WoW Classic Lead Developer Leaves Blizzard over Stack-Ranking Policy

[Alvito]

This sort of corporate game-playing sickens me. Employees should be reviewed fairly, and plainly. If they meet goals, they meet goals. If they exceed, they exceed. There should be no quotas. If someone underperforms they should have chances to step up, but if not, they get let go. If someone goes above and beyond they should be recognized. THIS IS A SIMPLE SYSTEM.

Leave it to ABK management to muck it up. It's gross what has happened to what was one of the titans of the industry. They fuck up and try to bury the rampant deviancy crawling through the company and just when you think they've cleaned that up and maybe made a non-hostile work environment... they pull this bullshit.

It is very common with large companies. With so many teams stretched globally they try to come up with some sort of metric to measure or assign quality work and employees. I have sat in on far too many meetings as we all fight for our employees to be ranked at one tier and based on that tier deserve "x" compensation. Easily one of my least favorite parts of the job and why I cannot wait to retire or go out on my own again.

[Oneirophobia]

Tell us all you don't understand capitalism without telling us all you don't understand capitalism.

I'd like to see your breakdown on how stack ranking isn't a capitalist thing. It was introduced and coined by Microsoft as a way to rotate out perfectly adequate or even excellent high-performing employees who have "over" stayed long enough to earn better pay and/or benefits. You can't (usually) get away with canning a great employee under the justification that you're paying them too much in benefits or they've earned too high of a pay without legal trouble and/or chasing away new hires who may be applying specifically to work towards the higher pay or the benefits.
Stack ranking allows you to "bell curve" out your highest earners/longest running employees under the guise of arbitrary stats you get to make up per eval (depending on policy). Even if all your employees perform ahead of everybody else in their whole field, you still get to apply the ol' "well we have 8 slots for perfection and 2 slots for 'getting fired', so naturally we will place our highest earners in the bottom so we can get rid of them". This also encourages the "hire to fire" mindset among managers who will literally keep 2 (or more, depending) slots on rotate in their teams so they can keep their competent or preferred members and axe two randoms each evaluation cycle - IE soft neopotism. On top of that, it turns teams into viper pits where employees don't have to "outrun the bear", they just have to "outrun their coworkers" - leads to all sorts of nasty project sabotage, reporting, team-ruining behavior in the name of job salvation.

Stack ranking is 100% a capitalist wet dream. It also doesn't work in the long run, which is another direct hint about its nature.

[Relapses]

This guy is never going to find another job in the industry if he airs out dirty laundry when fired. The idiot had 15 years to open up and spill all and only waited to get back out of spite. Fuck blizzard and this guy in particular.

If you're so horny for capitalism that you consider exposing a degenerate, dehumanizing system like stack-ranking "dirty laundry" then yeah. But back here in the real world, most rational people can see the obvious problems with this system and (rightfully) laud his efforts to bring attention to it. Not many people are willing to give up their livelihood and a job they seem to love based solely on a principle. I do not foresee him having any difficulty at all finding work in the games industry after this. (Also, might want to check your reading comprehension because this system was only implemented in 2021.)

[Jester Joe]

Also, might want to check your reading comprehension because this system was only implemented in 2021.

And to tack onto that if I'm understanding the situation right, they didn't enforce it until this year either.

[Absintheminded]

Stacked ranking isn't necessarily the problem, it's the fact that there has to be a certain number of unders performing employees. It's asinine and arbitrary. And greedy. F ABK still in 2023.

[Xorzor]

Blizzard are scumbag losers who deserve lethal and unmerciful punishment for firing someone who wouldn't dehumanise other employees all for some arbitrary nonsense. I actually want Dragonflight to fail now. It will be hilarious to see their flagship game crash and burn again.

[Osmeric]

Haven't posted on here in ages but this piqued my interest.

Can someone explain to me as if I'm a 12-yr-old what this policy is as it's the first time I'm learning about it?

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

[ParanoiD84]

Not surprised at all anymore after all that's happened. Good for him though.

[Biomega]

The issue with this poor metaphor is that it ignores the protest leader had the option to stick around and keep protesting rather than being arrested, something he openly admits to in his tweet.

That's still in the analogy. Nobody said he couldn't protest, just not in THAT AREA.

Same here - they didn't say he couldn't protest, just that he couldn't protest by not working. If you want to change the protest analogy to more closely match this, you can; in fact there's plenty of real-world examples for this in topless protesting. Which is exactly this: they can protest, just not in that way. And rather than putting their shirts back on (and continuing their protest) they often choose to be arrested instead to make a statement.

