For those of us who have worked corporate jobs and had to deal with this, here’s a heartwarming story about Blizzard being even more Blizzard.
I thought it was an Onion piece, but no. Just more proof that the Blizzard(s) of old are long, long gone and what’s crawled into it’s husk is way, way worse than a hydralisk. From the company that brought you corporate tax evasion, Diablo Immoral, and a workplace full of creeps comes EMPLOYEE WARS:
Stack ranking is a type of employee evaluation that requires a certain % of employees must fall within the low performance “needs improvement” or a similar category. A lead developer for blizzard says he got fired because he refused to give enough low performance evaluations to meet the quota.
Stack ranking is a terrible system that puts employees in competition with each other, and causes people to go as far as taking steps of undermining and sabotaging their coworkers so they don’t get the low rating, which leads to it’s own consequences.
It’ll also cause people to push themselves further and further so they don’t fall behind others who have no problem putting in 60-80 hours at the expense of work/life balance and families. This conveniently ushers the older more experienced (and expensive) people out to be replaced with younger and cheaper who likely don’t have families or other obligations.
Of course executives don’t have to deal with such dehumanizing garbage. In fact, a CEO can utterly destroy a company and get rewarded with a multi million $ golden parachute while being “fired” while the employees doing the actual work get laid off and the bare minimum as severance.
If this is what’s really going on there, then it’s no wonder their games seem to have lost the magic and fun over the years. A union would do them well
Brian was very very clear, this was not Blizzard. It is being forced by ATVI from the top down onto Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, and King Games.
Stack ranking has been common in the software industry for a while now, so it’s not just a Blizzard issue.
And yes, I would agree it leads to significant backstabbing, sabotage, etc. It does tend to lead to a very selfish environment where everyone is looking out for themselves only, and you have to treat every other employee with suspicion.
It was originally just meant to get rid of dead weight, and keep a company moving forward, as the hypothesis was you were going to always be getting better employees over the course of time, but the results don’t tend to support the hypothesis, which is partly why many companies eventually moved away from it.
But that I don’t really think has much to do with the game losing their magic and fun over the years. Unions certainly wouldn’t help in that area either.
In my opinion, part of that “frat boy” culture that we deem toxic, is exactly why the games use to be fun. Because that culture can work in small companies with tightknit employees, all of whom are looking out for each other, and have a shared goal. But the larger a company gets, the more problematic that culture becomes, and the more corporate the attitudes of everyone becomes.
You can have a company of 15 people, all of whom are friends. You can’t have a company with 1000+ employees without at least a few people hating each others guts.
Thank you for sharing that thread. It was a very interesting read! That’s very respectable for him to take such a strong stance looking out for his team, that he literally got fired for it. He prob knew there were going to be consequences and did it anyways. You won’t see too many people do that. Brian sounds like he would be a great person to work for.
I wouldn’t say it’s the only reason, especially since this isn’t something that’s been happening very long there, but I do think it contributes to losing the magic because now employees are focusing on that instead of working together to make the best games they can.
There was a quote from Bobby many years ago about him wanting to take the fun out of making games.
I do agree that the frat boy culture or just the dynamics of very small tight knit teams just don’t work in huge companies with thousands of employees. I just wish the giant corps would try and treat their people better. Better games would be made as a result.
I’ve read it. The point is that it is a practice implemented at Blizzard, regardless of where it comes down from, or who decided to initiate it.
But the bigger, more important point is that it is a fresh example of precisely what makes this company such absolute garbage. I mean, sure, the parent companies are also garbage, but that’s been more widely known and accepted for some time. No one except the most deluded corporate apologist, or somebody with their head in the sand, thinks that Activision is some sort of benevolent software publishing company.
Another domino, in effect. Exposure of toxic workplace, doubling down on Union busting, predatory monetization schemes, corporate tax evasion, and this. Of course, most people who purchase games are ignorant of most of this information. And I don’t blame them. Who has the time to research every single product from every single company? On the flip side, I wish people who did know could be more conscientious about their purchasing decisions and stop supporting companies like Blizzard and Activision.
So yeah, the “battle” was already lost when they got under Vivendi. People have been asking where’s the old Blizzard; it’s pretty clear that it died years ago, as it got into the big league.
I don’t understand all the nitty gritty details, but this is just a sad story about some hopeful fellows getting the gist of beating a corporation into changing something. That was just a mirage though; corporations don’t change, they evolve and adapt very slowly. Only bright side to this story is that they ought to remove that 5% policy when they finally got acquired by Microsoft as told in the article.
What happened? Are they slacking on their minimum monthly requirement of macking on married women? Maybe their quest design was that impressive, before Deathwing’s Cataclysm wiped them away.
Enjoy those union fees eating a hole in your paycheck along with taxes. Also, not all unions are strong. Most are not. Corporate cash > union rep. Why? Moar Lahyurs! Tie you up in court for YEARS.
