A Letter From CEO Bobby Kotick Regarding Progress and Commitments Made at Acti-Blizz

[glowpipe]

I don't think non-binary people dispute there are only two biological sexes? (I hope anyway, ha)

Non-binary is that they don't identify with either of them.

But then we have people who identify with either of them, and the people who don't. Thus making them binary again. checkmate

[GreenJesus]

Lol you cant make this shit up. Bobby Kotick releases this PR statement and then immediately after they announce a new store mount.

[ClassicPeon]

non binary in my experience is largely people who don't want to admit they are "normal" (no such thing but w/e) however they don't want to actually engage in hrt or say they have gender dysphoria. A dude who is wearing a dress is still a dude unless they are actually claiming to identify as a woman. "non binary" as a designation actually makes me incredibly angry because it makes trans people who deal with real issues a joke.

Ever since its inception i've thought it kinda weird that LGB is pooled together with the rest. As LGB is basicallly just sexual preference. Where as the rest is something very, very different.

[thunderdragon2]

But that's what I said?

Neither should lose a job or gain one because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. In my mind, this shouldn't even be a subject. It should be equal for all. Skill, talent, experience, and qualifications should trump all when applying for jobs.

i agree i dont get blizz's stand point on this it makes 0 sense

[Jester Joe]

Qualified != skilled though?

I dropped out in 10th grade, taught myself everything I know in regards to software development, and I assure you I am way more qualified than someone with that 4-year piece of paper.

Unless your qualification is *needing* that 4-year piece of paper.

That's the point the poster, and myself mean though when we say no two candidates will ever be on the same playing field unless they are both fresh out of college, never worked in the field you are hiring, etc.

Except that's also not the situation being described.

Also it's a bit weird to say qualified doesn't mean skill, but then try to defend your qualifications through your skills.

It's pretty simple to realize that the situation you're describing was already outlined by the other poster who already said that if there was an exceptional applicant they would be handled appropriately.

But in the situation where everyone is equally qualified (AKA- All meet the standards they need), that's where this policy will take hold.

If you know more tricks and have a better work history than someone else you are not equally qualified. Do you understand what the word equally means?

Do you understand what qualified means?

If a qualification is "Needs 5 years experience" and both of you have that, congratz! That's both equally qualified in that regards. Hence why the other poster also mentioned if someone is far exceeding the rest in terms of skill.

Qualifying is just to pass the preliminary part.

The only biased people here are Activision, who will now prioritize certain groups over certain others.

But you and all other mods on this forum have always defended Blizzard so I'm not surprised you disagree.

The amount of times people think pointing out a mod title is some sort of weird "GOTCHA!" moment is crazy.

Instead, realize it invalidates what you say if you have to stoop to such statements because it pretty much admits you don't have anything else to actually prove your point with.

Especially since you say this after I already pointed out that it's silly to trust ActiBlizz to be handling women/non-binary applicants as equally as male ones.

This makes no sense whatsoever - and honestly you should know better. You dont really believe this do you?

Do you honestly think companies hire people solely based on their education and experience? I've got a portfolio showing what i can do and what i've learned though the years and most others in my field do aswell. People with the same amount of experience and education have wildly different portfolios simply because people do not absorb the same amoount of knowledge in a given time, and at the same time people arent equally productive in the same amount of time.

The education and experience gets you to the interview. Your portfolio and your ability to vocalize your skills gets you the job(in an ideal situation).

You realize your own statement here highlights part of the issue that's been going on?

Do you honestly think companies hire people solely based on their education and experience?

No, they've been hiring based on gender too, which is the issue. Claiming now "Oh, but we shouldn't factor in gender at all!" isn't fixing the issue because there's already such a ridiculous imbalanced caused by hiring based on gender to begin with. The only way to actually fix that would be to flip it to give those who haven't had the chance they deserve that chance.

Once we're actually closer to being even, THEN we can consider disregarding gender/race.

[matchagoblin]

Translation: We won't be hiring people for their skills but for what they have between their legs/what they identify as.

