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Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

theguardian.com

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Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#71

Post by ryandrake »

fhjkkkg wrote: post #36
drdeadringer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did the walkouts at Google change anything? I was a "TVC" at Google several times. One of those times was during the walkout period. Even though I had no way of finding out about it until a lucky "right now in 3 minutes" time period, I participated. Whilst the walkouts may not have changed much on corporate or the outsourced "side-corporates" [the contract companies], it did change myself. For decades I've heard of…

If this isn’t parody, and I am guessing it’s not, then it’s still a perfect depiction of what changed in the American left in the 1960s. Politics became more about changing the orientation of one’s mind than the orientation of one’s society. Walkouts are worthless.

You’re absolutely right. Political action is impotent if it doesn’t actually move you towards your goal. Walkouts for a day and then you just go back to work, do not affect a company’s policy. Protests don’t magically bring social justice. Storming the Capitol doesn’t stop the election. So much political actions today don’t actually force change, they just “raise awareness” and make participants feel good for visibly being on the right team.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#72

Post by 0xy »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #14
ditonal wrote: post #6

Did the walkouts at Google change anything? Not only did Sundar enable the disgusting, predatory behavior of Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin, but as far as I can tell, he’s still a darling of the press. Even on HN Sundar and Google get the kid gloves despite the abhorrence of the culture they created. Walkouts are pointless. True Employee organization and collective bargaining is the only answer to holding execs accounta…

Walkouts are an easy way to get more attention to an issue and it costs an employer real money. A single action doesn't need to solve everything.

On the contrary, there's evidence that less time at work (especially a single day) can keep productivity the same or better. Look at 4 day work week experiments.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#73

Post by runarberg »

epicureanideal wrote: post #12

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

Non-compete clauses are very much a thing in our industry I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard were to enforce—or at least threaten to enforce—them if a sizable bulk of their workers migrated to a new workplace.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#74

Post by alksjdalkj »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #49
smnrchrds wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major global publication has written an article about it. Spotlight is shone on Activision Blizzard's culture. We have seen that the only way to get any sort of customer support out of big tech companies is making noise on social media. And it works when enough noise is made. This is the next level of that: making noise in publications with global reach. The management will be wise not to ignore it.

I don't think an article on the side of the front page of a foreign newspaper remotely compares to what the NYT center front page or NBC Nightly News spotlights would mean.

It's on the front page of the Washington Post and NPR.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#75

Post by wonderwonder »

tehjoker wrote: post #69
wonderwonder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just parroted a couple of slogans at me that sound like they belong on a Bolshevik pamphlet, you did not answer the question. Who is going to fund these things? You can claim that there are successful solo developers and you would be right, people like Notch and Eric Barone but these people are the exception and they certainly don't pay for teams of hundreds or thousands. So again, who is going to pay the bills f…

Industry should be funded in a planned way with public money. Institutions similar to NIH/NSF should provide grants for people to be experimental. There would be a track for "scale up" for successful experiments. In certain cases such as entertainment, it might be desirable to maintain markets as a significant fraction of the industry, but we've seen how large concentrations of private money lead to companies taking…

Good answer, I am not opposed and would actually love if the government would start providing funding to small startups so people could take risks. Currently in many cases the ability to take risk is limited to young single people, people with a supportive family or people with a significant financial cushion. Regarding "Democratically decided" spending decisions how would that be accomplished when the country is split almost 50/50 on everything? It changes very quickly if for example 50.1 % of the voting public wants money spent on border walls, police and defense. Is that not the people's will then at that time?

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#76

Post by ekianjo »

SecretDracula wrote: post #68
redwood wrote: post #2

I'm going to take a minority position here and say that I've always hated their games. To me they're somewhat akin to cigarette or vape companies or even Facebook... They're driving addiction and causing people to pour their lives or at least their time down the drain. How widespread are these types of issues in other game companies?

Blizzard always made the worse, but more popular game of the time period. Total Annihilation was better than Starcraft. Baldur's Gate 2 was better than Diablo 2.

diablo 2 is a hack and slash. not a story driven RPG. poor comparison.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#77

Post by lmm »

winphone1974 wrote: post #27
chadcmulligan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are busy as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

The only thing the absence of that union would have changed would be more money in the owners' pockets. If hiring your parents would be profitable the owners would do it; if not, not, not. That's true regardless of how profitable or not the other employees are.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#78

Post by psyc »

runarberg wrote: post #73
epicureanideal wrote: post #12

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

Non-compete clauses are very much a thing in our industry I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard were to enforce—or at least threaten to enforce—them if a sizable bulk of their workers migrated to a new workplace.

Not in CA.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#79

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

runarberg wrote: post #73
epicureanideal wrote: post #12

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

Non-compete clauses are very much a thing in our industry I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard were to enforce—or at least threaten to enforce—them if a sizable bulk of their workers migrated to a new workplace.

In California?

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#80

Post by Guthur »

epicureanideal wrote: post #12

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

Why? What makes you believe there is any advantage in these particular individuals?

Frankly, is it coming to the point where we have to say it's too dangerous for men and women to work together? Dangerous for individuals and companies a like.

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