If they were based in Norway you could just go to the government website and type in their name.
Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
41–50 of 300 posts
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
That only matters if someone is dumb enough to fire you and writes down somewhere "s/he was fired for discussing salaries". I can't remember the exact phrasing but years ago my boss said at the team meeting something about not discussing salaries, and someone said later "I don't think you can say that" and he was like "oh, ok". The message was delivered though.
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 of a 9, that might not lead to termination now, but it prevents career growth, and gets you sacked next layoff.
I don't think anyone would every get laid off JUST for sharing salary info, but it would push a lot of people over the edge.
All I'm saying is be careful about how you do it.
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#43Whenever 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…
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 with overpaid mediocre talent and a product roadmap that is suffering from the loss of top performers.
The more we celebrate victimhood as some kind of hero status, the more we shame and punish those who achieve and create success the worse off we're all going to be. A private company has every right to compensate its employees with its private capital anyway it wants, and they're going to want to do it in a way that achieves the goals of the business. They're not distributing welfare checks, they're a business.
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#44Whenever 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…
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.
In aggregate yes, but many individuals still have perfectly valid reasons for not wanting to share their salaries locally. No one should _have_ to share that info in most roles (important leadership and financial roles notwithstanding), but no one should ever be discouraged from sharing it either.
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#45Sharing your salary is absolutely not a “revolt” in any sense; this is literally a national worker’s right as an American. Bloomberg framing it as a “revolt” is a not very subtle attempt at casting workers using their rights as the agents of chaos when employers mislead, manipulate, and obscure.
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#46Earlier 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…
This argument is predicated on value creation being the primary determining factor in salary, and I think that’s probably worth a second thought
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#47I 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 reasons for doing things, the worlds felt believable, gritty, and sometimes unforgiving.
I don't know if it was Activision's influence, many of the original devs moving on, or World of Warcraft coming out, but since then everything about the company seems to have changed. So much of what they do nowadays just seem like money grabs. They release pay to win content meant to be addictive, dumbed down their art style to looking like cartoons that appeal to the least common denominator, follow trends instead of doing anything innovating, and seem to have completely stopped caring about making any interesting story. The villains in Diablo 3 were comically badly written.
At some point they even tried to force users to use their REAL WORLD names on battle.net[1].
It really isn't the same company as it used to be in the early 2000's.
[1]https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzard-requires-rea...
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#48[deleted]
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#49The game industry as a whole was pretty fucked when I left. I remember doing the 40hr+1.5x overtime calculation and realizing that if I wasn't salaried I'd be making $4/hr with the mandatory hours we were working(70-90 hrs/week). I tossed 2 months of PTO to leave that industry(yay Washington laws) and made up the difference in the first 2.5 paychecks of the new gig. Be careful of industries that over-index on "passio…
80 hrs/week is ~4000 hr/year. Your salary was only ~$16000/year?
Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities
#50So possibly unpopular point of view here, maybe not on HN, but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair. I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn. I think it's perfectly fair game in a job where it's hard to replace individ…
> I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn.
Whether or not pay discrepancies can be fair, this doesn't sound like a case of them being fair. What happens to your (hypothetical) colleague who gives just as much of a damn as you do, but doesn't feel comfortable hitting the appropriate negotiation notes to get their due?
Similarly: given that companies are liable to offer a lower initial rate to women and minorities, how do we account for the fact that they might negotiate just as hard as you and still end up behind?