Activision Gives New CFO 15 Million Dollar Bonus But Tells Devs To Cut Cost

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...15-million-sweetener-to-new-cfo-dennis-durkin


Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Dennis Durkin will receive awards worth $15 million as part of his appointment to chief financial officer.

Durkin will get $11.3 million of restricted stock tied to operating income and earnings-per-share targets, and a $3.75 million sign-on bonus, the Santa Monica, California-based company said Friday in a regulatory filing. That’s on top of his $900,000 salary and a $1.35 million target bonus.


 
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karmakid said:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...15-million-sweetener-to-new-cfo-dennis-durkin


Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Dennis Durkin will receive awards worth $15 million as part of his appointment to chief financial officer.

Durkin will get $11.3 million of restricted stock tied to operating income and earnings-per-share targets, and a $3.75 million sign-on bonus, the Santa Monica, California-based company said Friday in a regulatory filing. That’s on top of his $900,000 salary and a $1.35 million target bonus.


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I've never been a high level employee so I don't know what it's like to get a bonus that's bigger than my annual salary. I've always thought that was BS myself, I mean I've been able to hire employees and recommend terminations and do evaluations but I still never got a bonus bigger than 3% even though the executives at the places I've worked all got bonuses bigger than their salaries regardless of how well they were doing their job. .
 
The problem with tying exec's pay with short term profits is that you get short term solutions. These short term decisions will come at the expense of long term stability. You see this all over with business. You lay off a bunch of people because in the short term it makes the numbers spike, but in the long term is damaging to lose a ton of good people. Nothing matters past next quarter's results, so nobody plans long term.
 
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Kerosene31 said:
The problem with tying exec's pay with short term profits is that you get short term solutions. These short term decisions will come at the expense of long term stability. You see this all over with business. You lay off a bunch of people because in the short term it makes the numbers spike, but in the long term is damaging to lose a ton of good people. Nothing matters past next quarter's results, so nobody plans long term.
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I don't think any of this is true.

Organisms need to be flexible/adaptive in order to survive/flourish. All the oldest, most successful businesses have gone through layoffs and hiring periods due to circumstances.

Activision has been in the business for 35+ years and grown into one of the most successful publishers there is. I'm not sure why people like Jason Shreier thinks he knows how to run a billion dollar business because he writes videogame articles.

Am I misunderstanding you?
 
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The Sunset Limited said:
I don't think any of this is true.

Organisms need to be flexible/adaptive in order to survive/flourish. All the oldest, most successful businesses have gone through layoffs and hiring periods due to circumstances.

Activision has been in the business for 35+ years and grown into one of the most successful publishers there is. I'm not sure why people like Jason Shreier thinks he knows how to run a billion dollar business because he writes videogame articles.

Am I misunderstanding you?
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This absolutely happens in businesses. While I can't speak specifically for Activision, it happens a lot and it can crash and burn a company that has been successful for years and years. If you don't build for long term growth and sustainability, you can make your numbers look good short term. The problem is you get an ambitious person, or groups of people, that only care about what things look like now. They only care about getting that next promotion or that next big bonus.
Once they get it, they leave or leave their replacement with a giant mess to clean up.

I'm at work or I'd post some good examples but most business degree programs go over these kind of situations pretty in depth.
 
Almighty_bob said:
This absolutely happens in businesses. While I can't speak specifically for Activision, it happens a lot and it can crash and burn a company that has been successful for years and years. If you don't build for long term growth and sustainability, you can make your numbers look good short term. The problem is you get an ambitious person, or groups of people, that only care about what things look like now. They only care about getting that next promotion or that next big bonus.
Once they get it, they leave or leave their replacement with a giant mess to clean up.

I'm at work or I'd post some good examples but most business degree programs go over these kind of situations pretty in depth.
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Wait, what happens in business? I'm not even sure we're talking about the same thing right now.
 
Here's a perfect example (this happens all the time in real life).

There's a company that has a qa department. Lots of salaries in there. They want to cut costs, but are only looking at the short term. So, they fire the entire qa department for the 4th quarter. They'll just replace all their good people with contract/temps and won't pay them until after Jan 1. The 4th quarter looks great! Most of the work was already in the pipeline, so there's no real dip in quality (yet).

Fast forward to the next year and now quality is in the toilet and you're forced to hire a bunch of new people. You set the organization back 2-3 years all to save a few bucks to make one good quarter. Of course, what happens is that same manager gets fired or moves up or on, and a new one comes in and does the same thing to another department.

This happens all the time in IT. For some reason, we always end up with what I call "ladder climbers". People who never work a day in IT in their lives, yet they somehow end up running a major one. (they are always accounting/finance people for some reason). They come in, do what they need to do to get prompted/hired somewhere else, and are gone before the sh** hits the fan.
 
Kerosene31 said:
Here's a perfect example (this happens all the time in real life).

