Chris Cocks, the CEO of Hasbro, announces major “layoffs” right before Christmas. Nothing says Happy Holidays from your company like a pink slip. “You wanted time off during the Holidays, well you got it.” The Jelly of the month club would have been better than this.
Cocks sent out a memo to the employees of Hasbro in an attempt to spin this devastating news. He announced the “reduction in headcount” aka firings of fellow employees to help the “strategic transformation” for the company. Hasbro is down about 20% in their stocks and well over 50% for the last 5 years. You can check out the email sent to the Hasbro Employees here.
Hasbro brought in Cocks in 2022 to help right the ship of Hasbro. He made a salary of only $9.4 Million in 2022 and was projected to make more in 2023.
Apparently, leading a company down the drain is worth at least $9.4 Million. It takes a lot of skill and leadership to destroy a corporation worth billions. How do I sign up for that?
The leadership team saw no other way to cut “the fat” other than to fire 1,100 employees at Christmas. This does include employees at Wizards of the Coast which is the one area of their business that is making money for Hasbro with Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. Here is an idea, fire the people making money for the company.
Hey Leadership team, how about you only make the average employee salary for the year to save jobs? This could cut a lot of FAT. How many jobs could Cocks alone save by sacrificing his inflated salary? Any consideration for that? I understand you should make millions for destroying a company with your leadership (or lack thereof) but maybe you stop being a heartless person that fires your employees during the holidays when you are living high on the hog. Break out the $1,000 champagne!
These cuts are coming at a bad time for Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast is attempting to put out the new (not new) edition of Dungeons and Dragons in 2024. They are working on a new VTT and putting their eggs in that basket. After many problems in 2023, WOTC and D&D don’t have a lot of goodwill left with their consumers. If firing these people leads to bad releases or other stupid moves, this could cause further harm to a business seeing a lot of competition for Table Top Role Playing games coming out in 2024.
Those not fired in this round and look back and see 800 employees were fired less than a year ago. There may be more to come. Nothing says “I love my job” like fear that you may be fired in the future and you get to double your workload now.
Check out this great video from Luke Hart of DM Lair. He has graphs and numbers and goes over the email sent out.
Stay Geeky!
