> It shows that Riccitiello has no foresight into Unity's financial situation.
The sudden lay off could hint that there is a deeper and more complex problem going on. They invested in tools that must be integrated in a their engine as soon as possible to recover this money from movie makers. So they increased their workforce, but their technical debt would cause a large resistance, making much of the workforce ineffective. They just realized it.
And the deeper problem is that transforming these tools into an appealing work flow that brings clients is a very hard problem that isn't too technical, but more like a "way" in the philosophical/psychological fields.
Anyone who is an active developer of a Unity-based game knows there are a lot of struggles happening within that company right now, many of them technical and many of them related to poor project management. It's reflected in their product, and it's not even a close call. (See their recent efforts around ECS and their new rendering pipelines.)
The sudden lay off could hint that there is a deeper and more complex problem going on. They invested in tools that must be integrated in a their engine as soon as possible to recover this money from movie makers. So they increased their workforce, but their technical debt would cause a large resistance, making much of the workforce ineffective. They just realized it.
And the deeper problem is that transforming these tools into an appealing work flow that brings clients is a very hard problem that isn't too technical, but more like a "way" in the philosophical/psychological fields.