The only thing I caution against here is the “it should happen easily”… unless you want to open a large number of new positions, changing that much work force depends both on turnover of existing employees and interest in the jobs by those female/non-binary workers.Just because women make up 50% (actually more) of the country doesn’t mean 50% of applicants to Blizzard jobs are women.
IT for instance, I am involved in hiring, we have interviewed over 50 people in the past 2 months, only 2 were women. If you have a hard “must be 33%” goal, and you want to hire based on best for the job, means you have to have 33% of the best applicants actually be women/non-binary which in our case, well only 4% of ALL applicants even fit that bill. it would be downright impossible for us to hit that goal, with the applicants we get, without just hiring every woman/non-binary who applied regardless of ability.
Blizzard is a large company, and I have no idea what their job role/positions mix is, hopefully they have enough openings that women/non-binary are applying for to hire organically instead of forcing it.
Well, I checked the jobs for just Blizz today and there are over 400 open Blizzard positions just in Irvine CA. That does not count the other locations, or positions at Activision, or positions at corporate ATVI, King games (mobile), etc.
The turnover right now is kind of insane. So if they actually just keep the job positions posted and take lots of applicants. Chances are they are going to be fine with hiring best qualified.
As opposed to hiring people they know.
Keep in mind they are not just hiring IT. They are counting all the other positions too. Art, production, music/sound, PR, marketing, community management, GM/CS support, etc.
I do realize that the tech fields lean heavily male right from the education pipeline. I had to hire for that too! Worse, I needed people with US citizenship for clearances. Tiny little pool of people.
Part of their goals though are to increase the pipepline which is an overall US education goal so that is good.
Moving in the right direction are you kidding me? The guy has a net worth of 7 billion dollars. His salary was largely symbolic to begin with. His real wealth resides in his stock portfolio which he is trying to protect with this move. If you guys don’t know they are facing an investor lawsuit as well in addition to the discrimination lawsuit. This is literally nothing but virtue signaling from a company that suffers from one PR blunder after another and will continue to circle the drain by releasing one soulless corporate cash grab and broken piece of software after another.
That and his multi-million dollar bonuses. It’s funny how commonplace it is for companies to just lie these days. It’s like they don’t even realize they are insulting us by putting out such a press release because lying is just so second nature. Trying to pull the wool over our eyes thinking that this guy is going to be making a lot less.
And people fall for it over and over. Like the reduction in salary is some huge sacrifice when anyone with a clue in how these guys are compensated knows that a CEOs salary is a very small part of their net worth. And anyone with a clue would see that them increasing diversity hires is nothing but window dressing to cover their asses from lawsuits from investors and their own portfolios falling down the drain. Crap company will still produce crap software at the end of the day.
Don’t forget the 155 million dollar bonus this year.
And if this move causes stock to rise, he will make more money from stocks than he loses on the paycut.
“In an effort to eliminate discrimination, we are changing policy to discriminate in favor of a different class of people.”
OK. Sure. Whatever.
And like Bobby even needs that income, considering most of his wealth is in investments at this point. It is a very solid public feelgood effort though, which is about as far as it goes. If I Bob was honestly a decent person, most of this stuff would have been necessary.
But he’s going to jump through the hoops and bark for a year or two until the ignorant masses calm down and start buying his games again.
I agree with the “best candidate for the job” mindset and am very much a pro-employer advocate in that in a free, capitalist economy, businesses should be able to conduct themselves in the way they want within the means of the law.
The problem is that systemic racism and sexism has kept the playing field tilted for a really long time and the “best candidate” has been the benefactor of so many levels of privilege to put themselves in that position. It’s impossible to know someone’s true potential and character without taking a chance on them and if you’re hiring based on past experience or the school that person is from, your opinion of them is heavily skewed by their privilege, whether you want or not.
Some people in government and some companies are trying to do their part in untangling this deep-rooted, systemic prejudice but it’s virtually impossible to do. White folks, particularly men, have been the wealthiest demographic in modern first world society and therefore their progeny are best positioned to be “the best candidate” for just about any job.
Without the playing field being tilted in the other direction for a length of time, or some ridiculous wealth distribution idea, historically underprivileged demographics will never get a seat at the best schools or be given the best opportunities to put themselves in a position to be the best candidate for a job.
I have a problem with breaking the system to fix a broken system too… but at least some people are trying to fix it. I’m seeing a lot of people in here talking like we should just let the heirloom effects of racism and sexism continue to benefit them and not others. I guess you’re free to feel that way but “the best person for the job” mentality ensures we only ever see the true potential realized of a subset of society and that’s sad as much as it is wrong.
I don’t have a solution and see tons of problems with most of the ones people are trying to implement in their communities and companies, but it’s hard to be mad at a company trying to make a difference, whether through pressure or ethics… doesn’t matter to me.
but did she have the same schooling and job experience on a resume? unfortunately that’s all that matters when it comes to compensation, generally.
i’m getting paid less then others who do my same job at other companies, but i worked up to this position, i wasn’t put here due to schooling or work experience.
next position i expected to be paid fairly, though. and will not accept less
As long as its based on merit hell they could have 100% women and non-binary but if its only based on whats between your legs or identity politics it will lead to nothing good and discrimination against one group to satisfy another is discrimination. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.
She had been at the company for 8 years at that point, had a masters, etc…
When I used the phrase “was being paid” it was meant to be past-tense. She was identified by the company’s internal equality group as someone that was being grossly undercompensated compared to her peers with equal experience and received an enormous pay increase–which she well deserved. Granted she still makes a bit less than many people at her same level that she outclasses in every way, but it was a huge step in the right direction.