Cork ‘needs to keep Big Fish IT professionals’
The 89 workers at the Mahon-based gaming company were informed yesterday it was entering into a 30-day consultation period with staff. Informed sources say this is only a legal formality and the location will close.
Mr Dennehy said the skills the employees possess are in huge demand in Cork and that keeping the human capital in the area was vital to attracting future tech companies to locate here.
Mr Dennehy said that one Big Fish employee had already had 432 people viewing his online employment profile on Link’din since the announcement that Big Fish was to close.
“There are 300 companies employing thousands people in Cork. Most of the Cork IT companies are looking to hire staff. Absorbing 90 jobs into existing companies shouldn’t be too hard,” he said.
He said the games industry was volatile by its nature and companies that grow very quickly could end quickly.
He said Big Fish was a perfect example of this.
Last year, the company announced it was recruiting 30 software engineers to develop a cloud gaming service. However, this week chief executive Paul Thelen said Big Fish was discontinuing its premium cloud delivery business as it was “not growing as fast as we had hoped it would and is not on a path to profitability.”
Mr Dennehy said the ideal outcome for Cork would be for the new staff who had been let go to start their own businesses.
“There is no point sitting around crying into your drink. There is work to be done,” he said.
Mr Dennehy said he would happily supply free workspace to any of the Big Fish employees considering opening a start-up, which he said would be the best possible outcome.
The chairman of the IT@Cork cluster Denis Collins said the power of the whole tech cluster would be brought to bear to help the staff of Big Fish.
“We are integrating the whole power of the cluster and we are going to do what we can to help.
“We have a lot of smart people who care about these staff,” Mr Collins said.
