I admire him for standing up for what is right and hope it can bring change. I’m thankful I don’t work for a major corp.
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B-b-b-bb-b-but what about the other employees?! 
boyz_in_da_hood_ice_cube.gif
his craziest tweet.
“But ABK is a problematic parent company. They put us under pressure to deliver both expansions early. It is deeply unjust to follow that by depriving employees who worked on them their fair share of profit. The ABK team should be ashamed of themselves.”
Confirms DF and WOTLK were completely rushed expansions… If you bought DF you are a sucker for their advertising department lol
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That’s not extremely subjective at all.
I think a lot of companies do this. I’ve always hated performance reviews as they’ve always been fairly pointless and demoralizing, an obvious tool to save the company money.
My last job, my manager didn’t know what it was that I did, only knew it was highly specialized in a specific field and very technical (not with electronics) so he’d have to ask around and get info from co-workers, etc… and then make up his mind how my performance was.
He did that with everyone. So annoying.
You’re right. It’s why I think that no employee should ever be completely loyal to an employer.
Those days are over.
I also noticed that, during an interview if the prospective employer tells you “we’re a family here/we strive for a family atmosphere”, run.
Don’t work there.
Those are trigger words that let you know you’ll be working twice as hard for much less pay than the real “family” running things.
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Is this a US thing? I’ve worked for German and French owned companies and they never did this.
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So this thread is basically 2 competing views.
1 - This is bad and Blizzard should not have done it.
2 - This is bad, but I don’t care Blizzard did it, because other companies also did it, so you’re stupid for thinking they are bad for doing the bad thing.
And almost nobody here is congratulating Brian Birmingham for standing up for his employees.
When it comes to labor practices and how employees are treated it’s people like Brian who make differences. For example: We didn’t stop putting 10 year olds to work in coal mines because the Robber Barons suddenly developed consciences, they stopped because people spoke out and changed the zeitgeist and eventually labor unions and public opinion forced them to become a little less terrible.
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It’s a byproduct of basic human nature.
more power to that dev for standing up for their team…hard to find good leadership like that.
however, this is what blizzard signed up for when they sold out to activision & there’s no way out…they know they never needed bobby for success, but they got greedy imo 
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The games industry has way too few unions.
This doesnt surprise me at all. Its typical let them eat cake from that bunch.
It is not that performance reviews are bad as a whole. It is that the “stacked” review that the ATVI (ABK) senior management is forcing on all the sub companies (Activision, Blizzard, and King), is really bad. Forcing management to give a bad rating to GOOD workers with excellent metrics is the opposite of positive for a business.
Microsoft ended it almost 10 years ago because it was so destructive to good team performance.
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To be fair by 2008 Blizzard didn’t really have any say about the merger, as they were owned by Vivendi and that’s the company that agreed to merge with Activision.
Blizzard originally sold themselves in 1994 before they had even released Orcs & Humans, and they got bounced around for a while before Vivendi acquired them in 1998. There was a lot of companies buying other companies in those 4 years.
So Blizzard kind of unintentionally screwed themselves before they even really got started. It just took a decade and a half to get there.
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Apparently Blizzard reads the forums so this is for you guys 
i love it when people keep defending scummy practices. the companies aren’t your friends and they AREN’T going to mail you free stuff for white knighting them.
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Not really. If anything american companies are just as soulless as any other.
Hell, I was just reading an article about a google employee that while on a company approved business trip was let go. Imagine being stuck in some random city suddenly not having access to company stuff and being confused about the entire thing.
Its no different than grading on a curve.
While I don’t care for it myself and would never apply to such a company if they are open about it than its their choice to run it how they see fit.
Reviews always suck anyway because unless you have very clear instructions and guidelines as to how performances are rated its going to vary widely by supervisor. Personally I’m a hard on reviews (I gave 2 of the lowest company wide, when I also have the least amount of people) I leave myself notes as a reminder for infractions and what needs improvement so I don’t forget at the end of year. The weekday days supervisor on the other hand rates based on the last week and how well he gets along with you so every one gets a good score.
Its really up to HR and the supervisors supervisor to ensure that reviews are equal across the company. Luckily my boss knows how I rate and takes it into account when determining wage increases by adding a weighted factor.
When I was a correctional officer Sgt, all the CO’s under me on my shift performed exceptionally because I transferred the slackers to other shifts and retrained those that could be retrained to perform to my standards. I was told that not all the CO’s under me could perform exceptionally and that I had to give at least three of them a below average progress report annually. To which I responded, “No sir, I retrained all the CO’s under me to perform to my standards which, as you well know, are well above average and I will not lie to satisfy the department’s arbitrary quotas. That would be compromising my integrity, and I would rather turn in my badge than compromise my integrity, sir.” There were no further demands for below average progress reports from my shift for the next 3 years I was on it.
You have to have the courage to stand up for what you believe in if you want people to believe in you.
Semper Fi! 
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