Nice Interview

[Azaz-whitemane]

Thats why Blizzard games suck now

They hire to fill a quota instead of hiring the most talented and qualified developers

[Rawrhead-suramar]

You know what you do when you don’t agree with the direction someone who had nothing to do with building something great and claims otherwise does?
A. You stay and eat mouldy sausage.
B. You leave.

I can play TBCC or classic or wrath as much as I please as long as the “new brood” doesn’t get their hooks into it. There’s your answer about diversity, quotas, quality and this clown literally trying to lay blame on the guys who made blizzard great.

WHAT A JOKE.

[Cauchy-heartseeker]

@Fasc-atiesh

I want to call this one out because higher education generally is dominated by women, even at the college level.

Higher ed is post-secondary school, which is primarily college-level.

@Fasc-atiesh

My master’s program in ChemE had ONE girl in it, out of 30 some odd students.

Was that last year? Or 30 years ago?

My graduate program had a lot of female students who were earning PhDs. I do not recall the percentage, but it was probably between 30% and 50%. Times are changing when it comes to that.

Interestingly, the bigshot researchers at my school were all male. There were female professors, but they all made less money than most of the males. Almost none of the female professors had PhD students working with them… The culture was, in a lot of ways very toxic:

• Male profs would poach students from female profs (my advisor was female… there was an attempt to poach me from her)
• One of the profs, who was Chinese, allegedly solicited favors from the female students from China. If they did not comply, he blocked them from getting a funded graduate position (my ex-girlfriend was one of these students. Some of the other Chinese students confirmed this.) None of this was ever proven publicly, but the prof is no longer employed with the institute

@Fasc-atiesh

She was an excellent student, but she was the only girl, and she notably felt out of place since most nerds doing a masters in any STEM field tend to be kinda socially awkward and content to just crunch formulas all day rather than chit-chat or interact with people.

Being a STEM person, my experience says this is grossly exaugurated at best.

@Fasc-atiesh

The easy answer is that many of the highest and most lucrative positions in America are locked behind things that have nothing to do with performance, or skill, or education. The secondary effect is that the few that do care about insane performance output will naturally find more men than women, simply because women in generally can’t or won’t put in the ridiculous hours men will. The third effect is that women just don’t pursue those careers or positions at all.

@Fasc-atiesh

But then the 3 available derm slots go away and the other 190 of you have to do something else. Women aren’t aiming for surgery or radiology, despite those being competitive, and despite those having amazing pay and prestige. Men overwhelmingly dominate radiology because it is the least person-oriented job in the business. Women do flock to things like pediatrics, family medicine, and gynecology, but aside from the last one, those aren’t exactly the big-bucks compared to others. These are also more likely to be small clinic setups rather than big hospitals.

There’s no bias here that isn’t in total control by the students themselves: their performance. And yet the would-be doctors tend to self-select into roles that don’t have the same pay, hours, or prestige. Comparing the male surgeon in a big VA hospital to the female private practice family doctor in a small town who went to the same school is going to inherently skew the data.

Dude… you’re acting like individuals have full control. This really isn’t the case. The hiring processes are borked in many institutes. Most people aren’t interested in working in rural areas for most professional jobs… they take them because that’s what’s available to them. Regardless of what companies say, there are biases in hiring processes all over the place. And even if someone does get hired, the culture of the workplace could be quite unwelcoming.

Another personal example: My wife is Syrian. She worked at my college for a time as a support person for certain classes, but was effectively forced out. Comments like “is it legal for you to be here?” were fairly common from both employees and students. One of the instructors turned an entire group of students on her (I’m not going to disclose details here.) We could probably sue, but chose not to. Hell, we can’t even go to the doctor’s office without dealing with dumb crap. We filed a formal complaint with the local hospital due to racist crap FROM A DOCTOR (I witnessed the incident, and wrote the complaint. The doctor isn’t with that hospital anymore, as my complaint wasn’t his only offense.) I could go on with the issues we’ve faced as a family professionally and personally… but won’t.

At any rate, you could go on pretending that this individualistic crap is the way things work. Ultimately, if you’re female or a minority in the US, you will have a harder time with pretty much everything.

[Soada-westfall]

@Tracyn-benediction

from experience what ive seen is qualified men being left behind underqualified personnel because they need to fill a diversity Quota

I’ve heard rednecks and misogynists whining about this also, but it’s simply not true.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pragyaagarwaleurope/2020/03/04/gender-bias-in-stem-women-in-tech-report-facing-discrimination/

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/09/women-in-stem-see-more-gender-disparities-at-work-especially-those-in-computer-jobs-majority-male-workplaces/

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/07/13/women-left-tech-jobs-were-sexually-harassed-passed-promotions-report/

[Soada-westfall]

@Tracyn-benediction

because women hate women
any department or company becomes a battle royale for who is to be the alpha B*
which affects the whole thing negatively
and god forbid there is a love interested involved

This is a long, persistent myth. Women actually collaborate and work better in teams than their male counterparts.

@Azaz-whitemane

Thats why Blizzard games suck now

They hire to fill a quota instead of hiring the most talented and qualified developers

Right. Those cube crawling, butt grabbing drunks were the best and the brightest.

[Fasc-atiesh]

@Cauchy-heartseeker

Was that last year? Or 30 years ago?

About 10 years ago.

@Cauchy-heartseeker

Being a STEM person, my experience says this is grossly exaugurated at best.