[slickyjohn]

"Straight white male. Feminist. LGBTQIA ally. He/Him. BLM."

this makes him sound like a virtue signaller, but blizzard is still dying.

[Teucer]

If you think the content and quality of Blizzard games are bad now, wait until after they unionize. I'd bet, any amount of money you want, that in 10-15 years after unionization, they go bankrupt, or Blizzard gets sold away from Activision. 100%. You saw what happened after Microsoft unionized, first step, lay off 10,000 people. Yeah, that will help the company do better right?

Damn why you hate unions so much, hate people not being exploited by companies?

hilarious if you think that 300 employees unionizing at a Microsoft game studio led to them firing 10,000 unrelated people

[Daedius]

"Leaves" ? Fired, no?

[slickyjohn]

Stack ranking is 100% a capitalist wet dream. It also doesn't work in the long run, which is another direct hint about its nature.

wouldn't a smart capitalist want a system that works well long term?

[ONCHEhap]

wouldn't a smart capitalist want a system that works well long term?

That's not how it works in practice. Shareholders want maximum profit in the shortest term possible. Doesn't matter if it ruins everything in the long run as they can just leave and go do the same somewhere else. That's quite literally how the entire economic system of the western world (the US especially) is designed

[Toshirouu]

That's not how it works in practice. Shareholders want maximum profit in the shortest term possible. Doesn't matter if it ruins everything in the long run as they can just leave and go do the same somewhere else. That's quite literally how the entire economic system of the western world (the US especially) is designed

Just to tack on to this point, its not limited to grubby rich shareholders. A lot of people see this as just people piling on the eat the rich sentiment and dismiss it.

If anyone puts stock in something, even if it's not their expectation, they know the best thing that could happen is that stock swell up in price and they sell big. If that company crashes after.. see above's point. Whether you invest 100 bucks, or represent a collection of rich people who put billions in. It's all the same principal.

[Logwyn]

Let’s pretend you have to give evaluations to 100 people under this system. Five of those people HAVE to get a failing grade, even if they did nothing wrong.

Those five people effected will be hampered financially.

People think that companies are some benevolent entity that is less corrupt and looking out for everyone when in fact if it were a government. We be calling them totalitarians regimes that need to be stopped.

[Hitei]

That's still in the analogy. Nobody said he couldn't protest, just not in THAT AREA.

Same here - they didn't say he couldn't protest, just that he couldn't protest by not working. If you want to change the protest analogy to more closely match this, you can; in fact there's plenty of real-world examples for this in topless protesting. Which is exactly this: they can protest, just not in that way. And rather than putting their shirts back on (and continuing their protest) they often choose to be arrested instead to make a statement.

He didn't choose to be fired to make a statement though, his opening sentence was to flat out state that he hadn't intended to make the situation public, but other places heard about it and started making it a statement, so then he felt the need to clarify things, including that he didn't even really agree with the dumb "martyrdom" strategy and would rather still be employed and protesting from inside.

He didn't put the shirt back on because he didn't feel comfortable wearing it, not because it was statement.

People think that companies are some benevolent entity that is less corrupt and looking out for everyone when in fact if it were a government. We be calling them totalitarians regimes that need to be stopped.

Because if it were a government they'd be operating via laws and actually forcing people to do things under threat of violence or penal punishment. If you could just choose not to follow a government's mandates the way that you can just choose not to buy a company's products or work for them, far fewer people would take issue with problematic regimes. The key word there is totalitarian.

[Biomega]

He didn't choose to be fired to make a statement though, his opening sentence was to flat out state that he hadn't intended to make the situation public

Doesn't have to be an explicit statement to be a statement. Actions speak, too, whether we intend them to or not. I'm sure his goal wasn't to publicly broadcast this - but that isn't required for someone to be making a statement with their actions. Even if he wasn't SAYING IN PUBLIC "I value my integrity more than my job", that's what his actions EFFECTIVELY communicated.

[slickyjohn]

That's not how it works in practice. Shareholders want maximum profit in the shortest term possible. Doesn't matter if it ruins everything in the long run as they can just leave and go do the same somewhere else. That's quite literally how the entire economic system of the western world (the US especially) is designed

fuck the shareholders then. if you look at the really successful companies, they set themselves up for the long game.
would you rather own shares of a company that goes for a quick buck or shares of a company that is building a monster?

[diller]

It's disingenuous to say that he left though because it makes him sound like a martyr, where in reality he threatened the company, they fired him, he took a 180 and tried to say he would like to be rehired to fight it from the inside.

What he did MAKES him a martyr, do you even know what the word means?

He died (got fired) for a cause that he wouldn't back down on - in fact if he had left on his own he wouldn't have been a martyr.