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On July 28 2021 14:39 JimmyJRaynor wrote:My sig keeps getting better with age.  Show nested quote +On July 28 2021 07:05 andrewlt wrote:
I live in California and can tell you that companies like the one I work for frequently lose employees to companies with shittier work environments just because they are more exciting. This is a "reality of the marketplace" thing. i've taken jobs in crappy environments because i knew i could gain a skill that wouldn't be offered to me in a better structured work environment. Often its because the business unit//department is growing too fast. i know others who've done the exact same thing i've done. i know sales guys who worked in places with a fucked up culture and also a fucked up bonus structure they knew they could exploit. many aspects of the job were garbage... but they knew they could manipulate their commission levels. so they sucked it up .. put up with the BS and raked in the cash. I put up with the crap and learned everything i could; My team pulled off the project and we put a bow on it. I added it to my portfolio and then I GTFO-ed. lots of people do exactly that and have done it for decades. With today's whiney suckhole grievance culture people want a hero badge for doing it. meh. Some of the whining i'm hearing makes me wonder how much life experience the whiners have. Welcome to the real world boys. For years, Blizzard vet Samwise Didier referenced this speech in a 1992 movie in his twitter header. I wonder if he took it down? Any how, he specifically referenced Baldwin's catch phrase "A B C". This is Blizzard and this is the real world; this world ain't changing just because we showed up ~30 years ago. + Show Spoiler +Chris Metzen is denying he knew anything about Alex's misconduct. I think Activision is going to feed a Blizzard employed sacrificial lamb to the rage mob. My guess is J. Allen Brack will be forced out. What has Blizzard made and released since Brack started in October 2018 ?
Well , maybe you should reconsider what you think is the real world my friend , I work in a company with no culture of sexual harassment (to my knowledge) of any kind , never seen it happen at least (was the same in my previous company to be honest), also it is EASY for me to know you are a man , probably have no kids or at least no girls , because I find it VERY hard to believe as a father that you will be OK with your baby girl growing up and being harassed and touched without consent on a daily basis at work , I know I might end up in court if I knew someone is doing it to my little girl.
Did I get your post wrong ? was I missing something in it ? or you actually called the complaints whining ? it must be that I missed something in your post..... it cannot be that you gave us some hero story how you worked in a shitty environment and left to tell the tale.....
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I doubt that infantilizing your daughter does any good either.
I also don't think Jimmy was talking about sexual harrasment per se. Some Jobs/Teams just suck, you can either deal with it and try to profit as much as possible or leave. This is obviously not including illegal behaviour, thats another ballgame and taking legal action (and still quitting) should be normal.
Reading many posts here in general I mainly find myself wondering how bad north american work enviroments seem to be. Not that "Boyzclubs" don't exist here but the level demonstrated by some here? I feel like thats unheard off.
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On July 28 2021 20:33 bluzi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2021 14:39 JimmyJRaynor wrote:My sig keeps getting better with age. On July 28 2021 07:05 andrewlt wrote:
I live in California and can tell you that companies like the one I work for frequently lose employees to companies with shittier work environments just because they are more exciting. This is a "reality of the marketplace" thing. i've taken jobs in crappy environments because i knew i could gain a skill that wouldn't be offered to me in a better structured work environment. Often its because the business unit//department is growing too fast. i know others who've done the exact same thing i've done. i know sales guys who worked in places with a fucked up culture and also a fucked up bonus structure they knew they could exploit. many aspects of the job were garbage... but they knew they could manipulate their commission levels. so they sucked it up .. put up with the BS and raked in the cash. I put up with the crap and learned everything i could; My team pulled off the project and we put a bow on it. I added it to my portfolio and then I GTFO-ed. lots of people do exactly that and have done it for decades. With today's whiney suckhole grievance culture people want a hero badge for doing it. meh. Some of the whining i'm hearing makes me wonder how much life experience the whiners have. Welcome to the real world boys. For years, Blizzard vet Samwise Didier referenced this speech in a 1992 movie in his twitter header. I wonder if he took it down? Any how, he specifically referenced Baldwin's catch phrase "A B C". This is Blizzard and this is the real world; this world ain't changing just because we showed up ~30 years ago. + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM Chris Metzen is denying he knew anything about Alex's misconduct. https://twitter.com/ChrisMetzen/status/1419158239371952140I think Activision is going to feed a Blizzard employed sacrificial lamb to the rage mob. My guess is J. Allen Brack will be forced out. What has Blizzard made and released since Brack started in October 2018 ? Well , maybe you should reconsider what you think is the real world my friend , I work in a company with no culture of sexual harassment (to my knowledge) of any kind , never seen it happen at least (was the same in my previous company to be honest), also it is EASY for me to know you are a man , probably have no kids or at least no girls , because I find it VERY hard to believe as a father that you will be OK with your baby girl growing up and being harassed and touched without consent on a daily basis at work , I know I might end up in court if I knew someone is doing it to my little girl. Did I get your post wrong ? was I missing something in it ? or you actually called the complaints whining ? it must be that I missed something in your post..... it cannot be that you gave us some hero story how you worked in a shitty environment and left to tell the tale.....
