Ex-Sony President: Anyone who is fired should “go to the beach for a year” or “drive an Uber”

Chris Deering, former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, has made some rather questionable comments about layoffs in the industry.

In his opinion, this has nothing to do with corporate greed. If you lose your job, you can “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year” until you find a new job.

Things like that just happen

“I don’t think it’s fair to cite greed as a reason for the resulting layoffs,” Deering says on the My Perfect Console podcast.

“I always tried to minimize the speed at which we increased staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to have the same problems as Sony in the electronics industry.”

Regarding layoffs at Sony’s London studio and the subsequent closure, he said: “If there’s no money coming in from consumers on the last game, it’s going to be hard to justify spending on the next game.”

“I think it’s probably very painful for the managers, but I don’t think skills in this area (game development) mean a lifetime of poverty or limitations.”

“It still depends. It’s like the pandemic, but now you have to have a few… you have to figure out how to get through it, drive an Uber or whatever, find a cheap apartment and stay on for a year “Go to the beach. But keep at it while you’re doing it, because once you lose touch, it’s going to be a lot harder.”

However, he is optimistic about the workers laid off in the last two years: “These things sometimes recover much quicker than you think when everything is very precarious. I assume that people have received a decent severance package, and when that runs out… Well, that’s life.”

Sony laid off around 900 employees in February 2024, around eight percent of the workforce. London Studio and Firesprite were among those affected. In general, more than 11,000 employees have been laid off in the industry so far this year.