A smart move to be sure

well that's kinda the problem to begin with. they have a history of actively overlooking many non-cis-male candidates for job positions. mindfulness when hiring is a thing, even if blizz is guilty of not caring about it until now.

[ClassicPeon]

It got a bit long

I didnt know Blizzard has a history of not hiring women. Thats news to me if thats the case.

But making quotas or hiring specifically for women just creates the exact opposite problem? Or the same problem only reversed.

[Hellobolis]

are you impying women or non binary people dont have skills for the job? wow dude...wow

government report from 2019 says 87% of IT graduates are men and 82% of technology graduates are men. so yeah there aren't all that many women/non binary people who have the skills for the job.

but that's only a concern if they want to reach 33% women for all departments. they could just make all the janitors/caterers/etc women and reach the 33% quota in no time while the dev teams remain a sausagefest, which i would guess is how they are able to reach their current 25% number.

[ClassicPeon]

well that's kinda the problem to begin with. they have a history of actively overlooking many non-cis-male candidates for job positions. mindfulness when hiring is a thing, even if blizz is guilty of not caring about it until now.

Do they though? From what i've seen some women feel like they have been overlooked when it comes to promotion. That could be true but we havent had any confirmation on this afaik. But i havent heard of them outright hiring men over women.

[matchagoblin]

non binary in my experience is largely people who don't want to admit they are "normal" (no such thing but w/e) however they don't want to actually engage in hrt or say they have gender dysphoria. A dude who is wearing a dress is still a dude unless they are actually claiming to identify as a woman. "non binary" as a designation actually makes me incredibly angry because it makes trans people who deal with real issues a joke.

Non-binary people are widely considered to be under the trans umbrella though, jsyk. They also usually suffer gender dysphoria. Aso you don't need HRT to be valid as trans*. Some people cannot do HRT for medical reasons also, it doesn't make them less valid. Not everybody's struggle looks the same, so don't make sweeping generalizations like that.

[Jester Joe]

I didnt know Blizzard has a history of not hiring women. Thats news to me if thats the case.

But making quotas or hiring specifically for women just creates the exact opposite problem? Or the same problem only reversed.

Over 1/3rd still isn't nearly close to the current difference between the two groups.

[matchagoblin]

Do they though? From what i've seen some women feel like they have been overlooked when it comes to promotion. That could be true but we havent had any confirmation on this afaik. But i havent heard of them outright hiring men over women.

That's what makes this such a tricky subject to begin with, imho. It's so hard to actually prove, that we are all mostly relying on word of mouth and gut feeling. Nobody is realistically going to be scribbling down notes in their recruiting material like "didn't hire because WOMEN AMIRITE?", of course not. But without an admission on the recruiters parts, we just have to take it on faith, which admittedly is in short supply lately.

[GreenJesus]

Except that's also not the situation being described.

Also it's a bit weird to say qualified doesn't mean skill, but then try to defend your qualifications through your skills.

It's pretty simple to realize that the situation you're describing was already outlined by the other poster who already said that if there was an exceptional applicant they would be handled appropriately.

But in the situation where everyone is equally qualified (AKA- All meet the standards they need), that's where this policy will take hold.



Do you understand what qualified means?

If a qualification is "Needs 5 years experience" and both of you have that, congratz! That's both equally qualified in that regards. Hence why the other poster also mentioned if someone is far exceeding the rest in terms of skill.

Qualifying is just to pass the preliminary part.




The amount of times people think pointing out a mod title is some sort of weird "GOTCHA!" moment is crazy.

Instead, realize it invalidates what you say if you have to stoop to such statements because it pretty much admits you don't have anything else to actually prove your point with.

Especially since you say this after I already pointed out that it's silly to trust ActiBlizz to be handling women/non-binary applicants as equally as male ones.



You realize your own statement here highlights part of the issue that's been going on?



No, they've been hiring based on gender too, which is the issue. Claiming now "Oh, but we shouldn't factor in gender at all!" isn't fixing the issue because there's already such a ridiculous imbalanced caused by hiring based on gender to begin with. The only way to actually fix that would be to flip it to give those who haven't had the chance they deserve that chance.

