It's a really stupid set of moves by a company with more cash than sense. Hiring (and subsequently training) people is one of the most expensive things a company can do. Any smart company leans this and goes out of their way to reduce turnover and improve their hiring process. The fact that they layoff and hire so quickly is a sign to me that their management is inexperienced and / or not talking to each other. If one part of the company is understaffed, and one is overstaffed... there should be a solution that doesn't require laying off 500 and immediately hiring 100 more.

The fact that they layoff and hire so quickly is a sign to me that their management is inexperienced and / or not talking to each other. If one part of the company is understaffed, and one is overstaffed... there should be a solution that doesn't require laying off 500 and immediately hiring 100 more.

You don't have all the information. That is your interpretation based on the information you have.

Based on my experience I have seen some cases where both firing and hiring at the same time can make perfect sense. Software developers are not interchangeable cogs. There are times when it is best to bring in experts. There are times when it is best to migrate people from one area to another. There are times when it is best to dump an entire team and start from scratch.

The people with the most information are going to be the executives at Zynga, but even they don't have ALL the information. They make choices based on the information they have. The management is experienced enough to know the costs both of hiring and of firing, and it is quite likely they took those costs into account in their confidential business plans. They didn't invite you (or me) to review their confidential business plans, so I'm going to reserve judgement on its wisdom.

The people with the most information are going to be the executives at Zynga, but even they don't have ALL the information. They make choices based on the information they have. The management is experienced enough to know the costs both of hiring and of firing, and it is quite likely they took those costs into account in their confidential business plans. They didn't invite you (or me) to review their confidential business plans, so I'm going to reserve judgement on its wisdom.

I have worked with and for too many companies (large and small, successful and not) to assume competence at the executive level at Zynga or pretty much any company.

Meh. Lots of people think their boss is incompetent. Most think their boss' boss is incompetent. Virtually everyone thinks the top level execs are incompetent... just as virtually everyone thinks they can make better calls than the coach/manager of their favourite sports team, or the politicians running the company.

Sometimes people at lower levels work their way through the tech-ceiling and end up as execs. Then they get to be regarded as incompetent too.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. I have definitely met and worked with some fantastic managers and executives. However, just like in every type of work, they are the exception. The majority of people do just enough to get by and work for short term benefit versus real healthy growth.

The people with the most information are going to be the executives at Zynga, but even they don't have ALL the information. They make choices based on the information they have. The management is experienced enough to know the costs both of hiring and of firing, and it is quite likely they took those costs into account in their confidential business plans. They didn't invite you (or me) to review their confidential business plans, so I'm going to reserve judgement on its wisdom.

I have worked with and for too many companies (large and small, successful and not) to assume competence at the executive level at Zynga or pretty much any company.

Meh. Lots of people think their boss is incompetent. Most think their boss' boss is incompetent. Virtually everyone thinks the top level execs are incompetent... just as virtually everyone thinks they can make better calls than the coach/manager of their favourite sports team, or the politicians running the company.

Sometimes people at lower levels work their way through the tech-ceiling and end up as execs. Then they get to be regarded as incompetent too.

Not assuming competence (or intelligence) at executive level is not far fetched.

Not only is the mere existence of an "executive summary" (read as: abstract for totally unaware dummies) tell-tale, but I can confirm that the vast majority of executives aren't precisely the most competent or intelligent people both from my own experience and from what I get to hear from my wife (who happens to be an executive) every day.

As in, there's that customer who doesn't want to pay the 75k bill because <insert lame excuse>, but they promise to sign a 2.5 million contract, I guess we should just waive these 75k. Right, like they're going to pay that, or as if one would want to have a customer like this.

Meet with 5 people, and waste 4 hours on discussing nonsense like this with these assholes, solely because their gigantic egos can't admit that they've made a bad deal. Come out of that meeting with nothing you didn't know before. But hey, we're the greatest guys in the world. In the universe, says I.

I know executives who don't know how to do a phone call without help, and who don't know the difference between replying to the sender of an email and replying to all recipients. The same people will refuse to hire an extra hand when their team can't cope with the workload because the company needs to economize. But they're not considering travelling business class or taking the train (which is +/- 30 minutes) on a 600km trip. Which they do just for having lunch with another executive.

But hey, travelling business class is disgraceful. Business class is for, like, you know... monkeys and the like.

Of course you could teach a monkey to use a phone, other than an executive...

I've never worked in game dev professionally, but as a high level team lead/CTO, you always want to get rid of your lowest to average performers.

The reason for this is that if you hire someone else for the position, there's a chance of them being an over performer. Under performers and average performers can be dropped again anyway.

It's really just a strategic decision to try and increase the talent pool, without having to train people for years.

Not that the companies I work for perform this kind of crap, though. In business dev companies tend to treat people like human beings.