Laid-Off Zynga Employee Airs Company Dirty Laundry On Reddit

Image via Facebook/Zynga

Anyone who’s ever unexpectedly lost a job has thought of it, but few follow through. Revenge. But social sharing sites such as Reddit now provide discarded employees a new outlet to air their former employers dirty laundry. And that’s exactly what one ex-Zynga employee, who held a creative position for almost two years, did after the gaming company eliminated 520 positions without notice June 3.

And what did he have to say? For one, the company has a horrible business model.

Their major issues are the inability to adjust to the changing market,” the Reddit user, former_zyngite, said. “They did great when Facebook gaming was on the rise, but now it’s declining and Mobile is on the rise. They’re trying to change over, but employ too many of the same game development “best practices” that were developed for Facebook games. These just don’t translate to the mobile market, which is why they’re suffering in that market.”

Zynga also apparently has room to improve when it comes to employee relations. According to the Reddit user, the company offers “unlimited vacation,” but places its approval at the discretion of team managers. Therefore, few employees were able to utilize vacation time when they wanted it.

A lot of micro-management from the top down that stifles the creativity and hinders the production of many game,” the Reddit user described.

More so, however, the ex-employee dogged on the company’s overall lack of foresight:

Too many major decisions are quick reactions to sudden changes in the market. If some games jumps to the top of the Top Grossing charts then everyone need to drop everything and change to follow it. Which wastes time, makes for bad design and ultimately puts projects behind schedule. It just means they’re always late to the party, and whatever game they’re trying to compete with has already faded away by the time their own version hits the market.”

So how can the floundering Zynga improve? The Reddit user thinks the company needs to look at the overall market, and not rely so much on its own data.

They don’t strive to make anything new or innovative and that’s no way to excel in the games market,” the laid-off employee wrote. “You need to lead the pack, not try emulate the best practices of top games with the hopes that you can outperform and already established IP.”

Granted, Zynga offered the 520 laid-off employees a severance package that pays salary and insurance for four months plus an extra week for each partial year of service. But unless it gets a better handle on its business model, more layoffs are bound to happen in the future, and once the company’s broke, fair severance may not be an option.