixed Martial Arts Middle Finger GIF by UFC
 
ManaByte said:
www.cnbc.com

Nintendo CEO once halved his salary to prevent layoffs, and it worked—why that's so uncommon today

Nintendo's CEO once took a 50% pay cut to avoid layoffs. Here's why it worked for the video game company, says expert — and why it's not always a perfect fix.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com







Now you understand why Iwata is revered to this day at Nintendo, even crediting him in the Super Mario Movie.
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He literally laid off 320 people in Europe after saying this. All execs are liars.

www.polygon.com

Nintendo lays off 320 workers in Europe, despite speaking against the practice last year

Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
 
Yeah, I read it on here years ago when it happened, it didn't save enough money to do what is claimed, it was just done to stop shareholder outrage when they were in a revenue downturn.
 
Hasn't this been deboonked already? Because iirc, it was Japanese labor law that stopped Nintendo from sweeping layoffs, and Iwata halved his salary as a show of good faith and solidarity. Someone freely correct me if I'm wrong there.
 
Astray said:
He literally laid off 320 people in Europe after saying this. All execs are liars.

www.polygon.com

Nintendo lays off 320 workers in Europe, despite speaking against the practice last year

Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
Click to expand...
Pure whataboutism. Clearly he was talking about devs and the core team and about preventing some layoffs not all. While a CEO tends to make 100s more than the average, cutting their pay can only directly fund 100s of people's salaries. But you can point to a bit of data that contradicts this statement only when you add meaning to it that was never there so I guess you win the "I don't understand the issue but I can google something to say that it is bullshit award" for this thread.
 
ManaByte said:
www.cnbc.com

Nintendo CEO once halved his salary to prevent layoffs, and it worked—why that's so uncommon today

Nintendo's CEO once took a 50% pay cut to avoid layoffs. Here's why it worked for the video game company, says expert — and why it's not always a perfect fix.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com



Now you understand why Iwata is revered to this day at Nintendo, even crediting him in the Super Mario Movie.
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This is what a true leader does.
Too bad most CEOs only care about themselves and their bonus.
 
KungFucius said:
Pure whataboutism. Clearly he was talking about devs and the core team and about preventing some layoffs not all. While a CEO tends to make 100s more than the average, cutting their pay can only directly fund 100s of people's salaries. But you can point to a bit of data that contradicts this statement only when you add meaning to it that was never there so I guess you win the "I don't understand the issue but I can google something to say that it is bullshit award" for this thread.
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Whataboutism?

Literally what he talked about happened through his own doing less than a year after he said what he said.

Also CEOs cutting their pay is nonsense meant to placate the masses, the vast majority of their money comes from their stock options, which they can borrow against sell etc etc etc.
 
Layoffs should require executives to take a salary cut by law and if records are hit in following years the company should need to pay bonuses to the actual workers and not the suits who just fired a bunch of people and actually did nothing to improve the productivity, since the fewer, remaining people did.
 
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Nice story but how much was his salary and how many jobs did it save?

I really doubt any gaming CEO earns so much that 50% of his salary would save hundreds of jobs if mass layoffs were necessary.
 
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Drink Pour It Up GIF by VH1


Man, I miss Iwata. Dude had infinite charm and those Nintendo Directs have never been the same since he died. He was a shining beacon of how to act in the face of many adversities.
 
Nice to hear about a CEO doing something positive.

artsi said:
I really doubt any gaming CEO earns so much that 50% of his salary would save hundreds of jobs if mass layoffs were necessary.
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CEO pay is ridiculous though, I know you've put the caveat that you're talking about gaming CEOs, but it's worth sharing (IMO) that in 2021 CEOs were paid 399 times as much as an average worker. In that instance, they could halve their pay and save 200 jobs. I assume that given that CEO pay has been on an upward trajectory for a while, it might be even more average jobs that could be saved.

www.epi.org

CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021

What this report finds: Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%. In 2021, we project that a CEO at...
www.epi.org www.epi.org
 
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There are two issues with this conceit, one is that you can't save that many jobs and two is that it doesn't necessarily fix the problems with the company that lead to the need for layoffs. Like, if you look at Google, they're laying off 12,000 people, you can pay Sundar Pichai $5 and you're not going to save those jobs, many of which are dead weight anyway. Now, that said, Sundar Pichai sucks so the right move is to get rid of him and replace him, but you're gonna have to pay the next guy.

