Its part of her job, she is expected to do this to anyone and everyone.
But she did a good job in my opinion.
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Yeah, she brought up important issues.
Put her on the chopping block with the rest of the c-suite.
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Gtfo with that bro
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hey we are about a month from the showcase. A lot can happen in that time.
I saw the clip and Sarah looks like she doesnât want to be there whatsoever and I donât blame her. I have said numerous times and people need to accept the reality that Phil, Matt and Sarah are just the talking heads. Itâs Nadella, Stuart and Hood via the shareholders and investors that are making all the decisions.
At this point, it is what it is.
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Why are people expecting anything other than corpo spea
None of what you said makes sense or is true.
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Nobody should take her seriously when she confirms that a new console is coming.
In the end itâs not her decision.
Thereâs clearly a power struggle going on internally and everybody can see who is winning.
Phil Spencer will be gone within 12 months.
Thereâs a tweet from Destin that quotes Sarahâs bio. and one of her previous roles is noted as a senior business role at T-Mobile (US presumably) and I can tell you from personal experience that senior business executives from TM-US are more than capable of asking difficult questions of others like this and doubling down until they get to the true facts. And I would never have gone to a meeting with them without having anticipated any and all difficult questions and prepared sourced answers beforehand.
So for her or the team preparing her for this interview not to have anticipated this question and prepared an answer (that wasnât the seemingly off the cuff one given) is a preventable mistake that really should not have happened.
At that level it is part of the job to answer such questions in a public forum.
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As Jesse said donât believe a word they say, it will most likely be PR BS so whatâs the point indeed.
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It may not be in her power to answer it as fully as sheâd like - part of her briefing pack for it might have highlighted that she wasnât to say anything beyond the usual stuff about redundancies and closures to avoid it drowning out her other messages.
Also redundancies and closures are highly-fraught legal minefields - part of the reasons executives seem so robot-like and inhuman during them is theyâre quite literally restricted in what they can say as otherwise they give employment tribunals and other legal avenues ammunition to fight it.
Iâve been in a team that had the risk of redundancy spiel read out to us - I knew all the people involved, and I was senior enough to know the rationale and likely outcomes, but it still was a shocking experience as everyone involved almost has to read off a script and avoid any hint of impropriety or favouritism in the selection of who goesâŚ
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Sorry just donât buy this. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that this question would be asked in some form a quick scan of twitter or major news sites would have told you that and there is no excuse for not having an answer to it that fit all of the things youâve mentioned pre-prepared. We canât speculate on what was in her briefing pack or even if there was one but we can say that the answer she gave was extremely poor. If she was intended to give the corporate view then she should have started from âwe look at a variety of factors âŚâ because the first part of the answer given confirms that a hit game successful on Game Pass with high engagement that wins lots of awards is does not ensure the future of a studio in the Xbox org. because the goal posts differ for each team.
Thatâs not only bad from a customer or PR perspective it also sends an appalling message to all of the survivors of your current round of redundancies.
Itâs a well known fact that companies or organisations making redundancies that also prioritise the well being and feeling of security of the employees that remain are far more successful in the long term and this was the opposite of that.
A C suite member or president of a division reading out a boiler plate risk of redundancy notice is a completely different situation.
People at this level get paid the big money and have massive supporting teams for a reason.
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Yes but what I meant is that given Matt or Phil might want to be the ones making the clearer announcements on it, she may have been told she has to stick to the script and just give the usual waffle-type answer to these things.
Sheâs not going to have been given much rope to go out and actively discuss why these studios, what criteria was used, etc.
Then she would have been better advised to take a leaf out of Jim Ryanâs book and said nothing at all.
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To defend her. Would it be Sony, we would have - we had - got a ânothing to declareâ answer and nobody would react anyway.
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I get the sense that she was not in the known, she didnât even seem prepared for this question, Booty, Phil and Nadella more than likely knew ahead of her what studios were getting shut down, and Booty has had some awful things to say whenever they lay people off and now with the studio closures, like the dude isnât media trained for these situations, wish him and Phil were the ones out here doing interviews right now, they should be the ones feeling the pressure.
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Always curious to me how Booty skates by. I donât want to get into finger pointing, but he has always raised a few eyebrows.
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Yeah I wonder the same, he gives me âfailing upwardsâ vibes.