WoW Classic Lead Developer Leaves Blizzard over Stack-Ranking Policy

[agentsi]

Yet another reason Blizzard should unionize for $1,000, Alex.

If you think the content and quality of Blizzard games are bad now, wait until after they unionize. I'd bet, any amount of money you want, that in 10-15 years after unionization, they go bankrupt, or Blizzard gets sold away from Activision. 100%. You saw what happened after Microsoft unionized, first step, lay off 10,000 people. Yeah, that will help the company do better right?

[Wallmaker Yahzarah]

A very crappy, systematic game. Good for him to speak out about but the Stack-Ranking has a pro to its crappiness. It combats nepotism and friends' promoting friends. The military has a similar "system" when recommending for promotion. Or better yet, their way of recommendations for promotions.

[Doombringer]

This sort of corporate game-playing sickens me. Employees should be reviewed fairly, and plainly. If they meet goals, they meet goals. If they exceed, they exceed. There should be no quotas. If someone underperforms they should have chances to step up, but if not, they get let go. If someone goes above and beyond they should be recognized. THIS IS A SIMPLE SYSTEM.

Leave it to ABK management to muck it up. It's gross what has happened to what was one of the titans of the industry. They fuck up and try to bury the rampant deviancy crawling through the company and just when you think they've cleaned that up and maybe made a non-hostile work environment... they pull this bullshit.

[Relapses]

If you think the content and quality of Blizzard games are bad now, wait until after they unionize. I'd bet, any amount of money you want, that in 10-15 years after unionization, they go bankrupt, or Blizzard gets sold away from Activision. 100%. You saw what happened after Microsoft unionized, first step, lay off 10,000 people. Yeah, that will help the company do better right?

Look man, I'm not saying unions are the silver bullet solution to all of gaming's problems. I'm well aware of the pitfalls of unions as I've had firsthand experience with them. But the games industry has been famously under-unionized from the get go and look where we're at right now. It would, at the very least, help prevent bad applications of capitalism from causing people who love their jobs to walk away from the company.

[Nymrohd]

Capitalism functions essentially by capital owners exploiting their workers to extract more profit while spending as little of their own money as possible.

How is this sort of policy not a function of Capitalism?

In that it is ineffective and will not actually generate more profit for the capital owners. It is only a faction of capitalism in that it is probably largely a method to depress wages and also to manipulate wage growth to fit a formula but this is more an indictment of bureaucracy than of capitalism to be honest. Not saying capitalism is not problematic but I don't think that is the perverse incentive here; arbitrary organizational restrictions are a feature of the latter, not the former.

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A very crappy, systematic game. Good for him to speak out about but the Stack-Ranking has a pro to its crappiness. It combats nepotism and friends' promoting friends. The military has a similar "system" when recommending for promotion. Or better yet, their way of recommendations for promotions.

? Managers will just give favorable reviews to their own and unfavorables to everyone else.

[Zyky]

Does it matter how he exited the company? The story doesn't change. They could have launched him off the Blizzard premises in a comically large cannon and the story would still have the same impact (Brian's impact less so).

There's a big difference between "leaving because of a policy" and "being fired for threatening not to work because of a policy"

[ketsui]

Let’s pretend you have to give evaluations to 100 people under this system. Five of those people HAVE to get a failing grade, even if they did nothing wrong.

Those five people effected will be hampered financially.

I rarely post here but I worked for a game company before where we had such a limited budget for raises due to not making enough money (for more than the CEO to line his pockets) that they didn't give me a raise even though I did outstanding, I read my review and it was complete and utter BS like 'needs improvement' etc when I was so eager and so were others. I get what this is like and it hurts, its usually because the lions share of wealth goes into the already rich peoples pockets. This really is frustrating but its common place in industries. Luckily I don't work for game companies anymore, sucks for the people who do

[wiforkle]

Not surprising. Can we get an early life check on Bobby Kotick, please?

[arkanon]

A very crappy, systematic game. Good for him to speak out about but the Stack-Ranking has a pro to its crappiness. It combats nepotism and friends' promoting friends. The military has a similar "system" when recommending for promotion. Or better yet, their way of recommendations for promotions.

These two issues are completely unrelated. How do you think they are linked at all?

[Shadowferal]

If you think the content and quality of Blizzard games are bad now, wait until after they unionize.

