WoW Classic Lead Developer Leaves Blizzard over Stack-Ranking Policy

[Eternal2u]

At this point, it would be smart for RIOT to capitalize on this situation and bring these devs over that are clearly passionate. LoL Lore could be expanded to a turn based tactical system (Baldur's Gate, FF Tactics) and expand the story to an MMO and create a new era of love and care to a game. Sad Sad day.

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

[Malcho]

Paragraph 7 is where he admits he fucked up and stopped following company policy because he was counting his chickens before they'd hatched- thought he was "winning" against his own employer because of some unrelated turmoil in the company and thought things would just magically go his way. Nobody here can have any information about how good or bad the talent is on his team. It could be that a small percentage of his team had to compensate for the rest, who had an abysmal output, yet he wanted to protect those people for some reason. That wouldn't be fair. I've seen that sort of behavior in my own company before they enforced stack ranking.

Can't help noticing that there's a soreness in his explanation. "Problematic, toxic"

[Animaneth]

It was an ABK policy, not a Blizzard policy as such, and managers (especially) are never going to be allowed to buck the system too hard. The firing is wrong (I think) but is unsurprising given the circumstances as explained by the lead developer in his twitter thread. It's a very bad thing for morale some when members of a large team who have all performed well are forced into a "bottom 5%" category. The theory behind it is to lose dead wood employees but I do not believe that in reality it works that way and is a detriment to team-building as the team is now forced to compete instead of co-operate. It's just destructive of the kind of thing that makes teams excel. It also leads to moronic, outdated metrics like comparing lines of code created. All that happens there is you end up with bloated, inefficient code.

Come to think of it, the way WoW has introduced and doubled-down on competitive over co-operative aspects in PVE, perhaps it's karma.

The solution for profit sharing, vacations and the like lies in worker's rights, but that is a no no in the US culture. Most countries have learned about it, even places that you could hardly call "communist" have a worker's rights codified law and is applied. The reality is that "being the best country in the world" means nothing if your citizens are unable to enjoy living in the "best country in the world". But I get it, it is a cultural thing, most americans are raised by a generation that was raised by a generation of "left is bad and is our enemy!" so I wouldn't expect them to be much different, an apple does not fall faraway from the tree.

[NED funded]

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

[Doombringer]

The solution for profit sharing, vacations and the like lies in worker's rights, but that is a no no in the US culture. Most countries have learned about it, even places that you could hardly call "communist" have a worker's rights codified law and is applied. The reality is that "being the best country in the world" means nothing if your citizens are unable to enjoy living in the "best country in the world". But I get it, it is a cultural thing, most americans are raised by a generation that was raised by a generation of "left is bad and is our enemy!" so I wouldn't expect them to be much different, an apple does not fall faraway from the tree.

Definitely. Grand-dad and even Dad probably worked for a company that showed more appreciation for their workers than most companies do now. I know personally my grandfather worked for a company that gave him a pension, which he is still pulling from today. He put in his time and the company valued him enough with pay, benefits for his family, and takes care of him in retirement. His job and pay while he was working afforded him a nice house where he could raise 2 kids comfortably. And dad similarly worked for a company that paid decently and, again, gave him a pension that even his surviving wife benefits from today.

Companies don't do this now. Whatever you're getting paid, it may only be just enough to live where you must to do said job. Pensions are virtually unheard of and you get the minimum effort of a 401k match. Benefits can be decent but given how healthcare works you still end up paying deductibles, which could be thousands for even a short hospital stay. Your job is also constantly at risk if they decide to "reduce workforce" or any other rejiggering of the books... while the C-staff makes more money than God. Your taking vacation time is frowned upon for one of a few reasons... one, your team is already stretched thin and your absence stresses this more, or two, while you're away and being covered someone might get the idea that you aren't actually needed at all or your work can be outsourced, and you come back to a pink slip.

Make no mistake there are companies the world over that will try to bend any and every workers' rights rule they can to squeeze their workforce and enhance their bottom line... but there are many places that retain more of an old-fashioned "your work is valued, you as a worker are valued" ideal compared to the US. It seems as industrialization came about in the US, companies first abused their workers and cut corners, then were slapped into shape as they realized where the true power resided (the employees), and now we're creeping back into a time of abuse again. Low pay, unreasonable conditions and requirements, minimal benefits and no job security. It doesn't help that one whole political party who is supposed to be about helping the common man, the worker, is literally shitting on a high percentage of common men and workers -- they think so little of food and retail service workers, but they all want their fast food, their Walmart stockers and cashiers, and their Amazon warehouse minions to be buzzing away. They operate as if we still have the steel industry and companies like DuPont chugging away when in reality, most of the workforce is in McDonald's and Target. And the tech sector workers are seen as leftists and part of a conspiracy, so they get no love either.

