And they closed three studios yesterday.

It really depends on the product your making, the size of your company and it's corporate culture.

Essentially "Keeping your staff" would seem work best in a situation where you a moderately popular developer who doesn't have huge brand recognition... and is clear in it's culture.


You have to be moderately popular, because well... you need money to pay developers. Paying development teams is expensive. Having them sit around is troubling and you don't want to run into a bad project.

You shouldn't have huge brand recognition, because if your Call of Duty, who cares... the main value is in the brand. Though if your call of duty you may do this simply because your always making the next Call of Duty.

You have to be "clear" in your culture, because otherwise you might just end up making the same unpopular games time and time again. Fresh workers can shake things up in a stagnant culture that is out of touch.

Also, i wouldn't say those programmers knowledge are "lost to the wind".

I'd say they are "lost to other companies."

Yes and no.

It's biggest advantage would be getting a team together that works well with each other over time and knows each others quirks, weaknesses and sthrengts.

On the other hand it's just not financially possible or responsible in each instance for companies that don't have an enermous budget and multiple projects on the go like Epic, 343i, Sony Santa Monica, Nintendo etc etc.

Most people layoff employees so they can keep on using entry level people to save costs. I don't think any company would want an allstar team of coders, paying them 70k a year and having projects out with higher quality when it'd cost them 70k a year per person. They'd rather have long hours, high turn over rates and a team of 30-40k a year people... I really shouldn't have gotten into computer science.

Or you can follow the Stellar Stone approach and tout the advantage of combining brilliant American management with cheap offshore labor, for win-win-win!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Stone

This is the company that brought the world Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

From the perspective of a company, the talent is "lost to the wind".  Tim was speaking about a company culture and knowledge obtained working with certain people.  He spoke to team cohesion and so on.

Facebook money!  Remember how Facebook was DA FUTURE!  It IPO'd like that.

It's like no one remembered the dot-com bubble. I bet they do now.

How can you say this?  There is no bubble in technology!