Once we're actually closer to being even, THEN we can consider disregarding gender/race.

I heard from a friend that worked at blizzard that he was directed to hire a female candidate specifically. There were 5 candidates. 1 was a girl. The girl didn't know anything about video games, but she was chosen for the job.

This was 2-3 years ago though.

[ClassicPeon]

Over 1/3rd still isn't nearly close to the current difference between the two groups.

I'm assuming that most of the jobs we are talking about here are tech jobs right? IT/developers/infrastructure and so forth. If thats the case its still a completely male dominated world. As in 80%+ graduates are males.

Knowing that most of the people that apply are probably male aswell. Making having an overweight of males working at Blizzard make total sense?

[Gadzooks]

Are these studies peer reviewed and generally accepted? Do you have any links to them?

In general my world(coding) is extremely male dominated but thats because there are so many more males in it then females. The few females we get often just dont really compare in terms of skill, and i dont mean that in a derogatory way, its just a fact. I'm not saying there arent godlike female coders. I'm just saying they are extremely rare. If the company i work for where to start a new project and hire 10 developers where 5 of them had to be female, or even 1/3. The product would, in the end, be worse simply because they would have to hire less talented people.

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Thats because its a LGBT+ term. Its not a term a straight person would use about themselves because its often used derogatory.

I'm a straight person. I don't mind - or care - about using that term to describe myself as a label, because it's truthful.

Your agenda is so blatant, and yet you fight so hard to deny it's not there. Have fun with that - but with someone else, I don't have any more fucks to give. Fresh out.

[Jester Joe]

I heard from a friend that worked at blizzard that he was directed to hire a female candidate specifically. There were 5 candidates. 1 was a girl. The girl didn't know anything about video games, but she was chosen for the job.

This was 2-3 years ago though.

I'm highly skeptical on that front, unless the job had nothing to do with designing games in the first place which makes it pretty irrelevant.

I'm assuming that most of the jobs we are talking about here are tech jobs right? IT/developers/infrastructure and so forth. If thats the case its still a completely male dominated world. As in 80%+ graduates are males.

Knowing that most of the people that apply are probably male aswell. Making having an overweight of males working at Blizzard make total sense?

There's more than tech jobs alone, there's also artists.

[GreenJesus]

I'm a straight person. I don't mind - or care - about using that term to describe myself as a label, because it's truthful.

Your agenda is so blatant, and yet you fight so hard to deny it's not there. Have fun with that - but with someone else, I don't have any more fucks to give. Fresh out.

Just look at the facts dude. If you hire 50% male and 50% women, but there's 85% qualified male candidates, you would be discriminating against men.

[ClassicPeon]

I'm a straight person. I don't mind - or care - about using that term to describe myself as a label, because it's truthful.

Your agenda is so blatant, and yet you fight so hard to deny it's not there. Have fun with that - but with someone else, I don't have any more fucks to give. Fresh out.

Then you are either lying out your ass(this is probably the case) or you dont know how the word is used online. I dont see any reason to go around labeling myself something that other people make fun of.

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I'm highly skeptical on that front, unless the job had nothing to do with designing games in the first place which makes it pretty irrelevant.



There's more than tech jobs alone, there's also artists.

There is - but its not a stretch to assume that there are far more tech jobs. And it would make sense if the artists jobs is around 50/50(i actually have no idea how the gender distribution is in this line of work) and the tech are 80/20 or quite possibly more like 95/5 in favor of men that it would draw the average gender distribution grealy towards male dominated

[Denso]

Getting hired by Blizzard just became much easier -> males, just identify as non-binary! Fast track!

As others have pointed out this is going to worsen their product(s) by a lot. Can see them collapsing over this.

[Lothaeryn]

A diverse workplace with equally skilled and innovative emlpoyees is better than a non diverse one. It’s not like there aren’t talented female/NB developers out there

Fixed that for you. Diversity means shit if mediocrity is the only result of it.

Hiring based on ethnicity or gender/sexuality is in itself discrimination, even if that discriminatory behavior is in favor of minorities.