Employees of ZeniMax, the studio that produces The Elder Scrolls Online, have come forward to share the details of what happened the day Microsoft laid off around 9,000 employees. It sounds like a frightening, anxiety-ridden day for everyone.
What ZeniMax Employees Experienced
On the day of the layoffs, employees felt blindsided. They suddenly lost access to internal communication through Slack and email. They could only reach each other through an external Discord where people were “freaking out with no real verifiable info.” It sounds terrible—the absolute worst way to handle a delicate task like letting go of a massive number of dedicated employees. Employees were unsure who would be affected, so they were left in a state of terror.
ZeniMax employee and ZWU-CWA union member, Page Branson, said it was “one of the worst days at a job I’ve ever had in my entire life.” She went on to say, “It was so sad seeing people so distraught and confused and not knowing if they would have a job by the end of the day—or even if the layoffs were done by the end of the day.”
Another ZeniMax employee, Media senior and QA tester and ZWU-CWA union member, Autumn Mitchell, said, “Some people were here for 15 years and cut out. Making it so that people have to rush to type a goodbye message into Slack to their colleagues that they’ve been working with on various projects, that have been making your corporation money for 15 years, is disgusting.
Those Left Behind
Those who have lost their jobs are, of course, devastated. But the folks left behind at ZeniMax have to pick up the pieces and make things keep going, somehow. Branson said that some of the people who were laid off were “absolutely crucial” to Elder Scrolls Online. She said, “A lot of practical knowledge just disappeared overnight.”
“The morale and general confusion of it all has extended into our general workflow. We used to have very, very reliable people working on things and they’re no longer there. They were integral. I feel like they were numbers on a sheet that got cut, but the real application of what they were doing was integral to making everything run correctly.”
Can They Recover?
It sounds like the ZeniMax team wants to keep going, make things better. They want leadership to hear them and to listen. Things could have been handled much better, and without the unions, it may have been even worse. And, Mitchell had a message for the leadership as well.
“I’m still at Microsoft. It’s not like I’m looking for other work. A lot of us are trying to stay because we believe in making it better. I think that’s important for anybody who’s reading to understand, especially the executives. If people are sticking around it’s not just because they’re fearful of losing a job. It’s because at some point in time, they have believed in the culture and values that were once created at this place.”
We wish the best of luck to those who’ve lost their jobs and to those left behind. Going through a layoff like that is painful, but we hope for all of these talented folks to land on their feet.
