Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 300 posts

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#141

Post by setr »

Mandatum wrote: post #128
masayune wrote: post #116

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…

That is possibly the most exploitative form of compensation I've heard of in the Western world.

Then you dont know your western history :-)

There used to be whole towns where you'd get entirely paid in, and shop with, corporate funny money

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#142

Post by ithkuil »

egypturnash wrote: post #136
spaetzleesser wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 " And we all are top earners, right? Statistics tell me most of us aren't. The consequence of sharing salaries is not equity but people being able to negotiate better so most likely average salaries will go up. CEO salaries have been public for a while now and I h…

90% of the comments I see on HN about salary negotiation leave me convinced that most of the people here think they are top earners.

"working as intended"

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#143

Post by langitbiru »

This is the premise of the application that I am building: PredictSalary (https://predictsalary.com). It's a browser extension to predict salary from job opportunities currently. Right now it only supports two job opportunities. But I'm adding more job opportunities websites.

In the future, I plan to add support to predict salary from Linkedin profile. So based on education, experiences, role, the browser extension can predict the salary range. I'm thinking of adding a way to share the salary range in this application in a safe way. The mission of my application is to democratize the salary ranges.

This way, in the future, workers in other companies (other than Blizzard) have the ability to know the salary ranges in a convenient way.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#144

Post by gnicholas »

tyrust wrote: post #140
Mandatum wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is possibly the most exploitative form of compensation I've heard of in the Western world.

I'd rank service workers' tips counting towards their minimum wage a worse practice.

At least tips are in cash, not funny money.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#145

Post by ido »

irrational wrote: post #123
intended wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

Eh, anecdotal, but that hasn’t been true in my experience. I’m fairly certain I’m perceived negatively. I show up, do my work, but do not seek any sort of human communication beyond the bare minimum required. I certainly don’t create connections, seek face time, etc. I’ve been with my company for nearly 2 decades and only know about 10 people, and only 2 of those well. I worked with one person for five years on a dai…

According to the first inflation calculator I found there's been about 48% inflation in 18 years (2001 to 2019).

84% raise doesn't sound like much if you've also increased in seniority in that duration.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#146

Post by CobrastanJorji »

masayune wrote: post #116

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…

Is it possible to spend $20k per year in WoW?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#147

Post by riffraff »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #41

If they were based in Norway you could just go to the government website and type in their name. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

Funny story: data on tax declarations in Italy is supposed to be public, but _not easily accessible_.

I.e. you can go to the tax agency (or town hall) and ask for data on a given individual since 1973, but you can't just publish it willy nilly.

In 2008 the tax collecting agency decided to put all of them online, as that seemed like a reasonable extension of the 40 year old rule, and there was a huge shitstorm[0].

At some point the privacy authority stepped in and imposed them to hide it again, citing a lot of more and less valid concerns.

[0] which in my modest opinion proved it was a great idea

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#148

Post by Kinrany »

irrational wrote: post #123
intended wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

Eh, anecdotal, but that hasn’t been true in my experience. I’m fairly certain I’m perceived negatively. I show up, do my work, but do not seek any sort of human communication beyond the bare minimum required. I certainly don’t create connections, seek face time, etc. I’ve been with my company for nearly 2 decades and only know about 10 people, and only 2 of those well. I worked with one person for five years on a dai…

I'd say either you're still underpaid, or your employer/boss is a saint

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#149

Post by ithkuil »

foogazi wrote: post #96
sdoering wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have fought for raises of colleagues who were more introverted or just didn't feel as comfortable going into the pit and haggling for an appropriate raise. I saw the wage gap increase because they sometimes just didn't know how far ahead others were in terms of wage. Keeping individual wages a secret ultimately benefits the employer as they can use the knowledge disparity to their advantage. I even know of argument…

> I even know of arguments that a new father doesn't need to receive a relevant raise as he is extremely unlikely to switch jobs due to the newborn. This is a good one for new fathers - be prepared

Often that's also coupled with a decreased likelihood of getting sacked due to reduced performance. I don't know about you, but my productivity has been a tad affected by sleepless nights and other minor semi-regular drama surrounding newborns

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#150

Post by kalleboo »

setr wrote: post #141
Mandatum wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is possibly the most exploitative form of compensation I've heard of in the Western world.

Then you dont know your western history :-) There used to be whole towns where you'd get entirely paid in, and shop with, corporate funny money https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

At least company scrip was used to buy food/normal goods, albeit at a large markup. "Blizzard bucks" sound completely useless unless you're really into games
Post reply on HN