Not amongst those peers… oof. Hygiene was an alternative and optional activity for some of them still…

@Cauchy-heartseeker

Dude… you’re acting like individuals have full control.

No, I’m explaining a selection process with the least amount of bias, and yet you get very very different outcomes in pay and prestige.

Not everyone wants to be a proctologist despite it paying better than a number of other disciplines.

@Cauchy-heartseeker

At any rate, you could go on pretending that this individualistic crap is the way things work. Ultimately, if you’re female or a minority in the US, you will have a harder time with pretty much everything.

[Fasc-atiesh]

@Soada-westfall

This is a long, persistent myth. Women actually collaborate and work better in teams than their male counterparts.

What a load of hogwash…

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000289

Women are crueler to one another in the workplace than men are to each other or to women.

https://ncadv.org/blog/posts/domestic-violence-and-the-lgbtq-community

Within relationships, the most violent and abusive are female-female, with the least violent and abuse being male-male.

I bring up the relationships because the woman on woman hostility and cruelty is often vapidly blamed on the men (somehow) and just handwaved off… but no such male interference or influence exists in a purely female-female sexual relationship.

[Thereza-netherwind]

@Fasc-atiesh

Women are crueler to one another in the workplace than men are to each other or to women.

If I put this on another words I would’ve been banned from the forums.

[Creepindethh-myzrael]

This is every single company on the face of the planet that you speak of. If you think ANY company cares about anything other than their bottom line, you are living in a fantasy world. This is 100% uniform across the board.

[Naturion-benediction]

@Thereza-netherwind

If I put this on another words I would’ve been banned from the forums.

do it

[Arkane-sisters-of-elune]

@Soada-westfall

Qualified women and minority applicants are routinely passed over, often losing out to less qualified males.

No, they’re not. This is one of the biggest lies of the 21st century.

@Soada-westfall

Women actually collaborate and work better in teams than their male counterparts.

No, they do not. Another one of the biggest lies of the 21st century.

[Uchuyagi-atiesh]

Of course, modern social engineering has trained us to largely ignore or downplay female-on-femaie violence and abuse. Mostly because men are no longer allowed to be the old-fashioned protectors and guardians they used to be without otherwise being objectified as morally reprehensible for even having assumed such a role in the first place.

[Bankval-netherwind]

I really should have named this post “the battle of neckbeards”

[Uchuyagi-atiesh]

Ion has one of those thousand-yard stares. Like a deer in the headlights. Bereft of passion.
The very personification of a culture that is now being infantilized, watered down and stripped of the roughshod fibers that once made it great.

[Ixmucane-mankrik]

@Bumjockey-arugal

Saying you want the most qualified candidate but that you have to check their ethnicity before accepting someone is not the same thing.

It is if the only qualification for the job is diversity hire.

[Feywaif-atiesh]

@Fasc-atiesh

The very real worry that always manifests when hiring committees aim for qualities in a new hire that have nothing to do with the job itself is that someone is being selected preferentially over a more qualified candidate on the basis of a statistic that will not be helpful to the work that company does.

Sure, but sometimes there are unconscious biases. All it took to get lots of women in orchestras was to have everyone audition behind a curtain.

[Fasc-atiesh]

@Feywaif-atiesh

All it took to get lots of women in orchestras was to have everyone audition behind a curtain.

Right, and this is a good thing as the variable that was being unconsciously (or not) selected for was whether the performer was male or female. This would be like a company declaring they are removing the names, race, gender, sex, religion, home address, etc information from resumes before analyzing them, so as to only get the most qualified without gravitating to a particular kind of graduate or nationality or whatever.

The irony here is that we have Ion and companies like Blizzard who are deliberately taking the curtain away so they can get a good look at the candidates’ demographics that have nothing to do with their qualities. In fact, the goal here is to specifically discriminate in whatever direction achieves the benchmark quotas of “diversity” that are already predetermined. However, we’re supposed to praise this now… which is obscene.

[Raremob-earthfury]

go woke go broke.

[Soada-westfall]

@Uchuyagi-atiesh

Ion has one of those thousand-yard stares. Like a deer in the headlights. Bereft of passion.

One can objectively say that under Ion’s leadership WoW lost around 10 million subs. Under his leadership Blizzard went from being proud of their sub numbers to gauging success using MAU’s. One can objectively say that under Watcher’s watch, dev communication became a trickle and then ceased altogether.

One can objectively say that Ion has been less than forthcoming, from the story line in BFA to the flying debacle in WoD (You’ll fly at some point… and then, You won’t ever fly… and finally, You’ll fly but only after doing stupid things and then we’ll take it away in the newest zones).

One can objectively say under Ion’s leadership, zones became annoying and time consuming. Under Ion’s leadership, FB chores became an integral part of the game.

Under Ion’s watch, fun was doled out in small increments - just enough to keep players interested. The main focus was time gating and a slog-fest of chores.

But sure. Now that Blizzard has been exposed for sexual harassment and discrimination, Ion has just lost his passion. The game’s definitely going downhill from here.

https://patrickjcolliano.medium.com/blizzard-needs-to-fire-ion-hazzikostas-604796d3762

[Jassarin-pagle]

Ion was one of the worst decisions Blizzard made. The game has done nothing but decline under his watch. He’s too arrogant to be receptive to feedback that opposes his view on what the game should be. Until he puts his ego aside and listens to feedback at all levels, this game isn’t going to get better.