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Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

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Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#401

Post by buzer »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #309
throwaway894345 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also accept a whole lot of impossibly jacked shirtless dudes but there's barely any public outcry against this. Even worse, video games are extraordinarily violent (I play lots of FPS games, so I'm not criticizing fans of violent games per se) and anyone concerned about the effects of violence on society is lambasted as a pearl-clutching conservative parent from the 1980s.

Both absolutely true. However, regarding overly jacked dudes, there is no history of women in gaming culture harassing developers for putting a beer gut on the male protagonist of a video game, nor any talk about "bulge physics" or whatever the equivalent of "jiggle physics" would be.

> nor any talk about "bulge physics"

https://old.reddit.com/r/GirlGamers/comments/adbb5b/devil_ma...

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#402

Post by munk-a »

mcguire wrote: post #331
15155 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the bulk of these programmers solving problems with engineering and logical reasoning as they might today?

Yes. More so.

And not just more so - but more so with worse tools to do it with. There are really hard problems in development these days that we all deal with - and we only deal with them because we're standing on the shoulders of giants - most of whom were women.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#403

Post by cableshaft »

heavyset_go wrote: post #339
Ntrails wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with a net worth over about 100m (and many a fir chunk lower) isn't working for money anymore. He hasn't retired to enjoy his wealth is imo because the jobs selection bias excludes the sorts of people who would do that

I don't really think this is true. They can end up spending a lot of that 100m on a car collection.

I'm not too greedy. Give me enough money I won't feel too guilty spending a half million on a Lagoon 40 catamaran and a quarter million on a Lamborghini Huracan and enough for a single-family beach house on Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, (and enough investments I can 4% withdraw about 70k a year) and I'll be satisfied.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#404

Post by jacobrussell »

yarg wrote: post #362
nineplay wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to make a point about "culture fit" "culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria. Things I've seen teams consider "culture" - will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery? - will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us? - is the candidate entertained by all t…

Culture fit doesn't have to stretch that far - it does not need to be pervasive and it does not need to be toxic. We had a guy from Gaza in our office - he complained about informal emails sent to invite people for drinks because it was sinful, he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest. I don't know what lines to draw here - but be careful when playing with double-…

> he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest

Uhhhh... dare I ask to explain what was going on with said mannequin? What kind of “special occasion” requires this... ritual?

Also, I can’t tell whether you are implying that it would have been better for your coworker to have been filtered out because you think they are too sensitive, or if you are implying that your office asks weird things of people. What is the “double-edged sword”?

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#405

Post by Rapzid »

Kiro wrote: post #342
nineplay wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to make a point about "culture fit" "culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria. Things I've seen teams consider "culture" - will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery? - will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us? - is the candidate entertained by all t…

Is it discrimination if I own a company and only hire my friends who are into the same things as me? Serious question because I don't understand how that's different, if it is.

Yes. But then hiring itself is discriminatory unless it's random.. The whole point of interviews is to discriminate.

Back to the spirit of your question; it is legal discrimination. Frankly I support your ability to hire who you want at your company within legal bounds. I also support teams hiring people who will go to the pub so shrug.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#406

Post by Kiro »

hermannj314 wrote: post #399
Kiro wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it discrimination if I own a company and only hire my friends who are into the same things as me? Serious question because I don't understand how that's different, if it is.

If you are in the US, federal discrimination laws only apply if you have a certain number of employees. Your state may have a specific and more restrictive law, but you are free to be as discriminatory as you want until you have at least 15 employees (under Federal law). https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/small-business...

The difference between 15 and 20 on just age discrimination seems very arbitrary. How did they even come up with that instead of just putting it together with the rest of the stuff?

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#407

Post by brian_cunnie »

andrewzah wrote: post #182
throwaway894345 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. ... In Saudi Arabia? > It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known. It's common for men to talk down to men on video games too ("talk down to" is a very mild phrasing). Turns out there are a lot of jerks who…

"it's common for men to talk down to men on video games too" This is very tone deaf. I have spent probably thousands of hours playing games (with a mic) and the % of times I've been "talked down to" is very small, and it was never because of a natural property about me (that I'm male, etc). Literally every woman that I've played with who has used a mic or otherwise presented themselves as female has faced vitriolic h…

> every woman ... has vitriolic harassment faced (and/or sexual harassment).

I experienced being treated differently when I was playing a very attractive Blood Elf Warrior in World of Warcraft ten years ago: a fellow adventurer would continually give me gifts (valuable in-game items).

The third time this happened I realized he wasn't being generous—he was courting me! I had to come clean.

I messaged him, "Dude, I gotta tell ya: I'm not a girl in real life."

"You're not?"

"No, I'm a balding man in his mid-forties."

Long pause, and then he replied, "I gotta take a cold shower."

I never heard from him again, but he seemed like a nice guy who was trying to get a girlfriend by doing nice things for her, and I hope he found what he was looking for.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#408

Post by madamelic »

tsumnia wrote: post #302
andrewzah wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, those things exist. What I'm getting at is that the % of it that happens purely because I'm -male- (or another natural property about me) is basically zero. Either they're just being belligerent in general or they perceive me to be underperforming (rightly or wrongly). Whereas when I play with women who e.g. use a mic, very frequently it's like a switch gets flipped and people start being weird, overtly s…

> a switch gets flipped and people start being weird, overtly sexual, or just flat out insanely critical of every little thing the female players do I have no doubt that this occurs and I've even intervened in that type of behavior before; I think I hold more toward the "Greater Internet F---wad Theory" [1]. People will act like jerks and attack you for whatever traits you have. Adults trash talk 12 year olds; 12 yea…

The difference between "squeakies" is everyone was a squeakie at one point. It's basically an internet right-of-passage whether that is right or wrong.

Regardless, all squeakies get to stop being squeakies eventually. Women don't get that option. Women don't get to grow out of being women or being harassed for who they are.

I mean, I don't disagree with you that having a thick skin on the internet, but it's unfair that men get to make women feel unwelcome in online spaces simply for being women.

There's a large chasm between friendly teasing and harassment.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#409

Post by 908B64B197 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #370
908B64B197 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, that party and the people in charge of the "tech policy" are all Indians aren't they? [0][1] It makes sense they would pitch offshoring and low cost for programming since they saw it working for their country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagmeet_Singh [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navdeep_Bains

> Singh was born on January 2, 1979, in Scarborough district of Toronto, Ontario > Bains was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 16, 1977

Not sure what's the point being made

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_nationality_law#Citizen...

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#410

Post by cronix »

nineplay wrote: post #367
bennysomething wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I'm hiring someone at what point am I allowed to use my own personal discretion? Am I allowed to dislike someone? Am I allowed to say I don't like them so please don't hire them?

Why don't you like them _and_ which of those reasons will affect their job performance? Do they dismiss any approaches besides their own? Do they think mentoring is a waste of time? Do they think that their code is so obvious that there's no point in documenting? Do they think their code is so perfect that unit tests are unnecessary? These are good reasons to dislike someone and not hire them. Do you dislike them bec…

They made Steve Jobs work the graveyard shift at Atari because he stunk so bad (he'd go weeks without showering) no one wanted to work with him. That had nothing to do with his skills or job performance, but everything to do with disrupting the work environment to the point where others couldn't perform to the best of their ability.
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