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Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

wsj.com

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Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#91

Post by krasin »

speedgoose wrote: post #76
sydthrowaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there’s an overlap in low level perf tuning in AAA game engines and improving cloud workloads. These folks could easily get a job at FAANG

Working a at FAANG is not as attractive to most when you don’t know about the issues in the video games industry. There is a reason why FAANG companies pay well and video games companies don’t have to. I met zero people who told me they dreamed about working in a FAANG since childhood.

>I met zero people who told me they dreamed about working in a FAANG since childhood.

Hi, nice to meet you: I dreamed about working in Microsoft since I was 12. Ended up in a different FAANG, but anyway.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#92

Post by vsef »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #88

Blizzard, Ubisoft and gaming industry in general seem to be plagued with sexual harassment problem. is this the result of Silicon Valley bro culture?

It is a cultural problem but the game industry is not SV based. Blizzard Activision is SoCal, Ubisoft is French (with studios in many locations). I worked at a studio owned by Activision (in SoCal) in the early 2000s and the culture was certainly toxic.

I just find it funny how often commenters here assume all broism originates in SV.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#93

Post by SerLava »

A lot of the original Blizzard people have said the company's just dead - it's Activision now. Everything and everyone that made Blizzard good has gone. And it shows - they're botching games in ways completely uncharacteristic of the old company. Not even a vague sense of culture made it through to the new company.

And mark my words, this won't be the last instance of severe employee mistreatment and harassment.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#94

Post by naiwenwt »

seattle_spring wrote: post #50
harles wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which platforms are left to make statements on?

I'm personally not sure where to stand on this. On one hand, you're right: you can probably come up with an excuse for every platform as to why "making a statement" shouldn't be permitted. On the other hand, do we really want everyone able to make political statements in unrelated arenas? Literally everyone feels strongly about something. Letting all causes be elevated via unrelated venues would be untenable, which m…

> Letting all causes be elevated via unrelated venues would be untenable

I'm not sure it would be untenable. People generally intuit the social cost/risk that comes with making a statement in an unrelated venue. That is a natural force acting against people randomly bringing up strongly held opinions on unrelated platforms. Explicitly drawing and enforcing a line just doesn't seem necessary.

> I suppose it's not totally unreasonable to draw that line by saying, "all content must be related to the topic at hand"

I think this would have the effect of either completely sterilizing platform discussion or being impossible to enforce reasonably. For instance, what would happen if a competitor just mentioned something totally innocuous that would incense nobody but was off-topic? Should that be punished?

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#95

Post by [deleted] »

krasin wrote: post #91
speedgoose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working a at FAANG is not as attractive to most when you don’t know about the issues in the video games industry. There is a reason why FAANG companies pay well and video games companies don’t have to. I met zero people who told me they dreamed about working in a FAANG since childhood.

>I met zero people who told me they dreamed about working in a FAANG since childhood. Hi, nice to meet you: I dreamed about working in Microsoft since I was 12. Ended up in a different FAANG, but anyway.

[deleted]

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#96

Post by CheezeIt »

adrianba wrote: post #68
CheezeIt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. Bill of Rights [1] protects giving negative references. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

That's not quite how it works. In practice, in the US, liability comes not so much from giving a positive or a negative review, but from giving an incomplete one. This is most apparent as a result of giving a positive review and leaving out the bad bits. In this case, you might be liable for the negative consequences of hiring someone based on your positive review. For an extreme example, see Randi W. v. Muroc Joint…

That’s a great point, but at least as far as negative references go, you have libel/slander law with robust free speech protections. It’s nothing like Europe.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#97

Post by gonzo41 »

mysterydip wrote: post #3

And the CEO remains the CEO.

Leadership starts and ends at the top. Sometimes it never starts.

I do wonder if the games industry is close to wide-scale reckoning on working conditions. It really does just sound brutal and even more exploitative than Hollywood. I've personally suffered mild enterprise ERP burnout, but the kind of stuff I read about in the game industry is just next level.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#98

Post by Byteflux »

virtue3 wrote: post #53
chii wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while i do understand the plight of HK's fight, it does make sense that a non-affiliated individual should not be able to make political statements on someone else's platform, unless with prior consent. The competitor should be free to make his case in his own platform(s), but not on a platform he doesn't own if the owners of that platform doesn't want to affiliate themselves with the political discourse.

That would violate freedom of speech. Which is the first amendment of the bill of rights of America. And blizzard being an American company this really irked a lot of us. "The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. ... It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely."…

Like individuals, businesses also have an inalienable right to free speech.

Whether you like it or not, censorship among private individuals and businesses is an exercise in free speech. It's within my right to free speech to set the terms of your speech in my home, in my businesses or anywhere else on my property.

Your right to free speech is not violated by private censorship. Although the concept of free speech can exist independently of the First Amendment, the "right" to free speech cannot.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#99

Post by pm90 »

> In a letter to employees made public in October, Ms. Townsend said Activision had “exited” 20 employees and another 20 had faced disciplinary action. “We know there’s a desire to know about the outcome when misconduct is reported,” Ms. Townsend wrote. “Sometimes, there are privacy reasons we can’t share. But where we can, we will be sharing more information with you. We will also be providing you regular, aggregate data about investigative outcomes.”

They fired 20 people, not the CEO, and haven’t disclosed who it what reason these people were fired for.

Smells to me like major scrapegoating.

Re: Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

#100

Post by saagarjha »

speedgoose wrote: post #76
sydthrowaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there’s an overlap in low level perf tuning in AAA game engines and improving cloud workloads. These folks could easily get a job at FAANG

Working a at FAANG is not as attractive to most when you don’t know about the issues in the video games industry. There is a reason why FAANG companies pay well and video games companies don’t have to. I met zero people who told me they dreamed about working in a FAANG since childhood.

I know a bunch, but I also grew up in the Bay Area…
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