Not that we’re terribly surprised, what with the tone deaf “Occupy are all whiners” dumb@$$ we featured or their CEO’s now infamous speech about how they became so profitable so quickly, but apparently cranking out carefully designed Skinner boxes for suburban housewives is not nearly as fun as it sounds.
Also, unsurprisingly, Zynga is apparently run by d-bags. Really. Somebody heavily involved in Facebook is a d-bag. We’re shocked. Shocked, we tell you.
Some choice tidbits from the New York Times’ fascinating article on Zynga and its possible HR problems that was published over the weekend:
- Apparently a Zynga higher-up’s idea of negotiating is throwing $100 bills from his wallet at the other side and asking if that’s enough money.
- If your game doesn’t perform, you’ll be asked to take less equity…you know, because people work at Internet start-ups for the rich salary.
- To save equity for “performers,” people get demoted.
- Both Rovio (“Angry Birds”) and PopCap took one look at Zynga’s corporate culture and went running in the other direction.
In other words, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a company that sells digital heroin run by a Harvard Business School graduate.