WoW Classic Lead Developer Leaves Blizzard over Stack-Ranking Policy

[AlexeiPavlov]

Just never work for corporations. Easy.

PS: Not giving Blizzard a penny for several month already.

[Feeline10]

Sadly this is the outcome when greedy executives who only care about profits and ratings clash with the people who actually care about the games they're developing and making more profit is not their first priority.

Profit is still everyone's first priority from the janitor up to Bobby Kotick - but I believe (naively?) it can be done without terrible tactics like stack-ranking.

[Ragedaug]

Stacked Ranking = "we don't trust our managers to give honest reviews, so every team gets rated on a scale".

One of the things I hate most about corporatocrisy. I worked in a large Level 1 team at a support center, where the top 10% got promoted to the Level 2 team, to basically be available to help the folks in the Level 1 team. Every single person on the Level 2 team received the highest evaluations every year they were at Level 1. But now that we got promoted, the bottom 20% of the Level 2 team were going to receive "needs improvement" regardless of how good they performed. And if you get a "needs improvement" 2 years in a row, they put you on an "Improvement Plan", where if you don't show improvement, you get fired...keeping in mind, they would be firing you while knowing you are still a superior employee than the 90% still at Level 1.

So the rules basically had the managers rotating the "needs improvement" folks every year, so they didn't have to fire anyone, which also made the ranking system completely self defeating. This is what happens when the executives hire folks good at networking, instead of folks good at their job, to management.

[meowfurion]

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.

I see what you're doing.

You're attributing piss poor management practices to capitalism.

Sortof like blaming a highway because there are drunk drivers on it.

[Zaqwert]

The firing is prob bad looks but from what Ive read he just straight up stop working? Like I am not sure what he was expecting, you need to drum up some support from your peers if you are going to do something like this.

Hopefully he can get his job back now that everythings come to light

I think the stacked ranking system is pretty stupid as well but if you check out this person's twitter bio it's clear he is completely insufferable and probably a gigantic headache to have around. If he wasn't making a big stink about this policy it would be something else. Blizzard is better off without him and he's better off not working for a big corporation, he needs to find something that gels with his "values" better.

[bullseyed]

Why do facts matter?

Because... they do.

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I'd like to see your breakdown on how stack ranking isn't a capitalist thing. It was introduced and coined by Microsoft

Fake news.

Stack ranking has received continuous criticism since General Electric popularized it in the 1980s.

If you don't even know Neutron Jack and GE, chances are you know absolutely nothing about management and business.

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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.

Correct. The issue here is quotas, not stack ranking.

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Theres already a LoL mmo in the works and its the most excited ive been for one in a long long time. Greg Street is actually the lead on it as well

The guy who almost managed to kill WoW.

Inherited TBC and WotLK and made Cata, Mists and WoD.

[Relapses]

Because... they do.

He left Blizzard, what "fact" is being obfuscated here?

[Oneirophobia]

I see what you're doing.

You're attributing piss poor management practices to capitalism.

Ah yes, it is not the ecosystem encouraging and enabling these piss-poor management practices. Perhaps it is the managers themselves who implement evil practices and definitely not in pursuit of capital? I'm sure it's entirely a coincidence.

Sortof like blaming a highway because there are drunk drivers on it.

No, I'm blaming the system that allows drive-throughs which offer free shots of tequila all along the highway.

Y'all die-on-this-hill capitalists are getting just as bad as the communists. The "that isn't REAL capitalism!" stuff is getting nuts. Whether we like it or not, this is capitalism and it is definitely the shittiest system we can operate under (just as long we don't compare it to every other system ). We humans are unquenchable assholes and capitalism just isn't designed well enough to accommodate that.