Blizzard fires WoW Classic lead after he protests employee evaluation policy

[Grapemask]

How I am not surprised there are people simping for multi billion dollar corporations in this thread.

* simping for the creator of their video game addiction.

You see symptoms of this in other threads where people say, without even a hint of jest, that x WoW expansion is great because it's a do-nothing expansion and sometimes it's fun to not have to do anything in the game. Just weird people who are so deep in their fanboy-ism that their minds must resemble a Pepe Silvia corkboard.

In general though it always feels really challenging to get gaming communities to care about the working conditions of the people who make their games. Blizzard's previous wrongdoings only really made waves because "me too" is still a hot topic, but I think also because WoW has declined from its hay day and there are plenty of bitterly nostalgic fans that finally had something palpable to channel their rage into. People mostly just want to play their games and not hear that the thing they've put 1000+ hours into was built by people who might have actually made more money and got better benefits working for a community college. I would be happy to be wrong, but I'm not going to be shocked if this story fades out of memory by the end of the month.

[Osmeric]

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.

[Plutarch78]

Blizzard just needs to die at this point. Sell off the IP’s and let the company rest in piece.

[Mace]

Capitalism... uh... finds a way.

It's not capitalism, it's just bad philosophy you get idiots devising new ways of squeezing and manipulating people - citing it increases productivity, and not realising it's inhumane and super abusive not to mention unfair and sometimes unjust too., it ends up creating such low morale, de-incentivises people, encourages cheating, stealing and suspicious community at work, a whole host of negatives, because these people are not wise. They can be clever, but they're not wise.

[Mrbleedinggums]

Typical toxic blizzard still being toxic to employees

so did you just ignore the story and post as a direct result of the headline only? It's not Blizzard doing this, it's Activision Blizzard.

In a Twitter thread (opens in new tab) posted after the Bloomberg report went live, Birmingham said he hadn't intended for the story to go public, but since it has, he wanted to "set the record straight." He confirmed that he's not longer employed by the company but said that he'd return if he could, in order to "fight the stack-ranking policy from inside." He also believes that the policy came from upper management at Activision Blizzard, "ABOVE Mike Ybarra," the president of Blizzard Entertainment.

https://twitter.com/BrianBirming/sta...tion-policy%2F

[Orwell7]

Okay then fucking judge people based on WHEN they can be perfectly active. There are a SHITLOAD of scientific papers about night owls and the like, who cannot perform in the morning compared to others.

These metrics CAN be used to make people perform at their best, but they use them as reasons to fire people.

Come one, we, as humanity, have ALL THE THINGS we need to thrive, technology to make food and shelter, why do we need to satisfy the greed gods all the time?

[Plutarch78]

Sounds like a good reason to unionize.

Except unions bring a whole new set of problems with them.

Wanna fire an employee for toxic behavior? Sorry, you’ll need to argue your case before a labor board. Lawyers a plenty.

You’ll have to pay employees, regardless of job performance, annual increases every year per contract. This means the slackers will get rewarded just like the top performers.

And the cost will simply be passed down to the consumer. Are you willing to shell $100 for a standard edition of a new release?

Why do you think the majority of factory jobs are overseas and not in the US?

Your company unionizes, but you don’t want to join? Too bad. You are forced to join and pay union dues. So now in addition to federal income taxes, medicare, social security, workers compensation and health/dental insurance, your paycheck is even less now because you are part of a union and they need to stay in business.

And if unions don’t get what they want, they go on strike and hold the company and consumers hostage.

I still remember the 80’s where sanitation workers striked and garbage was piled on for weeks on sidewalks in New York.

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

[Grapemask]

so did you just ignore the story and post as a direct result of the headline only? It's not Blizzard doing this, it's Activision Blizzard.

In a Twitter thread (opens in new tab) posted after the Bloomberg report went live, Birmingham said he hadn't intended for the story to go public, but since it has, he wanted to "set the record straight." He confirmed that he's not longer employed by the company but said that he'd return if he could, in order to "fight the stack-ranking policy from inside." He also believes that the policy came from upper management at Activision Blizzard, "ABOVE Mike Ybarra," the president of Blizzard Entertainment.

https://twitter.com/BrianBirming/sta...tion-policy%2F

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.

[Shadowferal]

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

I wish that were true.

[FelPlague]

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.

