Blizzard fires WoW Classic lead after he protests employee evaluation policy

[Jester Joe]

Jesus its scary how hardcore the american propaganda machine is in indoctrinating average people into servitude.

As soon as you say "capitalism is flawed" their blood pressure skyrockets and they start spewing red-white-&-blue dogma.

Third world countries have better worker rights than what goes on in Usa but the very victim of the flawed system is the first to defend his abusers, thanks to indoctrination.

I mean, maybe we're reading different threads, but most of the discussion seems to be who is actually at fault and who can fix it, not whether or not it's good, outside of one post.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

There’s a 0% chance we ever get the full 100% unbiased explanation on the situation. And it’s for that reason I don’t care, will continue playing the best expansion since Legion. Possibly MoP, but there was just so much good in legion.

And by doing that you are saying Blizzard's story is correct.

[Osmeric]

yeah but ive also never even heard of some one hiring low quality employees on purpose to fire them later via stack ranking.

I understand it was common at Microsoft (and Intel?). I mean, if you're a manager who's depending on certain people on your team, you want to ensure they don't get canned by this mechanism. So you hire some sacrificial bad employees who will reduce the chance they end up on the bottom.

[Cæli]

this will not end well.

[Jester Joe]

And by doing that you are saying Blizzard's story is correct.

I mean, the guy himself who was fired said he won't boycott and will continue to play Blizzard games because everyone he knew hated the policy.

I don't agree with the policy, but ultimately we're not the one who was affected most by this.

[unbound]

I understand it was common at Microsoft (and Intel?). I mean, if you're a manager who's depending on certain people on your team, you want to ensure they don't get canned by this mechanism. So you hire some sacrificial bad employees who will reduce the chance they end up on the bottom.

I've never seen that happen at any company, and I don't see how that would ever actually happen. Absolutely no company hires people just to hire them. You hire people for only 2 reasons: you have work for them to do, or you are replacing someone who has left. Now, when companies are starting to see work slow down, or they need to show better profits, then you will see people getting laid off, and that is where whatever ranking system you have will be utilized.

Some key things to understand:
- Most managers except the most seasoned ones think the people that work for them move the world (aka all rockstars).
- Ranking systems force such managers to actually consider which of their people are actually performing better than others.
- Every ranking system has serious flaws...mostly because of the first bullet but also because you never end up comparing apples to apples.
- Managers that have more connections or have better presence will do better for their people in ranking systems.
- Every employee thinks they are at least above average (Dunning-Kruger).

As a result, no one will ever be happy with any system that attempts to award based on merit. The fact that Blizzard (like all large corporations) are trying to be cheap with rewarding their employees appropriately is a separate issue. Unless you think everyone deserves exactly the same rewards when some work harder and perform better than others means there will always be some discrepancies in rewards regardless of capitalism or any other economic approach.

[Osmeric]

I've never seen that happen at any company, and I don't see how that would ever actually happen. Absolutely no company hires people just to hire them. You hire people for only 2 reasons: you have work for them to do, or you are replacing someone who has left.

I explained why it would be rational for a manager to hire someone for the reason I stated, so I'm not sure why you think it's not possible. Manager != company. The manager may do things to help his own situation, even if it negates the desired effect of a company policy.

[Hotmail]

I remember when Blizzard was a tightly knit group of devs or two who focused on cranking out blockbuster after blockbuster. Nowadays all you see is bullshit drama after drama. Funny what "corporification" does to a company.

[Twdft]

Another thing this does is encourage the hiring of bad people so they can be sacrificed at stack rank time, to protect the actual performers.

Well, looks like it's time to get a stack ranked job, do the bare minimum and squeeze money out of all the other employees over the year to get fired instead of them in the end!

I’m all for a rewarding environment with a good work/life balance, but unions lost their usefulness a long time ago.

It's a pity too many Americans are as brainwashed as you and your society can't get strong unions. While Germans have a minimum of 20 days paid vacation a year mandated by federal law (I have 30) and can't be fired for calling in sick among a lot of other benefits, all because of unions.

[Relapses]

It's a pity too many Americans are as brainwashed as you and your society can't get strong unions. While Germans have a minimum of 20 days paid vacation a year mandated by federal law (I have 30) and can't be fired for calling in sick among a lot of other benefits, all because of unions.

Christ.

Meanwhile when I was managing a call center with 200 employees I was terming 70-year-old grandmas who missed a few days due to life-saving surgery which just happened to fall on busy Holidays they required us to work. 'murica, fuck yeah!

