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Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct

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

#161

Post by kodemager »

john567 wrote: post #154
framecowbird wrote: post #33

How did it get this bad?

Blizzard was never a privately held company or not in the sense that founders had real autonomy. I believe Michael Morhaime had a lot to do with why Blizzard could do what it did. I remember reading in interviews that he defended the soon(tm) mindset and steered the owners away from chasing quarterly reports. I also believe that Chris Metzen was a key figure in upholding a geeky and fun culture. I was genuinely impre…

Metzen Knew about the toxic “bro-culture” while he was in one of the management positions directly above some of what turned out to be the worst sexual offenders, and did nothing about it, for which he apologised on his own Twitter post scandal.

Michael Morhaime similarly was the head of Blizzard doing the worst of the sexual misconduct and people don’t things like “cube crawls”.

I’ve worked in big enterprise, I know how easy it is to turn the blind eye to things (maybe not drunk employees litterally crawling around to harass women) but still, but I fear that the toxic culture may be as old as Blizard west itself, and that it likely only grew into the sexual misconduct that it did following the growth of World of Warcraft and the huge influx of new hires (including a lot of in-office women which had been rare up till then).

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

#163

Post by tjpnz »

LukeShu wrote: post #36
tjpnz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted my Blizzard account when they censored and banned a Taiwanese e-sports competitor for speaking out on Hong Kong. It's a shame because I had been planning to give WoW classic a try. Edit: While the tournament was held in Taiwan, Blitzchung is actually a native of Hong Kong.

> a Taiwanese e-sports competitor for speaking out on Hong Kong Not that it makes much of a difference, but: It is my understanding that he's from Hong Kong, and is not Taiwanese. It is my understanding that Taiwan comes in to the picture only because the Blizzard event that he spoke out at was in Taiwan; that he has no connection to Taiwan.

>It is my understanding that he's from Hong Kong, and is not Taiwanese.

Thanks for pointing that out, you're indeed correct that he's a Hong Konger. I've edited my comment.

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

#164

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

gotbeans wrote: post #157
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?

Anecdotically, to this date and after 4 workplaces (FAANG included), I am yet to see what a bro culture is. To my eyes and experience over 10 years interacting with people, I have seen nothing of the sort, for which I believe this kind of culture must be very conditioned to the right (or wrong?) mix of individuals that by far do not make justice to the average SV engineer.

I've seen it, and to be honest I've only seen it in the ranks to the exec team rather than the tech team in both FAANG and startups.

The tech teams and tech managers are usually trying to impress you about how they spent the weekend coding on a PDP-11, playing board games or mountain biking while drinking custom brand protein drinks. Generally harmless stuff like that.

The exec teams are where the sociopaths live and work, and I've seen all sorts of bro one-upmanship there. The worse types, by far, are the rugby bros. The tales these guys tell each other are always of the "here's a horrible thing I did, so don't mess with me".

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

#165

Post by throwaway47292 »

cletus wrote: post #10

How many managers and executives were fired? My fear is that individual perpetrators have been fired but not the leaders who buried complaints or their own inaction dissuaded victims from complaining. A fish rots from the head.

> A fish rots from the head.

Are you sure about that? Doesn't it rot from the guts outwards?

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by shultays »

claaams wrote: post #6
mysterydip wrote: post #3

And the CEO remains the CEO.

He needs to be fired. I want to play one of their games but I won't until bobby kotick is no longer the CEO. So never.

Hard to fire someone that owns a good chunk of the company

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

#168

Post by Mirioron »

dehrmann wrote: post #45
framecowbird wrote: post #33

How did it get this bad?

Lots of people want to work in the video game industry, so they'll put up with low pay, long hours, and apparently sexual harassment for a really long time.

It's also possible that in a creative industry like that you can't be as controlling when it comes to employee behavior. The people coming up with crazy new ideas are probably more eccentric than average. It might not be as easy to walk the line of separating the good eccentric behavior from the bad. An incident here, an incident there can pile up over the years. My impression is that it's not a very uncommon problem in the entertainment industry.

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

#169

Post by aspaviento »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #5

Question, when these people find a new job will the person hiring them know?

What's the need of stigmatizing these people? If they did wrong, they have been fired for it. They don't need to be permanently punished for a mistake. That won't help anyone.

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

#170

Post by Gibbon1 »

barkingcat wrote: post #128
awb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you be ineligible for rehire after a downsizing?

You'd be surprised at the kinds of hr policies that makes their own sense, but has no common sense. Most likely to avoid someone returning on false pretenses to retaliate against being downsized in the firstplace.

Yeah that's the sort of policy a sociopath would think is a good idea.
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