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Six Months at Riot Games

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Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#71

Post by almostCEO »

zimablue wrote: post #56

Looking at this skeptically, given that as she says she put a target on her own back there's not much concrete here about problems she personally faced. Companies have a culture, it might not be your culture, and it's mental to expect to be able to walk in and attack it in the first six months then everything be sweetness and joy. Joining a gaming company and complaining about female outfits is roughly equivalent to…

I am sorry to see your comment in gray. I was heavily downvoted as well, but I share your views fully. The counter-example of a female-dominated environment is food for thought. At work, I just avoid women altogether and go for lunch with guys so I can say almost anything without offending anyone.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#72

Post by PakG1 »

shawn wrote: post #53
adn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current CEO of S2, Marc DeForest, has said incredibly racist things in the chat of HoN.

Yeah... all I can say is, he doesn’t speak for anyone except himself.

That's unfortunately not how being the top leader works. Although I suppose you could say recent events in the world say otherwise.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#73

Post by alexgmcm »

madengr wrote: post #51

Why isn’t the “bro culture” being weeded out of tech at the university stage. Bros’ and frat boys don’t make it through electrical engineering; they flunk out, at least from my experience. I don’t work with anyone like that. What’s wrong with the tech sector when it comes to computer science? Maybe the science is no longer required?

I doubt many of the senior managers mentioned have CS degrees.

It's like the old joke about the limit of Engineering as GPA tends to zero is Business Administration.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#74

Post by lmm »

EliRivers wrote: post #28
xsace wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am simply surprised they manage to produce anything at all in such a culture, let alone a hit game. The same culture you can find in Holywood, where hundreds of successful movies with unrivaled popular impact were produced.

You seem to be suggesting that such a culture is not an impediment to success, based on the existence of some success. I could blindfold myself and throw darts at a board. The fact that I hit the board sometimes doesn't mean that the blindfold isn't an impediment. Many more movies fail before even reaching the screen. Just because we see some success doesn't mean that the culture isn't an impediment to success. Perha…

If you won competitive darts championships while blindfolded, that would suggest the blindfold wasn't an impediment.

Given how long the movie industry has been around and how many studios have gone bankrupt through competition, I would think that any cultures that significantly impeded productivity would have been stamped out by now.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#76

Post by pmyteh »

Uberphallus wrote: post #49
unstableph wrote: post #2

>At Riot, employees are encouraged to play League before/after work, or during lunch. My very first week at the Dublin office, I heard shouting from individuals playing together, calling each other “f ggots” repeatedly. I was unnerved, but it was my first week and I didn’t know if this was a common occurrence. I didn’t say anything at that time. Eventually, the language would escalate to “n gger”. No one flinched, an…

I agree with you. And the fact that this was posted on Tumblr including a Content Warning only adds icing to this ironic cake. To those who disagree, lemme put it this way: it's not only videogame culture, it is plain old trash talk. Boxing, basketball, soccer, UFC, tennis, you name it, you have it in most competitive sports. It shocks pretty much anyone who hasn't taken part in a competitive sport/e-sport community…

It's absolutely LGBT-phobic. Do you know how many out gay professional footballers there are in the UK? Zero. Because the atmosphere around sexuality in professional football is sufficiently toxic that very few people are willing to come out before they retire.

These things can change. Thirty years ago black players had bananas thrown at them on the pitch. After a lot of work, racism is now rare at football grounds, and generally stamped on when it appears. We could do the same with anti-gay slurs too, if we cared enough.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#77

Post by michaelcampbell »

madengr wrote: post #51

Why isn’t the “bro culture” being weeded out of tech at the university stage. Bros’ and frat boys don’t make it through electrical engineering; they flunk out, at least from my experience. I don’t work with anyone like that. What’s wrong with the tech sector when it comes to computer science? Maybe the science is no longer required?

> What’s wrong with the tech sector when it comes to computer science? Maybe the science is no longer required?

That's part of it. I'm a CS grad, but I'm "rare" in my circle. Some of it comes from this "natural born programmer genius" vibe.

Don't misread me, I work with some truly talented programmers that weren't CS and some mediocre ones that were, but it has gotten to the point where people are specifically looking at degrees that aren't CS for dev jobs.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#78

Post by pjc50 »

Uberphallus wrote: post #49
unstableph wrote: post #2

>At Riot, employees are encouraged to play League before/after work, or during lunch. My very first week at the Dublin office, I heard shouting from individuals playing together, calling each other “f ggots” repeatedly. I was unnerved, but it was my first week and I didn’t know if this was a common occurrence. I didn’t say anything at that time. Eventually, the language would escalate to “n gger”. No one flinched, an…

I agree with you. And the fact that this was posted on Tumblr including a Content Warning only adds icing to this ironic cake. To those who disagree, lemme put it this way: it's not only videogame culture, it is plain old trash talk. Boxing, basketball, soccer, UFC, tennis, you name it, you have it in most competitive sports. It shocks pretty much anyone who hasn't taken part in a competitive sport/e-sport community…

Football (soccer) is probably a poor choice of analogy, given that it has a reputation for racism - everything from bananas thown at players to blaming "immigrants" for team failures. Or even for successes - there were people complaining that the winning French team wasn't white enough.

There are no "out" male professional footballers. This is statistically implausible; the homophobia is sufficiently bad that they have to remain closeted for their career and maybe safety.

Football fans also occasionally produce "ultras" notorious for physical violence: fights with each other and the police, which can be fatal.

And here in Scotland, we've the joy of sectarianism added to the mix as well, with cheerful songs about Fenian blood.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#79

Post by ecshafer »

lsmarigo wrote: post #40

Interesting that this one is doing well compared to the longer in-depth kotaku article a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710188 - fwiw that piece has since been corroborated by a ton of former riot employees on twitter. At the risk of sounding overly cynical, this is all true and everyone knows about it, people feign disgust at these articles but we're all complicit and understanding that this is…

This isn't the way things are though, at least no where I've worked. I work in the finance industry as a software developer and if any of that stuff happened, there would be a huge outcry and some serious reprimands and firings.

In most of America things are nothing like that. These are immature people that got lucky and rich and still act like frat boys.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#80

Post by almostCEO »

anentropic wrote: post #66
almostCEO wrote: post #48

A woman writes a post saying she’s offended by typical male jokes. The majority of employees are male, but they have to instead adapt to the vocal minority that can’t take a dick joke. I understand there are idiots but stories like this encourages me to never hire women, because they’re obviously over-sensitive and will at some point write a “I have been offended and this company is sexist” post and nobody will quest…

> stories like this encourages me to never hire women maybe you're just an asshole

Thank you for your respectful response. I’d like to say that, if you were in charge of hiring people, you’d try to calculate the risks when hiring someone. Hiring a women is unfortunately way too risky. You can find dozens of these posts with no proof whatsoever, but people will believe them and support the writer no matter what (some people even go and insult like you, because they can’t handle people having different opinions).
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