Phil Spencer’s annual salary: $10 million; 1,900 people who just lost their jobs: $0
This is a tweet (how do you verb X?) from a week ago regarding Xbox shutting down a bunch of their own game studios.
As a software engineer who would be absolutely devastated if I were laid off, it’s hard for me to care about how this decision “hurts” the executive (Phil Spencer) who:
- Created this situation by acquiring the studios and overseeing staffing that led to the shutdowns.
- Has an (estimated) annual salary of $10 million, which is relevant because being laid off directly affects these people’s income.
- Is not facing any consequences for his own mistakes and lack of results (at least not any anywhere near what he’s meting out).
- Is punishing (his own) people who were actually doing their jobs.
If someone steals your food, the last thing you want to hear about is how bad that person feels that you’re hungry. I don’t see how Mike Ybarra thought this tone-deaf tweet would go over well with anyone. It does not hurt Phil “as much as anyone else”—I guarantee you it does not.
If Phil Spencer really felt bad he would resign.
UPDATE: Take a look at this visualization of crowd sizes. The number of people that lost their jobs is somewhere between the 1,000 and 3,000 photo (but closer to the 3k). We’re sensitized to big numbers because of the global scale of the internet, so it’s an eye-opener to see just how many people things like this affect.