when you very quickly hire thousands of people for a company with out of control growth you end up with some bad apples. These out of control growth scenarios creating a "wild west" mentality are many decades old. Check out the complaints against Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. THat happened around 1980. 40+ years ago.
The creator of Pacman made the equivalent of $100K USD to make the game. It went on to make $1 Billion in 1980 money. That is about $3 Billion in today's money and it went on to gross $7 Billion. It Absolutely crushed Star Wars. The creator received zero bonuses and went on to live an average middle class life.
"You're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembly the cartridges", 1979.
This stuff has been going on forever dude.
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And this has what to do with the Blizzard lawsuit, exactly? "This is how it's always been" is not a response to anything. We know this is how it's always been. Shitty workplace cultures don't become acceptable because they've been shitty for a long time. They're still shitty and need fixed.
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I've never understood the mentality of "Yeah, it's shitty, but it's always been shitty, so it's fine". Clearly, if it's shitty, it should be attempted to be fixed, no?
Lump that in with the "Well I had to do the shitty thing, so I don't see why it should be fixed" attitude as things that needs to go by the wayside if you actually want to experience some improvements in a society
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On July 28 2021 22:59 Excludos wrote:
I've never understood the mentality of "Yeah, it's shitty, but it's always been shitty, so it's fine". Clearly, if it's shitty, it should be attempted to be fixed, no?
Lump that in with the "Well I had to do the shitty thing, so I don't see why it should be fixed" attitude as things that needs to go by the wayside if you actually want to experience some improvements in a society
To me it reads more like 'my generation had to deal with alot of shit, so i won't accept a lesser amount of shit for any current generation'.
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On July 27 2021 01:26 BronzeKnee wrote:Well Blizzard sticks guys like Demuslim in the booth when he talks about opponents raping each other... this is all in character. The video game industry and community has a long history of misogyny and defending those who are misogynistic. I mean, this is a quote from a longtime moderator of this forum: Show nested quote +Stealing a way better example made later in the topic. Beat clearly has a negative meaning in domestic violence. Wife beating and physical child abuse are more common than rape and are extremely damaging. That does not mean we should stop using beat as a synonym for win.
Words have meanings. In gaming to rape does not mean to sexually assault the unit or player in question. If anyone was in any way unclear about that then I can see why they might be shocked until the matter was cleared up. But I cannot understand why a word, which at this point is simply a homonym, should be banned because a tiny minority of people associate it with something other than the intended meaning.
In gaming culture rape is not an offensive word. I don't use it but this is almost as bad as people who claim the word niggardly is racist because it sounds kinda like nigger.
And if you say anything about it, you get silenced. Funny thing is, gaming culture is not in line with how society views this topic. It isn't up to any one person what is offensive and what it isn't, it is up to all of us. It's a democracy. If you choose to be out of line, there are consequences. For some, that means sitting alone in the lunch room, for others, that means sitting alone in jail. Blizzard is going to lose, so they will settle outside of court.
I love watching posts age like milk in real time
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Welcome back I guess.
I don't really see changes taking place. Riot did nothing when similar allegations surfaced and the fall guy there left briefly and came back as COO. Blizzard is going to take similar steps, and there'll be no real action that takes place. I hope I'm wrong but it's just not something that changes quickly, or at all if the people in power don't care to change it.