The policy is above him, he is effected by it as well, while he can be against it, he has no power on it.

[Utrrabbit]

All the "look, we're progressive good guys!" PR and they're still a shit company, who knew?

They're a soulless corporation at the end of the day like any other big corp.

It is Activision doing it if you read the actual twitter post. Blizzard had nothing to do with it and was against it. Activision and Blizzard are not the same thing or company.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

He has LITERALLY no power to say no or veto it. None. He is forced to use it.

[Khaza-R]

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.

I think its more likely they are looking for passive employees who they can squeeze extra work out of and underpay and that employee will just sit there and take it. A lot of people have abusive relationships with their employers.

[Kralljin]

but I think we ruled out "just following orders" as a valid excuse back in 1945.

That applies to War crimes, not HR policies one might surmise as unethical.

Unless there's a law that forbids these practices, firing an employee for not following orders is absolutely within the rights of a company, regardless whether they're just the lead of a single team or the president of an entire business unit.
And i'm not even sure on the "against the law" part, considering this is the US we're talking about.

[Shadowferal]

In most states you could be fired for no reason at all.

[Grapemask]

The policy is above him, he is effected by it as well, while he can be against it, he has no power on it.

He has LITERALLY no power to say no or veto it. None. He is forced to use it.

Incorrect.

Like any person that exists in the real world, which is not a programmed computer simulation where you can only choose the dialogue options presented to you on the screen, he can tell his employees the way that he would like performance evaluations to be done, and tell the people above him "no, this is what we're doing, sorry." Maybe that leads to repercussions, but Blizzard has plenty of power on their side, from financial to public relations.

[Nachtigal]

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.

[Nynax]

In theory, it seems a good idea.
In reality, it only works when the job market is very bad.

Even that, there are always people only work when the job market is good.

I don't see how even "in theory" it's a good idea. You'd have to be really fucking naive or completely devoid of understanding of human nature to not see the kinda of culture this would lead to 100% of the time. Maybe if it was backed up by a "no one gets fired" policy... But seriously.

[agentsi]

The problem with this line of thinking is that we have no way of knowing which metrics these employees were being compared against one another on. There are a lot of moving parts to an organization and if one department is actively making another department's job a living nightmare, it's going to be incredibly difficult for management to stratify performance across the board. In theory, it encourages the commensurate compensation for your best-performing employees. In practice, it creates a hostile work environment where people who would normally want to encourage and prop up their coworkers are instead inclined to keep information away from one another or (in the worst case) deliberately sabotaging other people to ensure they get the highest level of compensation.

I fully understand that issue. And I agree with you to an extent. But I do think humans can adapt to that environment(most environments), if anything, look at how we handle sports. I know, it is in theory just a game. But you're graded based on your results. If you play American football for example, and have a bad quarterback, as a wide receiver, your numbers aren't going to look great. What do you do? You make the most of every opportunity you get, to showcase your value. As an employee, whether a warehouse associate, sales account manager, programmer, etc, there are a ton of factors that will either improve your performance or decrease it. What do you do? You adapt, you prioritize, and you learn how to make the most of your situation to show your value. Just because you got the job, IMO, doesn't mean you deserve to keep the job.

Now, how do employees handle factors outside of their control? Maybe game development is slow, which is causing you to not meet deadlines in the art department. ANY "GOOD" Manager, will notice this, and acknowledge the fact that you can't get your work done because of someone else. It happens every day, I guarantee it. At Blizzard, at Riot ( I know it happens here, friends complain about it all the time), and every place of employment. I'm sure it's happening at your job now. But complaining about it without providing solutions will get you fired more than likely. Which is what I think happened to this guy at Blizzard. If he got fired for saying no and offered alternative measures to evaluate his staff, and still got fired, then he might have a case for wrongful termination. But if he just said no, and walked out, that not only isn't professional but its also disrespectful to your employer and warranted the result.

[Relapses]

It's not capitalism, it's just bad philosophy you get idiots devising new ways of squeezing and manipulating people - citing it increases productivity, and not realising it's inhumane and super abusive not to mention unfair and sometimes unjust too., it ends up creating such low morale, de-incentivises people, encourages cheating, stealing and suspicious community at work, a whole host of negatives, because these people are not wise. They can be clever, but they're not wise.

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.

[Elbob]

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.

...that is not the purpose of stack ranking.