Game News “You can become an Uber driver”: This is the advice of the former PlayStation boss to employees recently laid off by Sony
Despite its strong market position, Sony is also a fan of controversy surrounding some of its historic employees. For once, its former CEO Chris Deering only rubbed salt into the wound.
“Go to the beach for a year”
We remember the many shocking comments made by Jim Ryan, the former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, but now Chris Deering has added his stone to the building. As a reminder: Deering was head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe from 1995 to 2005 before heading Codemasters from 2006 to 2010. He is a video game star and although he undoubtedly knows the industry like the back of his hand, he still has the art and the way to say: especially when we talk about the painful topic of recent layoffs at PlayStation.
As part of the My Perfect Console podcast, Deering spoke about this topic and addressed all licensees:
Chris Deering
It’s like the pandemic, you have to take some steps… figure out how to cope, take an Uber or something, find a cheap place to live, and go to the beach for a year. But stay up to date with career news, because once you get off the train, it’s a lot harder to get back on. But I’m optimistic about the future, even for people who have recently been laid off.
It is obvious that it is not really practiced to advise everyone who has lost their job to become an Uber driver and relax on the beach for a year, and certainly not on social networks, where these comments are repeated and clearly highlighted. Deering still allows himself to justify his speech.
According to Deering, layoffs are predictable
However, it should be noted that these words do not come out of nowhere. Before and after, Chris Deering also commented on the layoffs and the situation certain Sony studios were in. recently closed like Sony London.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that the resulting layoffs were motivated by greed. I always tried to keep the hiring rate as low as possible because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up with the same problems as Sony at Electronics.
Certainly there have been major layoffs recently at Sony Studios and in London, but the whole studio has been based out of Amsterdam for a couple of years, and… I don’t know, but if the money doesn’t come from consumers for the last game, it will be hard to justify spending money on developing a new project. I think it’s probably very painful for managers, but I don’t think skills in this area (of game development) will lead to a life of poverty or restriction.
Chris Deering therefore points out that a cycle is to be expected (and the layoffs that come with it) and that it is particularly wise not to continue hiring new employees even though you know that you will have to be laid off one day. It also highlights the video game craze triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic “a bundle of money” was injected into studios to blindly respond to significant public demand… only to be laid off en masse once normality returned. “Really, it’s because of this kind of excitement in the industry that something like this happens, and it’s very sad, but it’s not going to last forever. People, wake up: it’s not the first time.”