I think Iwata's move was unique to Japan and unique to Nintendo. For one thing, Japanese CEOs are not as paid highly as in Europe and USA and the culture is different. Two, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with Nintendo's business. They were still making great games and still knew how to sell their products. They just released a bad console that the market didn't like. There was no need to lay off teams of people doing great work and contributing. The team that made the Wii U screwed up but they still needed a hardware team. They just needed to release a better product which they had in the works. Iwata basically bought some time with the move which is what they needed.
 
You have to be retarded to think that amount of money keeps a company afloat. Absolutely a great gesture, especially if you're not paying bonuses in Japan (which are technically part of your salary but companies can decide not to pay if finances are bad) and can't raise employee's salary. I can believe it had an effect on morale and might have pleased shareholders, but let's not pretend that saved people's jobs.
 
FingerBang said:
You have to be retarded to think that amount of money keeps a company afloat. Absolutely a great gesture, especially if you're not paying bonuses in Japan (which are technically part of your salary but companies can decide not to pay if finances are bad) and can't raise employee's salary. I can believe it had an effect on morale and might have pleased shareholders, but let's not pretend that saved people's jobs.
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It's definitely a morale issue. CEOs are more than adequately compensated off the payroll, it's just that the salary is the thing that makes the headlines and makes the ordinary worker resentful.

Steve Jobs was the lowest salaried employee at Apple, on just $1 per year, and yet he could afford to have this yacht built .
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Even when he became CEO he never stopped being a developer, still breaks my heart his final public message was apologising for the WiiU E3 showing, and he never got to see his vision for the switch become a huge success.
 
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Nintendo is famous for extreme employee retention rate before and after this (even within Japan), this was ingrained to the company by people like Iwata, which the shitty trolls that nobody will remember and their close circle will probably celebrate when they die try to smear after their death and inability to defend themselves in retarded ways, equating studio closures and the layoffs of up to thousands of people at a time by the likes of Microsoft and Sony to unrelated office/branch restructures (and ignoring when alongside the layoffs there are rehirings/turning of other temps/contractors to full time employees etc.). Obviously the actual money difference alone didn't save dev jobs, he saved dev jobs by taking real personal responsibility for the issues to shareholders and the world while maintaining the company's integrity and structure and leading it to the good times ahead :goog_cool:
 
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Satoru Iwata, Bless the man. The Nintendo switch was his final swan song unfortunately he didn't make it long enough to see the fruits of his labour. I do believe the recent up swing in Nintendo's output around that time was a desire to make right by the failure of the Wii u and to honor Iwata's passing.
 
He is a legend. He also wrote code on Pokémon or something that allowed them to double the size of the game because of his memory usage tricks.
 
What he did was legendary but most ceos of companys and development studios dont even earn a large enough bonus to cover staff costs, like no bonuses could cover 1900 people being laid off at activision
 
Nintendo dont do the same level of layoff because did not hire any the same amount unecessary people like western companies do.
 
Astray said:
He literally laid off 320 people in Europe after saying this. All execs are liars.

www.polygon.com

Nintendo lays off 320 workers in Europe, despite speaking against the practice last year

Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
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Nintendo of Europe has a separate CEO than Nintendo of Japan, Iwata didn't make that decision, Satoru Shibata did.

59% of those employees were contractors for translation. None of these employees worked on games.
 
Robb said:
Iwata is and always will be an absolute legend. Both as Nintendo's CEO and as a game developer/programmer.
AxPRYx.gif
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They got it right! And haven't been infected by Westernized late-stage capitalism yet. Great for them!
 
Astray said:
He literally laid off 320 people in Europe after saying this. All execs are liars.

www.polygon.com

Nintendo lays off 320 workers in Europe, despite speaking against the practice last year

Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
Click to expand...
Nintendo Europe? What is that? PR department?
Also PR in Switch era was different and waaaaay better than any PR before. WiiU is struggling because of everything PR so it's all for better and Switch proved it.
 
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