They're furloughed, not laid off. I doubt they'll lose anyone who wasn't intending to leave.

I get that John is down, and I definitely don't have whatever insight led him to say "even if I'm lucky enough to return someday, other people won't be". From my understanding though, a huge portion of corporate around the stores and parks was furloughed because there's not much for them to do at home. Their healthcare is covered and kindness aside it doesn't make much sense for Disney to bleed money. But this wasn't a covert layoff — when things get back to speed Disney wants people back.

Edit: And furloughing the employees allows them to claim unemployment, so that the US government can absorb the impact rather than Disney. Not pretty, but rational in a time of stimulus.

I wonder what happened to all the H1Bs and postdocs. Disney Imagineering employed quite a few graduates in Robotics and Graphics (typically, from India and China).

Unemployment is probably a fraction of their salaries.

It's a shame

Imagineering is incredibly competitive, and furlough allows employees to pull unemployment benefits temporarily. My guess would be that if Disney can bring them back and get them to work within 2 months, they'll lose very few of the employees.

(this really isn't far from how Denmark is handling the crisis nationally -- freeze employment, have the government pay salaries, and do their best to have companies pick back up where they left off w/ the same workforce).

Maybe Disney too got overrun by MBAs, and their optimization horizon shortened to "until next quarter"?

More like their money printer, ESPN, ran out of ink. Theme parks shuttered, movie shoots scrubbed. Theatrical releases delayed to next year. Disney+ is doing great but that’s like saying the orchestra makes great iceberg accompaniment.

They are freaked out and making any decision they can to stop the cash burn, if it’s a good idea or not.

For the size of Disney empire, they'd have more than enough cash to survive as a whole for months instead of cutting pay to [sic] Imagineering R&D department.

Is this related to the thing where the bill they passed is paying out more as unemployment than people would be making if they kept their jobs?

It's possible they know exactly what they're doing, are doing everybody a favor, and will just hire them again when everything opens back up.

Not for a job like this. Unemployment has limits. It’s only more pay for people at or close to minimum wage.