Things must be bad if I'm the one who tries to offer the glimmer of hope. :-)
I'm not the only one here who's been around in the SI community for close to 20 years, and we've been through these sorts of layoffs ever since SI first went public back in '92. Back in the day, I used to joke (to cope with other rounds of layoffs) that the best thing Softimage could do to expand their user base was to hire people, get them embedded in the community, then lay them off a year or two or three later. Big studios end up hiring these folks because of their established reputation as problem solvers, plus their inside contacts back with the mother ship. They end up bringing enough Softimage expertise with them to help drive pipelines in that direction, train additional artists, and ultimately expand the Softimage fan base. How many ex-Softimage demo artists, employees, etc went on to become power users in the community? While I agree, this time seems like a final straw because it's the last few voices who were willing to talk to the user base are the unfortunate victims. I wish them well, and based on past events, they will probably all land nicely on their feet and in better places, not just for them, but for all of us. At least, that's the hope. -Bradley
