Hundreds rally at Bethesda HQ to protest Xbox layoffs, and Ars was there

Ashton told Ars she would speak with the County Council and the Maryland Department of Labor to advocate for fairness in how employees are treated. Between the last round of layoffs and the promise of 1,600 more planned across Xbox for the coming fiscal year, the mood among the remaining employees at Bethesda is “bleak,” Dowell said. After surviving last year’s layoffs, Dowell said she remembers what it was like “to come to work the day after layoffs and try to keep going and be told, ‘Here are tasks that people that you know had relationships with were doing, and now you have to do them today.’” System Designer Mandy Parker, whose position was not affected by the latest round of layoffs, told Ars that “it’s hard to be creative, it’s hard to be able to tell stories when we’re worried about people next to us and ourselves.” Parker also pushed back against the Microsoft narrative that these latest layoffs were focused heavily on reducing redundant layers of middle management, saying she wasn’t aware of any middle managers let go in her office. “These folks [being laid off in quality assurance], they don’t make a lot of money,” Parker said. “They’re taking home pizzas from our cafeteria, for their kids to eat, to help them. We don’t get the big Microsoft money.” “If you weren’t caught this time, you’ll be caught next time,” Parker told the crowd during the rally. “I study systems, and [when] I see a broken system, I say it when it’s broken. This is a fucking broken system!” Union organizers said fans should go to the Xbox Player Voice forums to express their support for the developers of the games they love. “They’re the people that pay their salaries in there,” CWA’s Davis said of the players. “You know, those managers can’t have jobs without those people.”