Disney Staff Press Leaders on Layoffs at Town Hall
Supported by friends of the publication
Disney tech employees pressed leaders for answers on layoffs at a company meeting on Thursday. Few specific answers came, Business Insider reports.
Questions from the town hall
Business Insider viewed screenshots of questions submitted in writing during the Q&A. One software engineer asked whether leaders knew when the cost cutting is targeted to happen. A veteran tech employee asked if morale would be better served by hearing about future benefit changes and layoffs from management first, rather than from the media.
Others asked how the cuts would affect the Media Platform Alliance, which includes streaming distribution, infrastructure and metadata teams. One asked for insight into what motivated the early retirement package offers made to some higher-ups, first reported by Deadline in late August. Another wanted to know the plans for the 66 staffers Disney is paying $60 million to hire from Character.AI, a chatbot startup that went bankrupt in mid-October. Disney's new tech chief, Karandeep Anand, was Character.AI's CEO before joining in early October.
On October 1, at a Bloomberg event, Disney creative chief Dana Walden called the early retirement program the company had offered extremely generous.
Two streaming employees who attended said leaders gave no specific answers on whether cuts were coming or when.
Where the worry comes from
The meeting followed a Bloomberg report, days earlier, that Disney plans to lay off thousands of employees. Bloomberg also reported that some managers were told to target yearly cost savings of 20%. Disney declined to comment to Bloomberg and did not respond to Business Insider.
Josh D'Amaro, Disney's CEO, has overseen three rounds of cuts in his first seven months. In late October the company filed a WARN notice in California, the advance notice US employers must give before mass layoffs, signaling cuts of 159 park jobs.
Morale and the look of busyness
Four employees told Business Insider that layoffs and reports of layoffs are hurting morale. A high-level engineer called the reports very demotivating, saying even a positive annual review no longer means safety. Another software engineer said staffers are on edge and keen to show they pull their weight. "Everyone's looking more 'busy,'" this person said, noting that some senior tech employees are attending meetings they would otherwise skip.
After the town hall, staff vented on Blind, an anonymous forum where users prove they work at a company by email. One user said the answers made their blood boil. Another called the session "forced positivity".
Source: Business Insider