[Nzx]

Perfectly spoken by someone who has never worked within the corporate world to see how degenerate this type of behaviour and performance appraisals actually are. Good on ya kiddo!

I've led through dozens of annual reviews in curved workplaces and never once have I needed to grade an individual as non-performing. I've been challenged on my decision to call people performing by other managers and had to defend it, but I've not failed to do so. This is what managing a team and being prepared to go to bat for your employees looks like, and it requires constant regular check-ins with your people to ensure none of them are falling behind and an intrinsic knowledge backed by verifiable evidence of their contribution that you're willing to present when necessary.

There's a lot of whining in this thread about how a policy like this incentivizes you undercutting your team mates and making them look worse, which I think only really demonstrates that most of you are insecure about your performance - which would explain a lot about why people are so mad about a policy where you can't just be your boss' friend and have them skate you through all your reviews. All of this comes down to managing your team properly. No one should be surprised about their rating at the end of the year.

never worked within the corporate world

lul thanks mmo-c, never change

I explained why it would be rational for a manager to hire someone for the reason I stated, so I'm not sure why you think it's not possible. Manager != company. The manager may do things to help his own situation, even if it negates the desired effect of a company policy.

Man, not even close. You've never hired anyone if you think it works like this.

[Nymrohd]

I've been slowly realizing what this means over the last few years, and it's a grim outlook for any of these companies IMO. They get caught in an endless cycle of trying to cannibalize themselves to inflate their profit numbers as much as possible.

See this isn't entirely true. There are strategic investors who invest because they believe in long term growth and expect to hold a stock for years and take dividends or sell out for cashflow reasons later on. But yes, there is an ever greater number of "investors" who are just there for short term profit, looking for an arbitrage opportunity or just sampling for diversification. The issue here is that extensive deregulation has made this a very profitable practice. Between ever improving fintech and lack of regulation, the cost of acting this way is growing ever smaller.
So the solution is just more regulation (or at least getting back to the regulation we once had). Not just to increase transaction costs but mainly to fix the perverse incentive of CEO shortterminism.

[Icechaosss]

I've led through dozens of annual reviews in curved workplaces and never once have I needed to grade an individual as non-performing. I've been challenged on my decision to call people performing by other managers and had to defend it, but I've not failed to do so. This is what managing a team and being prepared to go to bat for your employees looks like, and it requires constant regular check-ins with your people to ensure none of them are falling behind and an intrinsic knowledge backed by verifiable evidence of their contribution that you're willing to present when necessary.

There's a lot of whining in this thread about how a policy like this incentivizes you undercutting your team mates and making them look worse, which I think only really demonstrates that most of you are insecure about your performance - which would explain a lot about why people are so mad about a policy where you can't just be your boss' friend and have them skate you through all your reviews. All of this comes down to managing your team properly. No one should be surprised about their rating at the end of the year.



lul thanks mmo-c, never change



Man, not even close. You've never hired anyone if you think it works like this.

You really didn't read any of the thread or reasons why he left, did ya?

[Mamushi]

I've led through dozens of annual reviews in curved workplaces and never once have I needed to grade an individual as non-performing. I've been challenged on my decision to call people performing by other managers and had to defend it, but I've not failed to do so. This is what managing a team and being prepared to go to bat for your employees looks like, and it requires constant regular check-ins with your people to ensure none of them are falling behind and an intrinsic knowledge backed by verifiable evidence of their contribution that you're willing to present when necessary.

So what would you do then when you are actually forced to grade someone as non-performing even though their difference in performance compared to other team members is not easily discernible (in most situations you just can't compare the work results of people with absolute objectivity). Would you flip a coin to pick the non-performers or perhaps pick them based on how well they get along with you?

I personally don't think that it's fair to disproportionately punish someone for performing only 1% (as an example) worse than the rest of the team members even if you could measure everyone's performance perfectly.

[Mace]

I agree with the last part of what you said (and pretty said exactly that myself in a post elsewhere in this thread); but I personally believe that without the incentive for corporations to seek profit over all else that such policies would never even be considered. So yeah, this is a bad execution of capitalism but capitalism is still to blame.

I don't think it's the corporation objective to be profitable that's at fault but rather the stock in which the humans working there, or rather running it, put in said profits. A corporation exists to be profitable, but humans do not.

