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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

#241
post #99

> 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…

> They fired 20 people, not the CEO Oh no, he's trying to save face and trying to make it look like he fixed the issues - even though he was a participant and he allowed this culture to develop.

I might be out of the loop, but what is indicating that, this is what actually happened?

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

#242

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.

Being fired for harassment/abuse doesn't magically mean that you'll never harass or abuse someone in the future. Hiring someone with a track record of these issues puts your other employees at risk.

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

#243

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

I’ve worked in the gaming industry and I was surprised how some fairly standard questions about creativity, playing games, character development, etc. lead to detailed insights into the candidate’s personality.

We’ve had candidates answer “You have to organise a fun evening for the 80 employees of this office. Your budget is $10. What do you do?” (a question meant to leverage their understanding that 70 of those 80 are insanely creative people who barely need a pen and paper to have fun) by suggesting going to a strip-club.

“What’s your favourite game?” is a staple (no answer is disqualifying in most cases); “Which character do you play?” the obvious follow-up when it’s an option. Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed. The word “jiggle” was used, with a nervous laughter that I had to describe in my feedback as ‘cringey’.

If one of those people understand that they did wrong, I’m hoping they’ll give considerate answers to what are standard, common questions. I’ve never heard a full contrition during an interview (not on that matter) but that could be an interesting conversation. If they think that they did nothing wrong sexualising their colleagues, I would expect hiring manager to notice a nervous laughter, connect that to the previous employer and date of departure, and possibly prod discretely; “What do you think is missing in the game industry nowadays?” is a good follow-up. If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.

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

#244
post #83
post #39

I really wouldn't boycott anything over workplace culture. If their product is good I will buy it. In the case of Blizzard their products haven't been good for a long time. I'm ok with supporting a company that's evil. I am consuming petroleum, plastic, the news media, etc. all the time. Anyone who suggests otherwise comes across as somewhat delusional and a little self obsessed to me. Blizzard would be the least of…

“workplace culture” sounds like an unwarranted euphemism for what is very clearly sexual harassment.

Im not familiar with all their problems I assumed there were more than one.

Not everything has to be drama, it was just a word with no hidden cunning evil meaning

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he’s led some of the highest growth of any company of the last two decades and there’s extremely limited evidence that he knew what was going on at just one of his subsidiary companies (and the least profitable one at that). Blizzard games don’t hold a candle to the money CoD, Madden, or Skylanders bring in. If Blizzard lets him go, someone else will snatch up his genius immediately.

Looks like returns are slightly below electronic arts (since 2009 anyway, around when Kotick started and after the crash), which seems like the best comp. EA has had two CEOs over that time frame. Maybe they were both geniuses too.

Kotick has owned Activision since 1991. Activision Blizzard was formed around 2008 from a merge. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of.

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

#248
post #39

I really wouldn't boycott anything over workplace culture. If their product is good I will buy it. In the case of Blizzard their products haven't been good for a long time. I'm ok with supporting a company that's evil. I am consuming petroleum, plastic, the news media, etc. all the time. Anyone who suggests otherwise comes across as somewhat delusional and a little self obsessed to me. Blizzard would be the least of…

> Anyone who suggests otherwise comes across as somewhat delusional and a little self obsessed to me.

I have responded to repeated opening from several oil companies, including one last week, by saying that I have seen their employee brag about sponsoring genocides and war crimes, and more of us were hoping they would be prosecuted at ICJ in The Hague for that, their action on climate change, and their relentless campaign to deny their role. It was explicit that several of those crimes incurred the death penalty.

That’s not just the right thing to do: those companies will face economic difficulty very fast as neighbourhoods are destroyed by hurricanes, heat waves, fires, famine, droughts, that scientist unambiguously tie to global warming.

I don’t understand why hoping that humanity will survive makes me self-obsessed, but you don’t seem to be the right person to explain collective responsibility so I probably shouldn’t ask.

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

#250

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…

Morhaime and the leadership definitely had autonomy. Blizzard was the goose that laid the gold egg. Also multiple former employees have stated that there's no way Morhaime didn't know what was going on. So I think you've got it backwards.
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