Its been a shocking couple of days in the Splinterverse as the team announced they were laying off 45% of their staff. I know....crazy right? Read it for yourself:
@splinterlands/to-the-splinterlands-community
I was listening to the end of the town hall yesterday and @aggroed was taking a lot of questions on the chin, braving the fud and the repetitive questions and the downright ridiculous suggestions and just generally taking arrows like a good tank
Ive said it before and I'll say it again. I have a lot of love and respect for splinterlands as a project and Ive been massively impressed with aggy and @yabapmatt in general throughout these few years..... but there's no doubting it.... a 45% staff layoff is a BAD LOOK
an extended bear market means drastic decisions have to be made and we are looking to settle in to a nice deep crypto winter (along with the possible winter of all global civilisation) so its probable that the team have made the right decision. HOWEVER. The community have a right to feel aggrieved.
We have thrown a lot of money at splinterlands just recently. We have been asked to believe and invest in a lot of different strands of development; Riftwatchers, Runi, Tower Defense, Splinterfest, The Lux Vega Promo Card, Node Licences.....with Chaos Legion Packs still a long way off sold out and the Land expansion still crawling towards its initial release stage after 2 years of waiting. The vision is huge and ambitious (which is kind of how we like it) and the community has been backing it with enthusiasm with presales disappearing in minutes and even seconds.... hundreds of thousands of dollars each time, cast in to the splinterverse to satiate our unquenchable thirst for this awesome game and its heady aspirations.
So..... you can understand how it might come as a bit of a shock, that the grand sum of our monumental financial backing over the last couple of months, has brought us to this disastrous announcement: 45% of the team is being laid off. 45%? They had a team of about 150 didnt they? Thats like 60+ people being sacked!? But.....but..... didnt we do well enough? How much more cash would we have needed to hurl at you for that number to have sounded a bit less excruciating? Like 30% layoffs maybe..... that sounds a whole lot less brutal...... you know, we all get that some cuts might need to be made to keep the old 'runway' healthy for the forseeable apocolypse.... but do we really have to sink half the fleet to stay afloat?
Wait a second..... arent we a DAO?
It suddenly struck me this morning while commenting on the reaction from @jongolson ... (please read for yourself):
@jongolson/so-now-what-do-we-do
...That we could maybe have been given a say in this.
now I can imagine theres a lot of reasons why we didnt get a say in this decision.
Its a huge decision.
Its the kind of decision that leaders have to make.
It directly effects peoples lives...immediately....and negatively.... losing your job is no joke, especially during a recession.
It directly effects the future survival of the project, possibly in the fairly near-term...I dont know what the financial expenses are and what the balance books would be looking like in a years time at the current rate but Im assuming it starts getting hairy at some point down the line...
This is the sort of decision that you DONT throw to the baying crowd and hope they make the right decision. That would be like giving the population of a major economic power the decision whether or not to stay unified with its supranational political and economic alliance despite the people having no collective grasp of the implications or the many nuances of the decision.......oh wait..... what did I miss....?
But you see....the funny thing is.....no-one can really see the future. no one REALLY knows whether Brexit is a good thing or a bad thing. Good for who? Bad for who?... Bad now? Good wen?.... Good Now? Bad Wen?... Captain hindsight is the only superhero we can really trust when it comes to the facts, but he's never around until just slightly too late.
In an unpredictable, chaotic universe that laughs at our plans, sometimes sensible should be thrown to the wind, and a little mischief should be had...
now I know I already mentioned the team having to put up with ridiculous suggestions....but its time for me to put my one forward.
Im a Splinterlander GET ME OUT OF HERE!
I genuinely feel that this whole sacking of team members thing is a missed opportunity.... The DAO should be given a say.
Think about it....
We are here at the cutting edge of Web3 development, investing in the pack leader for a complex incentivised crypto gaming economy, built on a blockchain that has made history with its breakaway decentralised community and we have a governance token and voting system that allows us to weigh in on decisions about the future of our ecosystem. We've even got a bunch of our own money in an account waiting for us to vote on what to do with it. Why are we not capitalising on this?
Imagine the headlines: Splinterlands Community votes to lay off 30% of paid staff
Gamers sack devs in Big Brother style eviction
Splinterlands leads the way in Web3 as playerbase vote on cutbacks
The parameters could still be set by the team itself. They've already ascertained that a certain amount of cutbacks have to be made in order for the project to survive. But maybe there's a gray area.... like between 30-45%. At 30% we're risking staff wages dragging us under if the bear market continues for X amount of time. however at 45% staff cuts we will see development slow and marketing dwindle etc. Certain projects go on the backburner but we lie a bit dormant and stay safe as we wait for the market to recover. Naturally the team would put forward their own opinions. There would be votes to cut back certain areas.... maybe even with reverse kickstarter goals; the more cutbacks we vote for in marketing, the more staff get ousted..... cut development this far, and you'll push land back to 2035! Cut Yaba from the team and well.....you might as well just cut your own eyes out and go for a jog on the motorway at rush hour. (obviously its unlikely cutting yaba would ever be an option....but id be impressed if it was!)
The community may choose to use its power to cut staff from marketing but not from development, or the other way round, or maybe they would've saved certain individuals and voted heavily to have others laid off. Its not nice. Hell no. In fact, it could even turn quite sour. But thats what community governance comes loaded with. Its dramatic. Its divisive. We've seen that already. But its also part of what we're aiming for and man....it could make for some great publicity as well! When investment and gaming combine with reality TV surely you are on to one of the ugliest win tickets imagineable!? Who wouldnt want to be a part of such a grotesque social experiment?
Nobody wants to see good, hard working people get made redundant, and we have some awesome people in splinterlands who are having to take some seriously hard news right now..... but all sensitivity aside....lets throw them to the lions and turn the cameras on and see where actual decentralised governance can take us. Hell... I reckon we probably would've saved a few of their jobs this way.
Just my 2 pennies worth. We're part of an experiment that may need to flex its unique qualities in order to truly make a mark on history. If we are overly cautious or sentimental, we might just fade in to obscurity along with the whole of the legacy system while truly revolutionary ideas burn hot and carve the way for the future.
peace out folks
Basil