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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

#191

Post by garmaine »

seanhunter wrote: post #188
garmaine wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the creative roles. Maybe you're thinking of guilds? They're both forms of collective representation, but quite different on the ground.

They certainly are a union and describe themselves as such. For example, from https://www.wga.org/the-guild/about-us/guide-to-the-guild "We are the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), a labor union composed of the thousands of writers who write the content for television shows, movies, news programs, documentaries, animation, and Internet and mobile phones (new media) that keep audiences constantly entertained and…

I'm sure they do describe themselves as a union. Most non-insiders don't know the difference between the two, and probably many guild members don't either. But legally speaking, a guild is an organization for collective bargaining of independent contractors, while a union is for employees.

If you are a television producer hiring a writer, you don't go to the WGA. You just interview a bunch of writers, select the one you want, and offer them the job. Like you would any other job, really, except that if the writer is a member of the guild then the terms of employment must meet some certain standards, with rules about crediting and overtime, etc. But so long as you adhere to the guild's rules, it's like hiring any other independent contractor.

But if you're a ship captain wanting to offload cargo, you go to the longshoreman's union and as for N day workers. You don't pick who, and you don't negotiate rates other than specifying (and paying for) the desired experience level. You ask for N longshoremen, and you get N warm bodies and the bill.

To the point of this conversation, a guild makes more sense in a creative project where the skill and art of the worker matters to the end result. If you're producing a TV comedy, you really need to make sure you employ the correct writers. Likewise for game designers.

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

#192

Post by shapefrog »

danaris wrote: post #173
shapefrog wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically no friends at work? But still be there for 16 hours a day ...

If you can't be friends with someone without alcohol, then you might need some help.

Where is the line and who sets it? Drugs, Alcohol? fine. Caffine is a drug, probably not that, definately not those caffine drinks. No hugs? Fine. No positive feelings at all? No involuntry dopamine hits to the brain?

If you cant be friends with someone whithout the dopamine, then you might need some help.

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

#194

Post by kbenson »

toofy wrote: post #190
kbenson wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you assume there is nothing you can do to change someone's mind, there is little to no reason to interact with them with regards to that thing. Without that interaction, you won't get their concerns and criticisms. Not interacting with people about something you and they disagree on is a good way to make sure there's nothing they can do to change your mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if they view you in a similar…

Again, Im just not following. This has little to do with the point my comment was making. I said, anyone who would tune out The Guardian article as noise because they disagree with the topic is not the target audience of the walkout. How much someone chooses to spend their personal energy or personal time “debating” contrarians just isn’t relevant to my comment… You seem determined to change the subject away from who…

> I said, anyone who would tune out The Guardian article as noise because they disagree with the topic is not the target audience of the walkout.

No, you said "There is almost nothing which would change the minds of the people who don’t already understand these as problems." That's far more expansive than a statement about the people that read the Guardian that don't agree ignoring it. It's one thing to say people may not trust one source or how it's presented, it's an entirely different thing to say they are unwilling to consider any source or argument. One is stating the people have a bias around a source and/or topic, the other is painting a large group of people themselves as entirely unreasonable, and to me it seemed your statement was conveying the latter.

If that's not your intent, then we can just chalk this up to some combination of poor expression and poor interpretation and call it a day.

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

#195

Post by seanhunter »

garmaine wrote: post #191
seanhunter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly are a union and describe themselves as such. For example, from https://www.wga.org/the-guild/about-us/guide-to-the-guild "We are the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), a labor union composed of the thousands of writers who write the content for television shows, movies, news programs, documentaries, animation, and Internet and mobile phones (new media) that keep audiences constantly entertained and…

I'm sure they do describe themselves as a union. Most non-insiders don't know the difference between the two, and probably many guild members don't either. But legally speaking, a guild is an organization for collective bargaining of independent contractors, while a union is for employees. If you are a television producer hiring a writer, you don't go to the WGA. You just interview a bunch of writers, select the one…

If they themselves describe themselves as a union it seems strange not to take that at face value.

That being said, even if you don't accept that, there are unions (not guilds) for independent contractors in the creative fields for example in the UK the musicians' union and Equity (the actors' union). If you are hiring musicians or actors in the UK you will for sure be hiring the specific people you want and they will very likely be members of the union.

Your example about hiring union workers may be how it works in the US but is not the case in other countries - you would hire them just like any other independent contractor or employee.

Source: I have been a member of both creative and non-creative unions in my career. I've been in the musicians' union and my wife and many friends are members of the ISM (another union for musicians with more traction in the classical music world) and I have also been a member of a more conventional union (the GMB or "General Municipal and Boilermakers' union") believe it or not. In no case have I ever been hired on the basis of a process like you describe.

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

#196

Post by toofy »

kbenson wrote: post #194
toofy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, Im just not following. This has little to do with the point my comment was making. I said, anyone who would tune out The Guardian article as noise because they disagree with the topic is not the target audience of the walkout. How much someone chooses to spend their personal energy or personal time “debating” contrarians just isn’t relevant to my comment… You seem determined to change the subject away from who…

> I said, anyone who would tune out The Guardian article as noise because they disagree with the topic is not the target audience of the walkout. No, you said "There is almost nothing which would change the minds of the people who don’t already understand these as problems." That's far more expansive than a statement about the people that read the Guardian that don't agree ignoring it. It's one thing to say people ma…

we can be as pedantic as we like, but either way, people like that were not the target audience. <—- that’s the important piece of what i was saying.

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

#197

Post by watwut »

908B64B197 wrote: post #170
poisonarena wrote: post #44

From the article: "Just 20% of Activision Blizzard’s 9,500 employees are women, and leadership at the company, one of the largest video game makers in the world, is largely white and male." I am 36 years old, white male. I imagine alot of the employees there are within my age range give or take 5-10 years. For me it just makes sense. in the late 90s and early 2000s if you asked me, an obsessed computer gaming white g…

I love these stats because it doesn't account for age and CS graduation rates. If all senior leadership has ~20 years of experience in the industry, it makes sense that it would be pretty representative of the graduating class of 20 years ago.

Majority of people who work on games are artists and such. Not CS graduates.

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

#198

Post by IncandescentGas »

dbsmith83 wrote: post #64
kevingadd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This specific criticism goes both ways and isn't unique to unions, though. Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance. Maybe one of your parents ends up sick or injured so their performance at work is suffering and you really want them to be protected while they get through that temporary hurdle instead of being laid off and replaced with che…

> Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance Maybe one or two, but not a large proportion of an aging workforce riding purely on the protection of the union

At what age specifically do you believe an aging tradesman should be stripped of worker protections? 30? 42? 60?

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

#199

Post by dbsmith83 »

IncandescentGas wrote: post #198
dbsmith83 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance Maybe one or two, but not a large proportion of an aging workforce riding purely on the protection of the union

At what age specifically do you believe an aging tradesman should be stripped of worker protections? 30? 42? 60?

How long specifically should you pay a worker who is not productive at their job and is killing the business? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Until the business dies?

I don't think you really interpreted my statement fairly. Perhaps I should have chosen another word instead of aging, but I was thinking in the traditional factory sense where there is a correlation with age and performance doing manual labor. Age should not be the indicator, performance should.

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