There's a company that has a qa department. Lots of salaries in there. They want to cut costs, but are only looking at the short term. So, they fire the entire qa department for the 4th quarter. They'll just replace all their good people with contract/temps and won't pay them until after Jan 1. The 4th quarter looks great! Most of the work was already in the pipeline, so there's no real dip in quality (yet).

Fast forward to the next year and now quality is in the toilet and you're forced to hire a bunch of new people. You set the organization back 2-3 years all to save a few bucks to make one good quarter. Of course, what happens is that same manager gets fired or moves up or on, and a new one comes in and does the same thing to another department.

This happens all the time in IT. For some reason, we always end up with what I call "ladder climbers". People who never work a day in IT in their lives, yet they somehow end up running a major one. (they are always accounting/finance people for some reason). They come in, do what they need to do to get prompted/hired somewhere else, and are gone before the sh** hits the fan.
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This is like saying "The sun is bad. It gives people skin cancer and I've seen terrible sunburns on people."

Laying off employees isn't an innately good or bad thing for the long term health of a company. It's a strategy businesses employ to position themselves for long term success.

In terms of giving CEOs massive bonuses...well, there's a reason why just about every highly competitive business does this around the planet, and have been doing so for a long time. It generally attracts the best talent.
 
The Sunset Limited said:
This is like saying "The sun is bad. It gives people skin cancer and I've seen terrible sunburns on people."

Laying off employees isn't an innately good or bad thing for the long term health of a company. It's a strategy businesses employ to position themselves for long term success.

In terms of giving CEOs massive bonuses...well, there's a reason why just about every highly competitive business does this around the planet, and have been doing so for a long time. It generally attracts the best talent.
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No, I'm talking about very specific circumstances and you're talking in generalities.
 
Kerosene31 said:
No, I'm talking about very specific circumstances and you're talking in generalities.
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And yes, in very specific circumstances the sun can be bad for people.

This whole discussion started from people complaining about Activision giving an employee a 15 million dollar bonus. We have no idea if this specific bonus is justified or not. What we do know is that this is common practice among the most successful bussinesses around the planet and we know Activision has made a series of successful desicions over the past 35 years.
 
The Sunset Limited said:
And yes, in very specific circumstances the sun can be bad for people.

This whole discussion started from people complaining about Activision giving an employee a 15 million dollar bonus. We have no idea if this specific bonus is justified or not. What we do know is that this is common practice among the most successful bussinesses around the planet and we know Activision has made a series of successful desicions over the past 35 years.
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You mean like running a franchise into the ground by hammering out half-baked money grabbing editions over and over again until the very fanbase that made said franchise a success is looked at with revolt and disgust.

Fck Activision and their sweatshop mentality to gaming. They destroy franchises in the pursuit of short term profits and then destroy lives when they inevitably shutdown the studio. Blizzard is a shell of itself and if they don't extricate themselves soon they'll be the next casualty of Activision's greed.
 
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BUSTERMAN said:
You mean like running a franchise into the ground by hammering out half-baked money grabbing editions over and over again until the very fanbase that made said franchise a success is looked at with revolt and disgust.

Fck Activision and their sweatshop mentality to gaming. They destroy franchises in the pursuit of short term profits and then destroy lives when they inevitably shutdown the studio. Blizzard is a shell of itself and if they don't extricate themselves soon they'll be the next casualty of Activision's greed.
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Activision has had major long term success. That doesn't happen unless they're batting average is pretty damn good.

But people who post on gaming message boards must know more about business than a titan of industry, lol.
 
The Sunset Limited said:
Activision has had major long term success. That doesn't happen unless they're batting average is pretty damn good.

But people who post on gaming message boards must know more about business than a titan of industry, lol.
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You’re right about me, I don’t know anything about running a huge mega gaming corporation like Activision. But it pains me how they do business by running a franchise into the ground and then discarding those who are really responsible for such successes.

I know how the business world works. The strong survive and prosper while the blood of the weak flows in the gutter. I just hate to see it play out in gaming and have no sympathy for a greedy corporation like Activision.
 
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That shows some restraint; I would have thought that he'd earn even more if he teabagged the Blizzard staff.
 
BUSTERMAN said:
You’re right about me, I don’t know anything about running a huge mega gaming corporation like Activision. But it pains me how they do business by running a franchise into the ground and then discarding those who are really responsible for such successes.

I know how the business world works. The strong survive and prosper while the blood of the weak flows in the gutter. I just hate to see it play out in gaming and have no sympathy for a greedy corporation like Activision.
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I've worked for years in IT and I can tell you that good programmers get worked hard. Bad programmers get promoted to management. :really:
 
Kerosene31 said:
I've worked for years in IT and I can tell you that good programmers get worked hard. Bad programmers get promoted to management. :really:
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What would happen if a competing company hired good programmers? Would the company that hired bad programmers struggle?
 
