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Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

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Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#131

Post by ehnto »

azornathogron wrote: post #76
biryani_chicken wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dystopian to see Chinese people consume American products at the expense of American workers.

Turn-about is fair play, right? Less tongue-in-cheek, I'm really not sure it's China's responsibility to ensure good working conditions in the foreign companies that produce the goods they want to buy, and I'm not sure it's the west's responsibility to ensure good working conditions for the Chinese workers who produce the goods we buy either. I feel I may be in the minority with that view though.

I don't entirely disagree, pointing out that their workers are at least the producing country's responsibility is fair, since some seem to forget.

But the consuming country is still participating in the exploitation knowingly. It's not like we're unaware, so it's definitely a conscious choice being made to ignore it. It's worth considering the weight of that, since being loud about it has been cause for quite a lot of positive change over the decades.

It's not like I think someone who buys something made with exploitation is a monster, or even shares much of the blame at all, but it is a choice you can make to support less exploitation here and there and I think that's worth doing.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#132

Post by a1pulley »

boromi wrote: post #54
a1pulley wrote: post #38

> "At WilmerHale 1st year counsel makes $350,000. The 24 year old 1st year summer associate still in law school walks into the office in a $1,500 Burberry suit and makes $202,500 that year. Those Amazon workers they swindled out of higher wages make less than $30,000 a year." The 200k figure is for a first-year associate who has graduated and passed the bar exam [1]. It's interesting to me that you can only hope to c…

Those FAANG are also in HCOL locations. SWE roles in smaller towns and other states then the coasts don't command nearly as high a salary.

Associates at top firms live in HCOL areas at similar rates as SWEs at FAANG companies.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#133

Post by barry-cotter »

gknoy wrote: post #114
barry-cotter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is impossible for the wages at all large companies to be below what large companies pay. What large companies pay is what defines the market rate because most people work for large companies.

I think they mean the wages at large [game studios] are below the average for large [software companies in general].

No, nynx said all large companies. They did not restrict themselves to game developers or software companies.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#134

Post by bobiny »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #121
x3iv130f wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company is only just a shell. It is the creative people that work for a company that make the actual products. If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.

Dreamhaven & frostgiant are the ones I'm following (and super hyped for), is there anything else I should be aware of?

Bonfire studios

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#135

Post by seoaeu »

lacker wrote: post #87
cratermoon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of that have to do with whether or not the firm is notorious for union-busting? Representing a polluting corporation against citizens suing it for making them sick is 100% compatible with busting unions. [Originally I had gotten this backwards and stated that WilmerHale represented the citizens]

Their Wikipedia page doesn't mention anything about union-busting. If you are "notorious" for something in this day and age, it should at least show up in ten paragraphs of Wikipedia. The main controversy mentioned there is them representing people who are held in Guantanamo under suspicion of terrorism. It seems more like Wilmer Hale is a huge bunch of lawyers doing all sorts of things, than some union-busting hacks…

> If you are "notorious" for something in this day and age, it should at least show up in ten paragraphs of Wikipedia.

That is placing way too much trust in Wiki pages not being manipulated to portray their subjects in an unfairly positive light

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#137

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

brainfish wrote: post #26

I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other. I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and qui…

I also haven't purchased any new Blizzard products since Blitzchung. I uninstalled the Activision Blizzard game launcher last night, hopefully others are doing the same and adding to the dent in their KPI scores and financial bottom line.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#138

Post by pteraspidomorph »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #61
aeoleonn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Path of Exile 2 -- it's the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. And it's freemium

It's a great game, but if you are concerned about Freedom in Hong Kong, Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, so you are still sending money to support an authoritarian regime that is still finishing up their latest installment of ethnic cleansing and re-education camps.

So is Funcom, Riot, Epic, Miniclip... They're harder to avoid than Nestle...

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#139

Post by golergka »

danaris wrote: post #125
mbostleman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market.">> For what it's worth, collective bargaining is, from an economic perspective, a monopoly. In anti trust terms it would constitute an illegal combination in trade if it weren't for statutory exemptions that explicitly give it a pass.

It's not really any more a monopoly than the business itself is. The business/management is a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least money possible for the most production possible. The employees/union are a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least production possible for the most money…

If I cannot work for a company without joining a union, it is a monopoly.

What if I'm a junior worker on a labour market that is saturated by more experienced and skilled workers, and lowering my rate is the only chance to make it in the industry that I have? Existing union and it's members are my natural competitors.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#140

Post by screye »

manux wrote: post #130
screye wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually elaborated on that in another comment in this thread. Unions are bureaucracy. Adding politics, people and power to any structure inherently adds inefficiencies. If individual bargaining is working just fine in an industry, then I would not push for collective bargaining. Because, it is tradeoff is between 'bridging the information asymmetry between how much power you think you command, vs what you actually…

Inefficiencies aren't always bad. Efficiency, for example, is often the opposite of robustness. Many companies have learned that the hard way when COVID hit, even though they had an efficient supply chain and production pipeline, it was not robust.

I guess part of it is just personal anecdotes. India was (democratically elected, but single party monopoly) socialist from 1945-1991. It is still pseudo-socialist in many senses.

Watching how deeply these inefficiencies from bureaucracies plague us, has been genuinely angering.

So yeah, I do come into it with personal priors which lead to be deeply suspicious of any unnecessary inefficiency. (emphasis on unnecessary. Your covid example clearly shows that the word necessary itself is subjectively evaluated)

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