When humans lose the objectivity and holistic birds eye view of life - i.e. wisdom, then they sink to sub human void less pursuits of profit above all else, which is basically a form of greed.

Greed is the problem here, - just like in wow people get sucked into a dps race, where everything else loses meaning and thus even perspective, to the end goal of flogging out the highest numbers (here it's vanity, not greed, - but the vanity would lead to greed, like need rolling on an item that gives you +2 stats over someone you know it will give +100). So too they now et sucked in to just getting more wealth, money and slave drive everyone in that pursuit,

Compromising moral integrity in such pursuits, taking it well beyond what it should be. A sane and wise system would never agree to stack -ranking, and would spot the flaws despite the apparent productivity increase. But without such perspectives, these people ignore.


I just see them as college kids in charge of big companies, running lives like exercise papers, and not caring because you know "we're a company and we are here to make money" the excuse that is touted often as you ignore sanity , responsibility, humanity and ultimately wisdom.

[Triceron]

And by doing that you are saying Blizzard's story is correct.

I don't get people who think this way.

Like if your house got broken into and you call the police for help, it doesn't equate to you supporting police brutality. It's two different things, even if you want to equate all problems deriving from the same system.

[Osmeric]

Man, not even close. You've never hired anyone if you think it works like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

According to one source,[36] by 1996 Microsoft had already adopted a stack ranking system which led managers to deliberately retain subpar staff in order to keep their higher performers:

Microsoft managers are generally supposed to allocate reviews according to the following ratios: 25 percent get 3.0 or lower; 40 percent get 3.5; and 35 percent get 4.0 or better. Employees with too many successive 3.0 reviews are given six months to find another position in the company or face termination. A manager who is top-heavy with valuable or talented people doesn't want to be forced to give them 3.0 reviews. So these managers kept a few extra slabs of deadwood around so as to save the higher reviews for the employees they want to keep.

[cLax0n]

Did you miss the part where this strategy/policy has been denounced by many, many companies? Microsoft tried it in 2012. They saw people sabotaging each other's projects and withhold information from each other so that THEY are not the lowest 5%. Microsoft scrapped this by 2013. Noone said anything about managing people correctly. Simply the fact that you need to grade someone badly BECAUSE there is a quota and the "Worst performing 5%" needs to be "disciplined" is asinine. Also, do me a favour will ya. Quantify for me the hours of work a developer puts in a video game. Is it lines of code? Assets created? Tooltips edited? Number of bug fixes?

Your "theory" works only in like...a factory. That produces chairs. And you can clearly grade your employees performance, since it is simply "How many chairs did X make?" But for coding? Game development? Not that simple my dude.

This reminds me a bit of some educational institutions that decide to "Grade on a bell-shaped curve" (damn idiots don't even call it by its real name, the Normal Distribution). You know what that means? Doesn't matter if the whole class scored 90%+ in an exam. The students who scored in the 90's and 91's are gonna get a fail. Because they are the lowest of the bunch. Even though they answered 90% of the questions correctly. So, when you "grade on a bell-shaped curve", you can give actual F's to people who scored 90%. Let that sink in a little. You can FAIL a student who studied, learned the material and answered NINETY PER CENT of the questions correctly. Sounds stupid, no?

Before you call me an unemployed teenager, I'm a 31yr old Economist with a Master's degree in my field who works in Asset Management.

I'm bumping this post up for more visibility because I agree with it completely.

[Dystemper]

Read the article first, it's not Blizzard. It's ABK policies forced on Blizzard developers. Also, from his own Twitter:

"Brian Birmingham

At this point Blizzard is Activision

[VinceVega]

It is a stupid system no one likes.

BUT this was mandated by ABK. Not Blizzard. He even said that himself in his Twitter Thread. Ybarra has to follow suit as much as anyone else there.

My father was a school principal in germany and had to do the same with his teachers and he HATED it.
So he talked with them and they implemented a rotation so each year someone else gets the low score. He wasn't really allowed to do it but could not give any of them a really bad mark because he had no bad teachers at his school... and even IF he had them it is a shitty thing to do.

Really fucked up. Capitalism at its peak. Play the employees against each other. Like when your employer gets angry when people talk about their monthly earnings.


BUT: Blizzard is not the only one doing this. This is a normal practice in basically every bigger company. It IS a bit... hypocritical to shit on ABK for this and then go one and play HALO or FF14 (i don't know if they do it, but japanese companies are even worse when it comes to employer evaluation and suck ups)