The Future

The bullshit of the magnanimity of the "jobs creators" we're all supposed to worship as benevolent overlords we're lucky to have is further exposed in this article about VICE, who while going bankrupt laid pretty much everybody off and "couldn't" pay for snacks yet a little sleuthing revealed that while this was going on not only did the executives keep getting paid, but they got bonuses et al.

But there's one area VICE's financial crisis doesn't seem to have touched: executive salaries. Newly public documents from VICE's May 15 bankruptcy filing lay out exactly how much money VICE's leadership made the year before the filing, the same period in which employees had to hassle their managers for basic newsroom resources. These documents show that the company's executives received mind-boggling retention bonuses along with biweekly paychecks for tens of thousands of dollars. This was all done in the midst of layoffs and as VICE's more lowly employees scrambled to produce work for a clearly sinking ship. As a former VICE employee and a born hater, these documents make for a fascinating read.

Adding insult to injury, the last round of layoffs, which primarily hit Executive Vice President of News and Global Head of Programming and Documentary Subrata De's department (take-home pay: $779,365, including a $201,467 retention bonus), coincided with VICE's bankruptcy filing—a lucky coincidence for the company, as it allowed VICE to wiggle out of paying out the severance spelled out in the union contract.

Just total fucking scumbags, but I'm *guessing* that's pretty much the norm for any company. The next line in the progression will be the absolute decimation of creative & writing jobs, gleefully shorn while everybody's products just get worse and worse, while of course not a single of the many, MANY suits who always show up for meetings yet nobody can really tell what their job is will lose their jobs.