Blizzard fires WoW Classic lead after he protests employee evaluation policy

[Shadowferal]

That particular evaluation policy is at least a decade old. They need a better policy.

[Flurryfang]

It seems strange that he was fired. Its a lot more beneficial for Blizzard to let him quit himself. Combined with the fact the evaluation policy is standard not just for tech companies these days, seems like there was a lot going on behind the scenes to warrant an actual firing.

The situation was properly that he said he would not do it, they said he has to or he would be fired, he still refused, met the final deadline and was fired as part of an ultimatum. I would call it a soft-firing, as he really decided for himself if he wanted to stay or not.

[loras]

Most universities grade on a curve it isn't just a law thing I think all faculties do barring maybe mathematics.

I don't really get the outrage... why wouldn't you want to replace your weaker employees with stronger new hires?

Seriously? No wonder the practical quality has stagnated.

I mean you do realisr you're not getting any better employees with such a policy, just better swindlers and saboteurs in higher places, right?
It filters out honest people that are either unwilling or unable to game the system, especially as the swindlers and saboteurs previously mentioned feel threatened most of all by people if genuine quality that might inadvertedly reveal them.

Competition is not a bad thing, but it needs careful management if it is to produce anything more useful than a mess.

[Tentim]

Seriously? No wonder the practical quality has stagnated.

I mean you do realisr you're not getting any better employees with such a policy, just better swindlers and saboteurs in higher places, right?
It filters out honest people that are either unwilling or unable to game the system, especially as the swindlers and saboteurs previously mentioned feel threatened most of all by people if genuine quality that might inadvertedly reveal them.

Competition is not a bad thing, but it needs careful management if it is to produce anything more useful than a mess.

I can't really chip in without insider knowledge on if it was fair or not. All I have to go on is one manager thinking it wasn't fair. It very well could of been and these employees could of been underperforming.

[Oakshana]

Not everything is racist, little busybody. Its about polish private servers because the biggest private servers are polish. Their Homepage ends on .pl.

I played the shit out of those servers and they had a good amount of bugs but I think classic is worse. Also private servers ban bots pretty quickly. I dont know if anyone has been to outland recently but there are a lot of DKs with strange movement there.

That's well and fine. But I would wager MOST people don't know this, and your tone spoke differently. It came off derisive. I'm polish. And I have spent the better part of my life battling with bullshit like that. Hence why i asked, because it didn't seem anything more than belligerent to poles. So, you can fuck RIGHT the hell off with the "little busybody" bullshit.

This thread is getting derailed into unrelated and tangential arguments. Return to the topic at hand, and let's drop the nation-bashing and interpersonal snark.

Sorry Aucald. I didn't see this until after the fact. But my feelings still stand.

However, I am done with it.

[Nymrohd]

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.

This is not capitalism at its peak. This is bureaucracy at its peak. The same system could absolutely be implemented in a socialist system; evaluations exist in either system. The problem here is with how large organizations with vertical structures manage people, not with labour as a market.
The purpose of the system seems to be to normalize and restrict wage growth so that it is predictable (because I call bullshit on the system ever improving productivity). That doesn't have to be a goal of capitalism because if the system reduces productivity (it likely does, especially in this kind of company), both revenue and profit could be depressed; if the purpose of capitalism is profit then COMPETENT capitalists take that into account. This type of incompetence is much more about office politics than the pursuit of wealth.

You have every right to be angry with capitalism and its failures, just understand and attribute things properly. The failings of bureaucracy are well known (heck they are a big part of the reason why USSR socialism failed) and at its core capitalism is opposed to them since it prefers leaner, horizontal organizational structures.

[MoanaLisa]

Most universities grade on a curve it isn't just a law thing I think all faculties do barring maybe mathematics.

The nature of teams in an IT environment doesn't resemble university classes though, never mind that designing/coding a project is nothing at all like taking a test. Stacked ranking might have a chance to work with very large teams but when teams are atomized into very small groups with a limited scope it's likely that there wouldn't be a clear 50%-100% spread that could easily be ascertained.

In an earlier post I stated that stacked ranking is an idea that has been around for a while, has been debunked in many business environments as an inadequate tool for assessing performance and leads to bad employee outcomes when roughly similar jobs become competitive among team members because there will be winners and losers within the team. Better to roughly grade the team's performance as a whole and then assign a percentage raise/bonus based on that. That's by no means perfect but at least it fosters a team attitude among members. Some variation of pass/fail might also work. I think it's a terrible idea to put your team members in a zero-sum competition for reviews. That will never end well. One example: What if one team member decides to take on a ton of overtime and essentially behaves as if their piece of a project is in crunch all the time. What is everyone else supposed to do? Hell, we still see debunked IT metrics such as code lines written which will only lead to bloated inefficient crap code.