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8751 Posts
the way the rank and file employees have villainized leadership is a masterstroke. we know a lot of those people participating in the walkout were themselves perpetrators of inappropriate behavior or were aware of inappropriate behavior and did nothing about it until a situation came along when they'd get applauded instead of possibly fired.
if you want to tolerate a toxic environment because it's what benefits you the most, that's fine, you can choose your battles, but normally you wouldn't expect the support/backing of the public when you take a selfish approach to a situation
personally i've blown up many situations in my life to my great personal detriment because of things that i viewed as intolerable. i dont understand living otherwise. why protect a life that's not even worth living? all the people who knew about this culture and did nothing prior to that poor woman killing herself ought to feel a great shame and responsibility
but let's all join hands in slacktivism together as we send thoughts and prayers and golfclap for the brave employees who are "risking" their financial security to protect victims now
nevermind that if people didnt tolerate it at all, then this would've blown up over a decade ago and all the victims between now and then wouldn't have been victims
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The law firm that Kotick is hiring to promote a more respectful and inclusive workplace is also the same law firm that Amazon hires to keep its employees from unionizing.
How extremely coincidental that in this time of employees potentially unionizing they're hiring a law firm with strong union-busting work. Yes, certainly a coincidence, I'm sure this law firm was chosen exclusively for it's ability to make Blizzard more inclusive and respectful, definitely nothing to do seeing the sparks of unionization on their doorstep.
https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-hires-union-busting-firm-as-workers-1847386654?utm_campaign=Kotaku&utm_content=1627578211&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter
In a public statement addressed to employees earlier this week, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said the company was reviewing policies and procedures to help promote a more respectful and inclusive workplace. To help accomplish that, the company has retained the services of prestigious law firm WilmerHale, which is the same law firm helping Amazon keep its workers from unionizing. Considering ongoing efforts to unionize game workers, the partnership is a little concerning.
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
One of the saddest parts of all of this is that instead of cutting out the cancer, upper management is doubling and tripling down so hard that they're destroying the whole company. The only motivation i can think of which makes any kind of sense are gambling for financial gain at the expense of their employees and the greater gaming community. Are any of them at risk of jail time from this kind of lawsuit?
personally i've blown up many situations in my life to my great personal detriment because of things that i viewed as intolerable. i dont understand living otherwise. why protect a life that's not even worth living? all the people who knew about this culture and did nothing prior to that poor woman killing herself ought to feel a great shame and responsibility
I am exactly the same on that front, but there are few like us. The overwhelming majority of people seem content to stay quiet and stick to their own little corner, at least until things get so bad that they come out in an explosion like this.
we know a lot of those people participating in the walkout were themselves perpetrators of inappropriate behavior
Some people are playing victim on the same twitter accounts that they used to denigrate people on the back of race, gender, disabilities etc - even while those tweets are still up. There are always a lot of hypocrites around.
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United States44287 Posts
The option to walk away from shitty situations is not universal. Not everyone has the same safety net.
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8751 Posts
On July 30 2021 07:31 KwarK wrote:
The option to walk away from shitty situations is not universal. Not everyone has the same safety net.
that's the only option that's universal
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On July 30 2021 07:42 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2021 07:31 KwarK wrote:
The option to walk away from shitty situations is not universal. Not everyone has the same safety net. that's the only option that's universal
The ability to endure the consequences of walking away from a shitty situation is what's not universal, which in effect makes the ability to walk away not universal. I thought it was pretty straightforward.
On July 30 2021 06:40 NonY wrote:
nevermind that if people didnt tolerate it at all, then this would've blown up over a decade ago and all the victims between now and then wouldn't have been victims
But also let me point this out for the victim-blaming crap that it is. Without being in the company, you have no idea what it's like, and then when you finally land your dream job at Blizzard you find they have a vile company culture that comes straight from the top. There are people who didn't tolerate it, they got fired and their stories were silenced. It was a top-down culture of exploiting and suppressing people at will. Leadership at Blizzard fostered a culture from the start that was toxic as hell, so all the people who would've stood against it got pushed out before they became a significant portion of their workforce. They selected for what they wanted and against what they didn't, which is effective leadership in a nutshell. It was just also despicable. Don't fucking blame the people who had to put up with it. They did nothing wrong. Go for the people who use their power and privilege to shit on the lives of other people.
