Her Interactive is about to release a banger, on 7th of May! 🤯 After temporary fall from the most unfortunate entry, they rise from their knees and fly very high. Welcome 34th game in the series:
It's a HUGE upgrade, when you compare these cinematics with other ND visual novels. Can't wait to get a feel of the gameplay that they, most likely, improved in accordance to general feedback as well.
There is so much to do in and explore new locations: in 3D, no less! Essentially, you can have a ride to Prague as the detective Nancy Drew in this game and play brain crackers, haha. :blobcattea:
Despite me being positive about #ND34, the newest entry for #NancyDrew videogame series, there is a merit in finding how we've got here in the first place and if #HerInteractive is a trustworthy studio.
Right of the gate, we see the drastic difference in how previous, #ND33 game performed after successful 32 inclusions... It's darn #MID, if you ask me. :thisIsFine: So, it was being developed after the big #layoff in Her, where most positions got bestowed on a new crew. Only that it was going hand-in-hand with new CEO's delusion of a #passion mobile project. Add here a camp of the #fanbase which insists on a regular ND release schedule, #hustle culture, and you have a case of rushed development, #crunch and leaving everyone with a subpar ND game. If anything, I guess old crew was spared nerve cells in expense of new blood being under equally subpar direction - lucky to be fired, unlucky to be hired? Oof.
I was one of the 400 people laid off from Okta last Thursday, and one of the ways I’m keeping busy is writing a series of articles on surviving layoffs (this is my 5th!) and what I’m doing. Follow me on my new adventure!
The thing about #tech#layoffs that people who haven’t been through it often don’t understand is that morale never recovers. The employees who remain will never have the same relationship with that company, bosses or peers.
Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.
If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.
@matdevdug the first time I went through a #tech#layoff I really struggled with “what did I do wrong?” It took me a long time to recover from that.
My first time as a manager having to lay people off was one of the toughest days of my 35 yr career. A year after that there was 100% turnover in that team, including me.
My current place has had a round of layoffs. We learned to manage employee growth in a way that we haven’t had to do it again. We’re now profitable and have an amazing team.
Welp, my employer joined the 2024Q1 #layoff club today. We're a small VC-funded shop so it's not really the same situation as Google canning 1000 people for no reason but doesn't feel great to be part of the trend.
I wasn't impacted myself but if anyone is looking to #FediHire some amazing #robotics#embedded engineers, software engineers or testers, and/or field engineers, let me know!
"Meta, Google, Amazon, and other major tech firms have laid off thousands of people. The public sector has tried — and in some cases, succeeded —to lure them in"
I got spared from being laid off for reasons I still consider odd. Here's the back story.
At my employer, I had been part of a group that pursued its own clients and maintained profitability even when other parts of the company had challenges. My coworkers and I kept utilization levels between 90 and 110 percent. If you are utilized, you are making money. This all got disturbed by an internal merger...
The group we got merged with had been acquired by the company in some years prior. They liked to aim for utilization levels around 60%. In my opinion, hat's pretty low. That means 40% of the time you are a burden to the company. When they were first acquired, finances were ignored.
At the same time they were noticed, the company decided to do a headcount reduction and merge my group with theirs.
The company decided this other group would take the reigns of the merged group and informed them of the need to do a headcount reduction. The group decided to only layoff people that came from my group, leaving thier headcount preserved.
They also decided we were not to work on any of their projects, and instead continue to do what ever the hell we had been doing before.
This is important, keep in mind that we were not working on any of their projects.
Later, I found that the company looked at the average of the utilization numbers to decide on head count amount. That the profitability of the group i was in actually contributed to reducing headcount, while the lack of profitability of theirs contributed to increasing it.
Let's fast forward to late 2019. By this time, more of the original group was gone. I asked to be transferred to another part of the company.
By this time (Dec 31, 2019), I had been in the group for 2.5 years. I was asked to fly to Singapore to assist with installing something. While I was there, we heard about a weird flu that was going around. A few months later, we were told to go home for a few weeks while this COVID thing blew over.
This group, which focused on hospitality and entertainment, saw all their clients put work on pause at once #office#merger#job#layoff
By this time, there were only 3 developers left from that group if you include me (ugh!). I got asked to finish their work. I discovered they had been deceptive about their actual completion percentage. It took me half a year to sort through the mess they left behind.
After that was over, I went back to doing my normal work.
Disruption came at the end of September when I was on a list of people to be laid off.
The company had concluded that the type of work that the group had done just wasn't profitable. They decided to nolonger do that type of work. Additionally, the remaining people from the group generally didn't adapt to other types of work. They decided to get rid of all of them.
THIS INCLUDES ME!!!
But someone was looking out for me (in a literal way). One of the internal recruiters had problems with the decision. She submitted my name for a position.
I found myself being interviewed for a position I never applied for. Those with knowledge of layoffs are generally contractually obligated not to disclose this information. Finding my interview was a few days after everyone of the remaining people from the group got removed, I inferred what was going on. I played along and did the interview. I didn't get that position, but it had serverd it's function. It delayed my layoff to be at the end of October.