[Tuor]

The wholle problem explained...

[Katchii]

The nature of teams in an IT environment doesn't resemble university classes though, never mind that designing/coding a project is nothing at all like taking a test. Stacked ranking might have a chance to work with very large teams but when teams are atomized into very small groups with a limited scope it's likely that there wouldn't be a clear 50%-100% spread that could easily be ascertained.

In an earlier post I stated that stacked ranking is an idea that has been around for a while, has been debunked in many business environments as an inadequate tool for assessing performance and leads to bad employee outcomes when roughly similar jobs become competitive among team members because there will be winners and losers within the team. Better to roughly grade the team's performance as a whole and then assign a percentage raise/bonus based on that. That's by no means perfect but at least it fosters a team attitude among members. Some variation of pass/fail might also work. I think it's a terrible idea to put your team members in a zero-sum competition for reviews. That will never end well. One example: What if one team member decides to take on a ton of overtime and essentially behaves as if their piece of a project is in crunch all the time. What is everyone else supposed to do? Hell, we still see debunked IT metrics such as code lines written which will only lead to bloated inefficient crap code.

Bottom line for me is that work should not be "graded" like a class or test. You either did the job and tasks you were assigned, performed your assigned role, or you didn't. Your skill level and willingness to work over time to get more done shouldn't make other employees look bad in comparison, it should simply reflect that YOU did more.

Employees were ALREADY hired based on their skill set, so grading them on how good or bad they do regarding that after the fact seems stupid. However, if they can't complete the work they were given because they don't actually HAVE the skill set that's another discussion.

Employee 1 is given tasks a, b and c Employee 2 is given tasks d, e and f Employee 3 is given tasks g, h and i, and so on (with some overlap obviously). Grading Employee 2 poorly because employee 1 Not only did a, b and c but also x, y and z while helping with d, e and f is dumb. Employee 2 was only ever expected to do their assigned goals. If they did them, they performed their job adequately. Employee 1 should be recognized for their efforts, but employee 2 and 3 should not be punished for it.

Stacked ranking is designed to do exactly that; punish employees that are doing exactly what they're supposed to do because they're being compared to people who have no idea what work life balance is. It's completely unfair and totally unhealthy for long term employee retention and their mental health.

[Utrrabbit]

But Blizzard still has agency here. Blizzard is the Blizzard in Activision Blizzard, accounting for about 20% of the company's financials. Ybarra has the power to put his foot down. Yeah, maybe they didn't make the policy, but I think we ruled out "just following orders" as a valid excuse back in 1945.

Actually NO they do not. Blizzard is NOT the blizzard in ABK, that is an entirely seperate enity. I know it is confusing but ABK owns blizzard they aren't partners.

When Activision aquired Blizzard they could not get all of it. Blizzard still holds 20% of their shares. ABK was built because of this and oversees Activisionb, Blizzard and King. ABK is the top dog and overseas the 3 studios under it.

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It seems strange that he was fired. Its a lot more beneficial for Blizzard to let him quit himself. Combined with the fact the evaluation policy is standard not just for tech companies these days, seems like there was a lot going on behind the scenes to warrant an actual firing.

Blizzard never fired him ABK did. ABK and blizzard are not the same company. ABK owns Blizzard. He said so himself all the devs at blizzard are against the policy. Even mike ybarra is against it. He also said if they could he would return to blizzard. I do not think he would say this if blizzard fired him.

[Linkedblade]

I already knew this would happen. The increased "oversight" from being corporate human resources and then the additional "diversity and equity" teams only leads to nepotism. The people making these decisions, about promotions/raises, have zero knowledge of the what the business does.

I'm not even sure what is being actively developed at blizzard. Everything seems to been in the works for some time and they are slowly trickling the content over months. Patches have been a dumpster fire as well. It really seems like chatgpt does it.

[Utrrabbit]

Didi you read the quote that I first responded to at all? That person literally said that 3rd world countries had better workers rights than the US. That is blatantly false. 3rd world countries have no workers rights at all. I am calling out a blatantly false claim. Nothing more.

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I guarnatee you that Bobby Kotick would tell him. YOu know the CEO of ABK. If Ybarra tried to tell Kotick that , Kotick would tell him, "do that and you can clean out your office". Ybarra does not have the power you think he has.

People do not realize Ybarra is the president of blizzard kotick is the ceo of ABK. That is like comparing a mayor of a city to the president of the entire country.

[VoidDrake]

Typical toxic blizzard still being toxic to employees

I assume you never worked anywhere, judging by your comment.