Wow, a proletariat rant on MMOChamp. I doubt anyone will read this but it felt good to type it out.

[Hctaz]

Wow, a proletariat rant on MMOChamp. I doubt anyone will read this but it felt good to type it out.

Snip the rest of the post, but I read it.

I know from my own personal experience as well as the experiences of seeing my mom struggle a decade-ish ago how companies can be pretty scummy.

I can tell you a story about a company I've seen get progressively less friendly toward their employees.

One of the perks was that they had a metric based merit system which meant you weren't directly competing with your fellow associates for competency evaluations. Instead of the lowest grade being a 0, everybody in the entire class could get an A (so to speak) if they hit a certain number.

They scrapped that entirely. Now the lowest ranked person in the company is a problem even if they were performing their work sufficiently (because sufficient isn't efficient I guess).

Not only that, but they've slowly pushed their call center jobs higher and higher. You had a baseline call center that did certain tasks before sending the work to a team or a specific member. Not anymore. They've since merged the call center position with not only the position above it, but now even the position above that position. It's created such a nightmare that, for a while, they've even removed quality off their metrics entirely.

These things used to be handled correctly, but it's impossible to do so with a call center lifestyle. I don't want to name names, but let me just strongly suggest you absolutely do NOT want a call center team taking recorded interviews to determine fault in tricky situations.

It's clear to me to see where their true values lie; not with the customers or employees but with their shareholders. Gotta show them profits going up up up to make those shareholders happy! When you can't grow naturally, then your best bet is to start cutting chunks of your own flesh and selling that off for profit it seems.

[potis]

Paragraph 7 is where he admits he fucked up and stopped following company policy because he was counting his chickens before they'd hatched- thought he was "winning" against his own employer because of some unrelated turmoil in the company and thought things would just magically go his way. Nobody here can have any information about how good or bad the talent is on his team. It could be that a small percentage of his team had to compensate for the rest, who had an abysmal output, yet he wanted to protect those people for some reason. That wouldn't be fair. I've seen that sort of behavior in my own company before they enforced stack ranking.

Can't help noticing that there's a soreness in his explanation. "Problematic, toxic"

Thats the thing with most people, you cant know what he is talking about but.

I aint a programmer, but i am tech/IT oriented but this was my problem with my ERP consulting job i quit 3 months ago after 2 years.

I do not find how it is okay, for multiple people to underperform and ask for help all the time to simple tasks that they were shown multiple times, and even retrained 3 times.

I do not find how its okay to never attend any training, cause someone has to work when the rest are doing training, and still score higher than everyone else during the test, with 10% of the training done.

And many other similar things, and in the end of the day, you all get paid the same.

So no, fuck that, and no wonder as time goes programming jobs and similar jobs are being treated with scaled pay.

Everyone and their mother is aiming for some sort of job like that, cause lets face it..office life, higher pay..You cant tell me all of them produce equal results.

Sounds horrible..but you cant pretend a team of 50 junior developers, all work the same speed/skill etc, obviously "forcing" or fake marks is bad..but you get it.

[Utrrabbit]

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.

You do know Blizzard has nothing to do with this. It is ABK who is doing this. I know you have a hate boner for anything Blizzard, but pleass do some research first.

1. He clearly states in his letter that it was from ABK and no Blizzard employee wants it, including Mike Ybarra.

2. If it was Blizzard he would not have clearly states that he would go back to work with them of he could.

3. You clearly do not know the structional way ABK/Blizzard works. I will break it down for you. ABK owns Blizzard, they are a studio working under ABK. They are not the same thing.

Jesus at least know what it is you are talking about.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizz as a corp is just cancer it seems...

...This has nothing to do with Blizz. It was a policy set up by ABK who owns Blizzard.

NOT

THE

SAME

[Osmeric]

You do know Blizzard has nothing to do with this. It is ABK who is doing this.

Blizzard is just a meat puppet for ABK now.

[Utrrabbit]

Look I am not saying people should not be upset about how this is being handled and the clearly stupid policy put in place. What annoys me is people have this irrational hate for Blizzard when they did not do anything. Be upset, but be upset at the correct people.

