<story><title>Zynga to Lay Off 520 Employees and shutter NY and LA Offices</title><url>http://allthingsd.com/20130603/zynga-to-lay-off-520-employees-18-percent-of-staff-and-shutter-new-york-and-la-offices/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mbesto</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Being caught in a downsizing sucks&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or it can be a great. Severance packages can be quite lucrative.&lt;p&gt;The better advice I give people is &quot;always be looking for job opportunities&quot;. The best job opportunities come when you least expect them, and the worst jobs are taken when you&apos;re desperate.</text></item><item><author>josh2600</author><text>You know what the problem here is? There is no material difference between a 10 person game studio and a 3000 person game studio. Zynga likes to pretend that their Z-Cloud gives them an advantage over their competitors. Maybe it does in terms of operations, but games isn&apos;t an operations business, it&apos;s a hits business. All of the optimization in the world doesn&apos;t help if you can&apos;t keep making wins and Zynga can&apos;t make wins because they&apos;re too cluttered with layers of middle management FUD.&lt;p&gt;520 employees is a lot of people out of work, but I have to think they saw it coming. My advice to people in similar positions all throughout tech is this: there are three signs that indicate an impending downsizing.&lt;p&gt;* Depressed Stock Value over long periods of time&lt;p&gt;* An Acceleration of secrecy and fiefdom claiming within the culture&lt;p&gt;* You look around and no one wants to come to work anymore&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself in this situation, leave. Find another job. Being caught in a downsizing sucks, but if you pay attention you can avoid them. It&apos;s important to make friends and to be able to tell the temperature of your local environment to avoid such devastation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;: This can best be summarized as the well known phenomenon: &quot;There&apos;s no such thing as a Free Lunch&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MartinCron</author><text>&lt;i&gt;the worst jobs are taken when you&apos;re desperate&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I could suggest one thing for a young programmer to tattoo onto their inner arm, it would be that sentence right there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Zynga to Lay Off 520 Employees and shutter NY and LA Offices</title><url>http://allthingsd.com/20130603/zynga-to-lay-off-520-employees-18-percent-of-staff-and-shutter-new-york-and-la-offices/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mbesto</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Being caught in a downsizing sucks&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or it can be a great. Severance packages can be quite lucrative.&lt;p&gt;The better advice I give people is &quot;always be looking for job opportunities&quot;. The best job opportunities come when you least expect them, and the worst jobs are taken when you&apos;re desperate.</text></item><item><author>josh2600</author><text>You know what the problem here is? There is no material difference between a 10 person game studio and a 3000 person game studio. Zynga likes to pretend that their Z-Cloud gives them an advantage over their competitors. Maybe it does in terms of operations, but games isn&apos;t an operations business, it&apos;s a hits business. All of the optimization in the world doesn&apos;t help if you can&apos;t keep making wins and Zynga can&apos;t make wins because they&apos;re too cluttered with layers of middle management FUD.&lt;p&gt;520 employees is a lot of people out of work, but I have to think they saw it coming. My advice to people in similar positions all throughout tech is this: there are three signs that indicate an impending downsizing.&lt;p&gt;* Depressed Stock Value over long periods of time&lt;p&gt;* An Acceleration of secrecy and fiefdom claiming within the culture&lt;p&gt;* You look around and no one wants to come to work anymore&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself in this situation, leave. Find another job. Being caught in a downsizing sucks, but if you pay attention you can avoid them. It&apos;s important to make friends and to be able to tell the temperature of your local environment to avoid such devastation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;: This can best be summarized as the well known phenomenon: &quot;There&apos;s no such thing as a Free Lunch&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mkenyon</author><text>In this case, Zynga offered us 3 months + 1 week/year.</text></comment>