Sad news for us today boys!
Trash Company Strikes again.
Imagine making someone give bad reviews that could impact someones life in a negative way.
Im actually disgusted.
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The policy is crap nothing else to say about that.
But Brian was not good for classic, he injected his own ideals into what should have been a mostly unchanged environment.
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Damn after reading that Brian really was the good guy Greg he always seemed to be.
I’ve seen this stuff managing a lot of finances for Fortune 500 companies.
This is modern corporate America in a nutshell. It’s moving closer to Cyberpunk 2077 every years
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Not just america, someone replied to a post on this elsewhere that their swedish company does the same thing.
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Definitely bad news for the Classic franchise.
Good on Brian for his integrity.
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I disagreed with many of his stances, but I do believe he had the best interests of classic at heart. This is a blow to classic in general and really awesome fuel for the haters and doomsayers who love to point to one thing when something inevitably declines.
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Last time I had to do evaluations for a company (based on a 5 point system) I was told I wasn’t allowed to give a single employee over a 3.5 unless I got with other team leaders and discussed why they deserve it over other teams. Highest that went out that QTR was a 4 for the entire company.
The people at the tippy top has lost all connection to the real world.
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Not really sad to see him go considering how he mucked up wrath classic but that is a garbage practice and it’s good he stood up to it.
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Because to them the lowers are not people, they’re robots that NEED them.
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Him leaving isn’t going to do anything - it sucks that he had to do it, but it won’t change a corporation’s perspective on things.
His messages on Twitter probably won’t do any favours, either.
I don’t care if he ruined Wrath Classic, or if he made it great again, the sad reality is that he’s gone, and who knows what’s gonna happen now.
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Yea, it’s a hard situation.
I’m happy he stood up for his employees, but I’m definitely not sad he is gone
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I wonder what his backup plan is?
No normal person quits a job before setting up a new job.
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Requiring to hit low performance quotas. What a way to run a company.
And this answers quite a few questions.
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He hired all the people. Those people made modern WoW and ruined Classic WoW.
Not really sure what the fuss is about. This is the dude that was personally responsible for the culture that brought us bowls of fruit and removed /silly and /spit
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There may be more to this than how it is portrayed. The US Army uses a similar sounding evaluation system. It’s not perfect but it works very well for it’s intent – which is to promote and move up fastest, the very highest achievers.
Managers in the Army cannot give out the ‘top mark’ to everyone they rate. The system does not let them. The system tracks the managers current ratings given out, and how many that manager reviews. let’s say it will only let the manager give the top mark to the top 30%. If you have 9 employees to review and 4 of them deserve the top mark, tough… one will get a ‘average’ mark.
Now…there is nothing in the Army that forces a manager to give a low review. The system doesn’t care except for that top mark. The Army is trying to move the best to the top. I think you get the idea. Now if somone is very very poor performing, then you can get the bottom mark. I have never seen this done.
The best get the top marks, and the rest get average marks. And frankly…usually the best get the top, and the average get the average. And the ones slightly below average…still get average. It’s not a punitive system. It’s for feedback, and a tool for the Army to move the best up.
It’s really really really rare to want to give the top mark to someone, and not be able to.
It’s actually poor management by the manager. If he/she was flippant about handing out top marks to someone who didn’t deserve it…that sucks. There is an appeal process by the way. Though I’ve never heard of it being used.
People know when they are average. People know when they are the best. And the marks usually go that way.
So there may be more to this. If Activision’s system works similar to the Army’s…this may actually be a case of Brian B doesn’t like this system at all, he handed top review to everyone…eventually ran out, and now protests he can’t give other people the top review.
yet he knew the system ahead of time. It doesn’t make the company bad, in fact its a very very good rating sytem. not perfect but works well.
No I don’t work for blizzard. I complain about them all the time lol.
But i have many years experience in this exact thing, but the military context and it sounds very similar.
edited to add: but we don’t really know what their system and situation is exactly like. For example if he had the ability to give someone a top review, but a higher up manager had a quota they messed up somehow, and Brian was being forced to unfairly penalize someone he knows works 110%…well yeah that sucks. By the way, there is no situation like that in the Army. quotas are one level. No manager is subject to a higher manager’s quota. Your quota is yours.
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Yeah, but he’s not really a normal person. People know who he is and what he’s done. I bet he’ll take some time off to just decompress and have offers being thrown at him. Heck, he might already have a few in his pocket that he turned down until bliz gave him a reason
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I would look at the person in charge of Wrath Classic as a huge warning sign to stay away.
But the realist in me knows once you hit a certain level your performance doesn’t really matter. Once in the elite club, you stay in the club.
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Well not exactly. I think if you get passed up for promotion twice in a row they discharge you? So average scores can lead to termination. It’s just as bad as a low score.
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Development is not the same as the military. The problem is development is not inherently a competitive environment just like he said because the goals are objective not subjective based on how you stack up with others and if everyone performed relatively the same they performed relatively the same. There are some jobs where forced rank quotas make total sense, like sales, but development isn’t one of them.
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It’s true. But that is only a issue at very high rank. And by then you know the system, you plan ahead. I’ve known soldiers who were enlisted, and got passed over twice for promotion (and maybe rightfully so) but were able to get a warrant officer position which reset their counter (two time non select…military says goodbye).
So someone who is average…a poor planner…maybe even sub average (overweight at times, seems to be injured all the times…etc, late on projects, always an excuse) they don’t get promoted…they don’t get top marks. There are very few positions at the top.
The old system…everyone got top marks…really awful people were in charge. It was worse the old way. So…I don’t know. Keep an open mind about this? :shrug:
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