This was ABK not Blizzard and it was clearly written that Blizzard staff are against it.

Hopefully when Microsoft takes over stuff oike this will never happen.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard is just a meat puppet for ABK now.

Thats not how this works. The are owned by them. If you also read anything youd know the entire Blizzard staff is against the policy including Mike Ybarra. The one thing we can hope for is when Microsoft takes over, policies like this are tossed out.

Microsoft tried this and it failed. So I would bet that it would be one of the first things they change.

[Goat7]

I stopped playing Blizzard games awhile ago, even before the workplace lawsuits. If your eyes and mind were open, as a Blizzard gamer my whole live, you could really see the degradation of the games, especially in WoW toward end of legion somewhere around 2017 and then it got really really bad in BFA shortly after that and has been a shit show since just from a blizzard gamer point of view.

I am happy I have not touched WoW since WoW SL first season, even though it is saddening, simply because the ONLY way you can get these companies to change if at all is by speaking with your WALLET. The masses have to stop paying for this dogshit, and that goes for more then just Blizzard games, WE ALL HAVE TO stop accepting shit, the gaming companies just simply release buggy messed up games and only to patch them later if at all because WE HAVE ALL come to accept this as the way things are in gaming.

STOP PAYING FOR SHIT. STOP ACCEPTING BUGGY ASS GAMES. STOP PAYING P2W or MICROTRANSACTION BULLSHIT GAMES. STOP IT COMPLETELY AND THE GAMING WORLD WILL GET BETTER IN TIME!

[Xilurm]

Paragraph 7 is where he admits he fucked up and stopped following company policy because he was counting his chickens before they'd hatched- thought he was "winning" against his own employer because of some unrelated turmoil in the company and thought things would just magically go his way. Nobody here can have any information about how good or bad the talent is on his team. It could be that a small percentage of his team had to compensate for the rest, who had an abysmal output, yet he wanted to protect those people for some reason. That wouldn't be fair. I've seen that sort of behavior in my own company before they enforced stack ranking.

Can't help noticing that there's a soreness in his explanation. "Problematic, toxic"

Why does it matter? That kind of company policy is bad regardless of what the reasons are.

Your company sounds like it went down a shady path.

[Malcho]

Why does it matter? That kind of company policy is bad regardless of what the reasons are.

Your company sounds like it went down a shady path.

I, for one, find it a very effective deterrent to nepotism and good old boy tactics. Maybe he had to

face putting his neck on the line as bad performance finally came to light
-or-
resign gracefully.(looks like he took option 2 and opened his mouth to fuck himself.)

I'm eager to see what Blizzard's rebuttal will be ...if they have any teeth left.

EDIT: and here we go. Bing bang boooom. Worgen monk, baby~
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...-in-patch-1007

[Flamewibble]

Look I am not saying people should not be upset about how this is being handled and the clearly stupid policy put in place. What annoys me is people have this irrational hate for Blizzard when they did not do anything. Be upset, but be upset at the correct people.

This was ABK not Blizzard and it was clearly written that Blizzard staff are against it.

Hopefully when Microsoft takes over stuff oike this will never happen.

- - - Updated - - -



Thats not how this works. The are owned by them. If you also read anything youd know the entire Blizzard staff is against the policy including Mike Ybarra. The one thing we can hope for is when Microsoft takes over, policies like this are tossed out.

Microsoft tried this and it failed. So I would bet that it would be one of the first things they change.

I worked at Microsoft under Satya, after they'd supposedly eliminated the stack ranking, forced attrition/"unregretted attrition" that ruined the company under Ballmer and produced Windows Mobile, the Zune, Windows 8, etc.

Stack Ranking and the "Unregretted Attrition" policy (basically what Brian Birmingham got fired for protesting) are alive and well at Microsoft. Microsoft is particularly bad about this.

The policy looks great on paper to executives. Their managers will always beg for more resources and always give glowing reviews to their underlings. Forcing them to shitcan a percentage of their employees makes them much more aggressive and economical.. at first. Then after a couple of years all the obvious misfits and low performers are gone, and you start having to weasel to make yourself look good in order to avoid savage cuts. Before you know it, every team is adding its own worthless one-off gizmos and widgets to the product in order to make themselves look good while the overall quality suffers terribly. Everyone's spending all their time finding ways to blame each other for problems and hog credit for successes. Your best talent either leaves or they devote all their energy to self-promotion, and the company is pretty much doomed at that point.

