Roblox tells employees they have to come to office three days a week or take severance package

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 295 points – Roblox tells employees they have to come to office three days a week or take severance package
cnbc.com

Roblox tells employees they have to come to office three days a week or take severance package::Roblox CEO David Baszucki told remote employees that they'll have to start coming to the office Tuesdays through Thursdays.

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Take the severance package. If they are offering a severance package then they are already planning a layoff and are just taking volunteers first. Trust me, this is exactly what happened in tech this year. Take the package or face layoffs / gatting managed out.

Going to hammer hard on this too! Happened to me a few years ago.

This is definitely the goal. And those "loyal" who stay have a dice roll chance to get laid off with nothing later down the line.

This is exactly what happened to my dad during the .com crash. He worked for Enron, worked in server maintenance. Waited around as everyone got laid off because they said they would keep him, he was the best but not the most senior. Push came to shove and with only 4 people left in the department the higher-ups had to cut one more or take less money. They decided to cut my dad. By then the industry in that city was packed with Enron refugees so my dad had nowhere to go. We lost everything. Seriously y'all, cut your losses it's not worth it. Just find somewhere else that's more stable.

Read the details first though and compare to what else you can find out. Some companies are sneakily reducing severance package standards just for remote employees. It may be better to just aggressively job hunt while still getting a full paycheck as long as possible.

Could be. But it’s also a wise choice even if they have no layoffs planned.

Let’s say they don’t offer voluntary severance. It’s just RTO or quit. Lots of people will grudgingly RTO while they look for a new job. That makes their time of departure unpredictable and it means they’ll be disgruntled as long as they’re still around. Why not just rip off the band aid, invite these people to leave immediately, and help them do so? You can move on from that.

And maybe by shedding these people, they can actually avoid a layoff.

Paid severance is a tip-off that a layoff may come, but RTO is also a big fucking deal and I could see it possibly having a paid severance component even with no layoffs in sight. Possibly, mind you.

What's the benefit of VR over IR? I'd have thought the terms would be better with IR, plus you get to be paid a salary for longer

Can't you just take the severance package when you get laid off?

This is a layoff masquerading as "return to office".

I agree this is probably an attempt at veiled layoffs.

But I wish I could understand why executives are so desperate to have people back in an office. It’s like class warfare or something.

“Don’t let the proletariat spend more time in that box they already overpay for; make them come to the box that WE overpay for!”

I really think it is connected to the fact that many managers never had to think about how long something takes and how much work they actually need out of someone. It used to be, that if you stare at your screen from 9-5 you probably did all the work you could. But now they can't see you stare at the screen and they fear they don't get all the work out of you. For the first time management has to figure out how much work they need instead of going by time spent in the office. That scares them.

It's because they all have assets in corporate real estate, have massive amounts of debt that they just refinance latter and get more investors on board so they can ignore the problem. Now we have real pressures that would kill their inflated corporate real estate assets turning that balance sheet upsode down and they are in a panic because they haven't been effectively doing the job they are supposed to. Fuck them

Extroverts are disproportionately in places of power and authority and CANNOT understand people who don’t like being in the office. So if they don’t want to be in the office it’s because they’re lazy/anti-social/working multiple jobs. These extroverts are convinced that their preferences are the BEST way, because hey, they’re successful and that’s how they became successful.

It’s like class warfare or something.

Marx was right

One conspiracy theory I like is that it's a measure against people working at two companies, collecting two salaries.

It's really ironic when makers of socially interactive 3D experiences demand their employees meet in physical space. Even more ironic that they tell us that virtual property is valuable.

As a long time gamer, playing Roblox with my niece made me feel old for the first time. I have no idea why the hell kids play that game so much outside of the social media aspect with their friends.

It really seems like they are tapping into the addictions of children. I've wasted money on game DLC before, but the amount of crap kids buy on Roblox is insane. I don't think parents really know what they are giving them when they buy gift cards for it. If it makes them happy, okay fine, but I really think it's something psychological that the company is taking advantage of.

Rant over. I agree with everyone else. Something is about to go down. I hope they all take severance and leave. Three days is still better than what I get... which is like 20 WFH days a year... but ultimatums are never a good sign.

Gaming these days, at least multiplayer or those "games as a service" games, just seems so shitty. With all of the "gacha" aspects of lootboxes, or battle passes where you have to pay to play the game, or just plain predatory psychology manipulation to get you to buy random stuff... Games nowadays feel like you're basically working a second job, or you can pay money so that you don't have to work the second job because it's not fun.

My kids play it. 9 and 11. I've played it. I've spent money in it. It's the amount of content. The games are actually really good.

And it's super easy to make something and just send it to the world.

As a developer I used chatgpt and it just spits out whole games.

Edit: Some games are really good. Some games are crap.

Roblox is filled with "quality" content like this: https://www.roblox.com/games/8110845141/POOP-WITH-FRIENDS

My kids used to play on Roblox... then they invited me to try it... and I started watching what is going on in there. It's pretty bad. LOADS of grooming going on... shitty games... games that encourage anti-social behavior... horror games targeting under 5s... now they aren't allowed to play it anymore.

You just described the whole internet. You gonna ban them from that too? What about the crap talked about on the playground? You going to ban them from recess?

Flat out banning them is lazy and isn't doing them any justice in preparing them for how to handle these situations when you are not there to make the bad people go away.

You are the problem. Not roblox and some poop game.

Lol. You're not a parent are you?

It's not lazy, it's being involved as a parent. I teach them. I council them. I explain the good and the bad.

They don't have unfettered access to the internet either. I carefully limit to what is appropriate to their ages. As they get older and are more able to understand the implications I relax the restrictions.

My kids will survive just fine not playing in an environment that encourages bed behavior.

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Hope they're ready to lose key employees...

They actually carved out a part of that for key staff. Basically anyone they deem to have deep knowledge doesn't have to return back.

This is one of the worst RTO requests I've seen because it's just so obvious what it is.

I hope they go down the crapper completely TBH, with their predatory practices targeted towards young people who don't know what they're being pulled into.

That and the various gamedev companies on that site exploiting child devs who truly deserve better than that

Roblox has always been complete garbage. If they don't give a fuck about kids gambling, they sure as fuck don't care about their employees.

I’m sure par of the reason for this so they can lay off a bunch of employees.

What’s funny to me is that Roblox and other companies have to threaten peoples jobs to get them to come into the office. Surely if it was as great as they say people would just want to come in x number of days a week.

The people in charge at Roblox are evil and have been for a long time.

Every time I hear some government tries to destroy privacy "for sake of kids", I think "where have all you been when roblox exploited kids?". When I was a kid and went to municipal children library(most of books are for childern or about children) to play Minecraft do 100% legit research, I've seen some kids play Roblox and hear them talk about them spending insane amount of money. Thank Faust it wasn't me, this is really scary.

I am of the mind that one should always take the package. Clearly, some are working paycheck to paycheck, which sucks.

If you don't take the package, then start applying for other jobs like mad.

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/roblox/salaries

I refuse to believe that anyone at Roblox is working paycheck to paycheck, unless they literally burn the cash to heat their homes.

If you can swing a different FAANG-level gig, then sure, take the package. Otherwise it might be a pretty bad move as far as compensation goes.