Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#111

Post by john-shaffer » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

dyslexit wrote: post #47

john-shaffer wrote: post #9

I boycotted Blizzard after their censorship regarding Hong Kong. It was a great decision since it saved me from the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires that was Warcraft III Reforged [1]. I would strongly suggest that if anything about Blizzard pisses you off, just be done with them entirely. The people who created the great games of the past don't work there. Blizzard is no longer capable of producing good produ…

I feel like their entire mission changed around the time of their merger with Activision. I remember reading a long time ago the original devs saying they made games they would want to play, and I believe it showed. The most obvious example of that to me were the game stories. Back then the stories and background lore had depth and were fascinatingly interesting. Characters felt like they had real motivations and rea…

The decline started when Vivendi (the owners) drove off the Blizzard North (ex-Condor) devs. The Blizzard North leaders were ignored to the point that they submitted their resignations in protest. Rather than actually give the team a voice, Vivendi decided to accept the resignations. They shut down the studio entirely a year or two later because it couldn't perform. They would have made a lot more money if they had listened to their proven leaders.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080702062733/http://www.netwar...

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#112

Post by cheerlessbog » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #23

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Whenever the topic of sharing salary information comes up I always bring up the algorithm for figuring out the average salary for a group of people without anyone learning anyone else’s exact salary: Say you have 10 people sitting at a round table. Person 1 picks up a piece of paper and on it writes a sum of their salary + randInt(100_000, 10_000_000) remembering what the initial random number was. We can call this n…

Everyone writes their salary on a piece of paper and puts it into a hat. Then you can get a the full distribution.

If you know who is senior, who is junior etc you can identify their values

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#113

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

verma7 wrote: post #90

jhanschoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the salaries are still too easily identifiable here's how it can be anonymized. Allow breaking down the salary into a sum of numbers, and putting them as separate slips into the hat.

How would you get the distribution from the sum of numbers individually?

You don't count the slips of paper in the hat. Instead you count the number of people who put in slips of paper.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#114

Post by tptacek » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

gibba999 wrote: post #42

ncallaway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, though. Wrongful termination lawsuits aren't "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Most civil actions—including wrongful termination—need to show a "preponderance of evidence". That is, you need to convince a jury that the claim is more likely to be true than not true (e.g. 51%). So, assuming you have evidence of the chain of events: - Group shares salary openly - Employer says: "you cannot do that", s…

Here's the other thing though. Law suits are expensive. Law suits burn bridges (you'll never get a recommendation from an employer you've sued). Law suits prevent future jobs (would you hire someone who sued a previous employer?). And wrongful termination isn't the end. And things are rarely black-and-white. If your boss thinks you're a douche, it will hurt your career. If your next performance review is a 7 instead…

Here's the other other thing, though: lawsuits are expensive. Employers settle them routinely. I've seen frivolous suits settled for real money, just to get them out of the way. Legal expense probably scares most employers a lot more than it scares former employees.

Getting fired for sharing salary information is not high up on my list of concerns, in part for that reason.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#115

Post by stevenwoo » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

throwawayblizz wrote: post #99

Here is the sheet, if anyone wants to peek. These salaries are really bad for Irvine, and the raises seem really bad too. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/119RI3oS9XNOjq2X8VLpU...

You know what's crazy? I worked at Blizzard last around 2000 and I made more than 150K in base salary as a programmer, so it looks like salaries haven't increased without inflation adjustment for 20 years.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#116

Post by masayune » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

Back when I worked there, they had something called "Blizzard Bucks" to "supplement" your salary. Basically "Blizzard Bucks" was Monopoly money we could use to buy their microtransactions and WoW game-time. In reality, you made approx. $30-40k sans OT, but they would always calculate your "salary" at $50-60k because of all the "Blizzard Bucks" and claim your salary was industry best.

The best part was, and they would emphasize this at every meeting, "that the company would pay the taxes for us" as if it were a big deal. People never believe me when I tell them this is how the non-devs got treated.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#117

Post by dkislyuk » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #64

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Whenever the topic of sharing salary information comes up I always bring up the algorithm for figuring out the average salary for a group of people without anyone learning anyone else’s exact salary: Say you have 10 people sitting at a round table. Person 1 picks up a piece of paper and on it writes a sum of their salary + randInt(100_000, 10_000_000) remembering what the initial random number was. We can call this n…

If person 1 doesn't tell the group if they're adding their salary at the beginning or at the end, it would provide a little more security between person 1 and 2. i.e. If the minimum rand # is known to be 100,000, and person 2 receives the number 150,000 and knows it includes the salary of person 1...they will know person 1 makes <= 50k

If the first person doesn’t add their number, then the 3rd person has the same “visibility” into the second person’s number, based on the minimum rand.

The solution can be to include negative numbers in the RNG range, or keep the RNG range a secret (except to person 1).

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#118

Post by xenihn » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

Blizzard has always treated their rank-and-file employees poorly, and underpaid/exploited them. The latter is generally expected from the videogame industry, but I don't think that excuses it. It's worse when you consider that Blizzard HQ has always been in one of the richest cities in the world.

There's a thing that happened last year that wasn't picked up by any major news sources. It was really troubling to see it completely swept under the rug. I can't even find a "reputable" news site that covered it:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-01-09-former-bli...

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#119

Post by acituan » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43

axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why all the hoops? Companies have shamed us into thinking sharing salaries is bad. It's not. People should share freely, in my opinion it benefits all parties except the company.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

> It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information

Maybe one of the biggest myths is that we can appraise performance objectively and that pay is nothing but a function of that performance.

In reality, this is nothing but price discrimination for the price of labor; just like it would be in an airline's best interest to squeeze the most individual dollar amounts out of every individual passenger for the same flight, it is in employer's best interest to pay the absolute minimum that can convince each particular employee to do the same work.

Information symmetry or collective bargaining destroys that advantage.

What Blizzard workers did might feel like a revolt in the US, but there are countries where total income and taxation information of each individual must be publicly listed annually.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#120

Post by chrisdirkis » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

verma7 wrote: post #90

jhanschoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the salaries are still too easily identifiable here's how it can be anonymized. Allow breaking down the salary into a sum of numbers, and putting them as separate slips into the hat.

How would you get the distribution from the sum of numbers individually?

I believe the parent meant breaking it down as "if you earn $100k, add 10 slips that each have $10k on them". The number of slips will be more than the number of people in the room, but that's fine. It's less practical than the "seed + pass round" method that someone else recommended imo (due to handwriting notability), but still works in a more technical sense.