You can predict the future? A pity you couldn't predict the company's shitty expansions.

[Drutt]

A very crappy, systematic game. Good for him to speak out about but the Stack-Ranking has a pro to its crappiness. It combats nepotism and friends' promoting friends. The military has a similar "system" when recommending for promotion. Or better yet, their way of recommendations for promotions.

How does it combat nepotism when said favored employee can be put at the top of the stack by the person favouring them and reap the lion's share of the rewards at the expense of those at the bottom, who might be doing perfectly good work?

[Relapses]

There's a big difference between "leaving because of a policy" and "being fired for threatening not to work because of a policy"

Functionally, I don't see a difference. The guy took a stand; they yeeted him because Activision values policy above employee stewardship. I don't necessarily agree with the way he did it but saying he "got fired" doesn't diminish the story or the reasons he ultimately *ahem* left Blizzard.

[nToxik]

Sadly, this is how my company does it. They also use the 'Bell Curve' for year-end performance ratings.

[Zyky]

Functionally, I don't see a difference. The guy took a stand; they yeeted him because Activision values policy above employee stewardship. I don't necessarily agree with the way he did it but saying he "got fired" doesn't diminish the story or the reasons he ultimately *ahem* left Blizzard.

It's disingenuous to say that he left though because it makes him sound like a martyr, where in reality he threatened the company, they fired him, he took a 180 and tried to say he would like to be rehired to fight it from the inside.

[Biomega]

Functionally, I don't see a difference. The guy took a stand; they yeeted him because Activision values policy above employee stewardship. I don't necessarily agree with the way he did it but saying he "got fired" doesn't diminish the story or the reasons he ultimately *ahem* left Blizzard.

I agree and disagree, to an extent. There's definitely a difference here. He likely knew this was a futile effort - one employee holding his breath is unlikely to get a multi-million-dollar company to fold. But it's a STATEMENT that he'd rather get fired than quit. It puts the onus on Blizzard for saying "we value our policy more than our people", and emphasis the fact that he has convictions even in the face of an ultimate consequence.

It's the difference between a protest leader going home when the police asks to clear the area, and them sticking around to get forcibly removed. Yeah sure they "left the area" in both cases, but there's very significant implications to the how and when it happened.

[Mace]

A very crappy, systematic game. Good for him to speak out about but the Stack-Ranking has a pro to its crappiness. It combats nepotism and friends' promoting friends. The military has a similar "system" when recommending for promotion. Or better yet, their way of recommendations for promotions.

There are other ways to combat unfair nepotism. The ranking system is manipulative and abusive. And it has a knock down efffect long term that will affect the productivity it claims to increase.

[Hitei]

It's the difference between a protest leader going home when the police asks to clear the area, and them sticking around to get forcibly removed. Yeah sure they "left the area" in both cases, but there's very significant implications to the how and when it happened.

The issue with this poor metaphor is that it ignores the protest leader had the option to stick around and keep protesting rather than being arrested, something he openly admits to in his tweet.

[cozzri]

If you think the content and quality of Blizzard games are bad now, wait until after they unionize. I'd bet, any amount of money you want, that in 10-15 years after unionization, they go bankrupt, or Blizzard gets sold away from Activision. 100%. You saw what happened after Microsoft unionized, first step, lay off 10,000 people. Yeah, that will help the company do better right?

Let's be honest, Blizzard hasn't been an innovative studio in 20 years;. Upon the success of WoW, corporate culture has been spreading it's tendrils into every aspect of the company like the Old Gods. The game quality relies heavily on the passion of the developers wiring and coding the game; the products we get from the company now is a reflection of the climate and work culture. Better working conditions / environment is a huge boon to game development. Unfortunately, unionization will do very little if corporate management continues to fight back, retaliate, belittle with metrics. Maybe the union can shield the workers from such practices?

[Zeek Daniels]

The company i work for does this. I was a manager for almost two years and and had to go over reviews with HR before giving them to employees. We couldnt give too many high ratings and couldnt give too many averages. Some people who i thought deserved high ratings got bumped to average and some who were average got bumped to needs improvement.

[OrangeJuice]

This guy is never going to find another job in the industry if he airs out dirty laundry when fired. The idiot had 15 years to open up and spill all and only waited to get back out of spite. Fuck blizzard and this guy in particular.