[HeatBlast]

I, for one, find it a very effective deterrent to nepotism and good old boy tactics. Maybe he had to

face putting his neck on the line as bad performance finally came to light
-or-
resign gracefully.(looks like he took option 2 and opened his mouth to fuck himself.)

I'm eager to see what Blizzard's rebuttal will be ...if they have any teeth left.

EDIT: and here we go. Bing bang boooom. Worgen monk, baby~
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...-in-patch-1007

He was the lead for wow classic, how is a change on retail evidential for your anti-worker whine?

[Mekh]

Based. /10char

[Polygons]

If Activision/Kotick really cared about employee performances on WoW, they wouldn't force a deadline.

[Jester Joe]

I, for one, find it a very effective deterrent to nepotism and good old boy tactics. Maybe he had to

face putting his neck on the line as bad performance finally came to light
-or-
resign gracefully.(looks like he took option 2 and opened his mouth to fuck himself.)

I'm eager to see what Blizzard's rebuttal will be ...if they have any teeth left.

EDIT: and here we go. Bing bang boooom. Worgen monk, baby~
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...-in-patch-1007

I'm sorry, what?

FORCING leadership to hit a negative review quota is a deterrent to having favorites? You realize that straight up is contradictory right? If anything, it pushes leadership to have more nepotism.

[Tiwack]

Zero trust + maximum control "gee I dunno what we're doing wrong?"

Out of touch owners scrapping the barrel for pennies, don't want to fairly compensate all their workers and setup this quota strawman to accomplish that goal under the name of stack ranking. It's like how can we take this ranking system and bend it to our purpose of maximum profits and keeping our workers down and in line smh.

[Drench]

Definitely. Grand-dad and even Dad probably worked for a company that showed more appreciation for their workers than most companies do now. I know personally my grandfather worked for a company that gave him a pension, which he is still pulling from today. He put in his time and the company valued him enough with pay, benefits for his family, and takes care of him in retirement. His job and pay while he was working afforded him a nice house where he could raise 2 kids comfortably. And dad similarly worked for a company that paid decently and, again, gave him a pension that even his surviving wife benefits from today.

Companies don't do this now. Whatever you're getting paid, it may only be just enough to live where you must to do said job. Pensions are virtually unheard of and you get the minimum effort of a 401k match. Benefits can be decent but given how healthcare works you still end up paying deductibles, which could be thousands for even a short hospital stay. Your job is also constantly at risk if they decide to "reduce workforce" or any other rejiggering of the books... while the C-staff makes more money than God. Your taking vacation time is frowned upon for one of a few reasons... one, your team is already stretched thin and your absence stresses this more, or two, while you're away and being covered someone might get the idea that you aren't actually needed at all or your work can be outsourced, and you come back to a pink slip.

Make no mistake there are companies the world over that will try to bend any and every workers' rights rule they can to squeeze their workforce and enhance their bottom line... but there are many places that retain more of an old-fashioned "your work is valued, you as a worker are valued" ideal compared to the US. It seems as industrialization came about in the US, companies first abused their workers and cut corners, then were slapped into shape as they realized where the true power resided (the employees), and now we're creeping back into a time of abuse again. Low pay, unreasonable conditions and requirements, minimal benefits and no job security. It doesn't help that one whole political party who is supposed to be about helping the common man, the worker, is literally shitting on a high percentage of common men and workers -- they think so little of food and retail service workers, but they all want their fast food, their Walmart stockers and cashiers, and their Amazon warehouse minions to be buzzing away. They operate as if we still have the steel industry and companies like DuPont chugging away when in reality, most of the workforce is in McDonald's and Target. And the tech sector workers are seen as leftists and part of a conspiracy, so they get no love either.

Wow, a proletariat rant on MMOChamp. I doubt anyone will read this but it felt good to type it out.

This sounds like some hillbilly trumper talk about how people are taking all the jobs.

That's the thing tho. Either you live in cali or you are letting yourself get screwed over. There are shite jobs for sure. But if you are over 22. You should have no problem finding a job with decent benefits. Retirement and even good bosses aren't that hard to find. We have too many people in the USA with no spine. If you are young and have at least a ged and not making 22+ an hour in cheap states then you are getting shafted starting out in the world. If you are over 25 should be making alot more in any type of work. Don't care if you are a janitor. Don't clean at walmart get a nice cleaning job. The issue we have with the complainers is they aren't intelligent enough to use the system correctly and move up every 2 years.


Google how to be confident or something to apply for some real jobs, don't be a neckbeard and get some social skills.