Kerosene31 said:
The problem with tying exec's pay with short term profits is that you get short term solutions. These short term decisions will come at the expense of long term stability. You see this all over with business. You lay off a bunch of people because in the short term it makes the numbers spike, but in the long term is damaging to lose a ton of good people. Nothing matters past next quarter's results, so nobody plans long term.
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But the long term plan is to ruin the company and get an exit bonus in the bankruptcy.
 
Spiritech said:
There have been instances where an IT department lost it's best person(s) then the company collapsed.
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That happened at my college, they had one IT guy running the whole thing, with a few volunteers between the breaks (I was one of them). When they let him go and let some new kids run it instead of the volunteers poo hit the fan fast and hard. Granted the school found someone, a former volunteer, it did go out of business a few years later. I guess they didn’t tighten up those graphics :p
 
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The sad truth is, many corporations has 2 tier system, the elites that you need to pay as high as possible to retain their talent, which is often hard to verified. Then there is the expandables which must be paid as low as practically possible to save cost.

The sad truth is, employees can risk losing jobs EVEN if the company is doing well, just because they want more profits. Here in Merkeland, there is 2 Tier pay tariff system, one with a fix minimal base on your level and industry. You can earn more base on performance bonus but it’s not really substantial. Then there is the over tariff which is the free to pay as much as you wish, reserved obviously for the elites.


A few years ago, our location faced lay-off, & one of the union Chief came down and ask, „ wtf, why are you laying off workers when your company are making record profits!“

The chief of the division also came down, with his Merc S class sponsored by the company, telling us we are too expensive. When one worker ask what happened when we won projects and we have not sufficient developers. He said no problem, he sent the jobs to other locations worldwide. In our faces, with a straight face.

I am not a support of Socialism or anything, but I do recognize and even understand the mindset of these people, and their disconnection with the regular worker, where profit and satisfaction of shareholder truimph workers welfare and job security.

But then again, we have Union that keep pushing for higher and higher wages, often unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, I like pay rise like the next guy, but I am also know higher wages will push more corporations to lower cost locations. It’s always finding the right balance.
 
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starseeker said:
The sad truth is, many corporations has 2 tier system, the elites that you need to pay as high as possible to retain their talent, which is often hard to verified. Then there is the expandables which must be paid as low as practically possible to save cost.

The sad truth is, employees can risk losing jobs EVEN if the company is doing well, just because they want more profits. Here in Merkeland, there is 2 Tier pay tariff system, one with a fix minimal base on your level and industry. You can earn more base on performance bonus but it’s not really substantial. Then there is the over tariff which is the free to pay as much as you wish, reserved obviously for the elites.


A few years ago, our location faced lay-off, & one of the union Chief came down and ask, „ wtf, why are you laying off workers when your company are making record profits!“

The chief of the division also came down, with his Merc S class sponsored by the company, telling us we are too expensive. When one worker ask what happened when we won projects and we have not sufficient developers. He said no problem, he sent the jobs to other locations worldwide. In our faces, with a straight face.

I am not a support of Socialism or anything, but I do recognize and even understand the mindset of these people, and their disconnection with the regular worker, where profit and satisfaction of shareholder truimph workers welfare and job security.

But then again, we have Union that keep pushing for higher and higher wages, often unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, I like pay rise like the next guy, but I am also know higher wages will push more corporations to lower cost locations. It’s always finding the right balance.
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I think often it seems like unions are pushing too hard because they see how much more the execs are making than the people that actually keep the company running and they think there should be more of a balance. There are unions that have way too much power, I think the teachers unions are a bit out of control in many ways but there are so few unions left in the private sector these days they are almost a non issue anyway.
 
I don't care what executives make. What I care is when many people's wages don't even keep up with inflation, yet the economy is growing and doing well. That doesn't add up. How to fix it is something that is far too complex to discuss here even if I did have any answers.

The big problem with executive pay is not how much they make if they are successful, but how much they get paid when they totally screw up. If you look at execs, they take a lot more risks in general. Why? Because they have massive termination bonuses in their contracts.

They are under tremendous pressure to make money, so they do things like the above examples. What happens is it falls on the regular employees to take a bad idea and make it work.
 
You can’t stop or regulate greed and selfishness. The power is in the hand of the top people. Force them to pay workers more, okay, I cut workers, replace them with machines or moved to cheaper locations.

The ‚cheapest ‚ of consumers also play a part. I propose a hypothetical question, would you willing to pay more to support product made in your community ( if you can afford) over buying cheaper products made overseas. Anyway, my answer is I will.
 
What is dangerous is short term greed. Seeking a profit is what people should do. The problem is when people look short term and ignore long term consequences is when everyone gets hurt in the long run.

A company that makes cost cutting measures that will just hurt profitability in the long run are hurting themselves, yet many still do it.
 
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