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8751 Posts
+ Show Spoiler +On July 30 2021 07:58 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2021 07:42 NonY wrote:On July 30 2021 07:31 KwarK wrote:
The option to walk away from shitty situations is not universal. Not everyone has the same safety net. that's the only option that's universal The ability to endure the consequences of walking away from a shitty situation is what's not universal, which in effect makes the ability to walk away not universal. I thought it was pretty straightforward. ?? nothing to endure when you're dead. suicide is the final comfort for anyone whose situation has become untenable. i thought THAT was obvious
User was warned for this post
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The reason for the suicide and nude pictures being spread is of course a big no and should be punished.
But the rest, pfff. This whole PC, cancel culture, lgthbiqxyz. It is going too far.
Being hit on, derogatory comments and jokes. If that is the culture that a company chose for, it is their good right. If you don't fit into that culture then you shouldn't be there. It is like immigrants coming to a country and then saying: nehh i dont like this and that, you should change it!
And no, it does not mean I would want to work for such a company, but it is their own choice. Of course there is a line, like I said. Nudes should not be spread, no physical bullying etc etc. But more often than not I see that the line is moved to the front in such a way that is just ridiculous. You need to apologize if you make fun of some accent or imitate some other language or if you say 'get the camel drivers'. Words with black in them are banned (such as in Germany) and in the USA animals with 'offensive' names such as gypsy are getting renamed. And people who are biologically not women need to be called a she or they or whatever (well I refuse to, as a scientist I refuse to do pseudoscience or deny biology).
So I would not work in a company where there are many people who go beyond the b in lgbtiqhxyz. These people who dont fit in the culture of blizzard should do the same.
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On July 28 2021 21:56 Velr wrote:
I doubt that infantilizing your daughter does any good either.
I also don't think Jimmy was talking about sexual harrasment per se. Some Jobs/Teams just suck, you can either deal with it and try to profit as much as possible or leave. This is obviously not including illegal behaviour, thats another ballgame and taking legal action (and still quitting) should be normal.
Reading many posts here in general I mainly find myself wondering how bad north american work enviroments seem to be. Not that "Boyzclubs" don't exist here but the level demonstrated by some here? I feel like thats unheard off.
It's nowhere near that bad. I feel like too many people talk like this is a 100% American thing that will magically go away if we become more European or mimic some other developed nation. The likes of Ubisoft say otherwise.
The reality is that outside 2008-2010, we've had a good run for most of the past 20 years. Unemployment was at record lows before the pandemic hit. Most of the victims I've read about had systems engineering, programming or some other valuable experience. In Southern California, finding a new job would be a piece of cake for these people. Let's not pretend that people who could easily earn $100k+ with RSUs at other companies are chained to Blizzard and in need of a safety net.
Nony is right that a lot of these protesting employees found it easy to look the other way because Blizzard was their dream job. Even some of the victims themselves tolerated it because it was their dream job. For the kind of people Blizzard employs with these kinds of skills, there are plenty of companies here with much better work environments with better pay. You just won't get to work on your favorite Blizzard games.
I work outside of the videogame industry and I've seen some of my coworkers take a pay cut and leave our cushier work environment for Blizzard. Some of them are female. They really, really wanted to work for Blizzard.
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On July 30 2021 08:01 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2021 07:58 NewSunshine wrote:On July 30 2021 07:42 NonY wrote:On July 30 2021 07:31 KwarK wrote:
The option to walk away from shitty situations is not universal. Not everyone has the same safety net. that's the only option that's universal The ability to endure the consequences of walking away from a shitty situation is what's not universal, which in effect makes the ability to walk away not universal. I thought it was pretty straightforward. ?? nothing to endure when you're dead. suicide is the final comfort for anyone whose situation has become untenable. i thought THAT was obvious
Is this a strawman? A suggestion? What about all the folks who didn't commit suicide? Come on, man.
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On July 30 2021 06:40 NonY wrote:
nevermind that if people didnt tolerate it at all, then this would've blown up over a decade ago and all the victims between now and then wouldn't have been victims
But also let me point this out for the victim-blaming crap that it is. Without being in the company, you have no idea what it's like, and then when you finally land your dream job at Blizzard you find they have a vile company culture that comes straight from the top. There are people who didn't tolerate it, they got fired and their stories were silenced. It was a top-down culture of exploiting and suppressing people at will. Leadership at Blizzard fostered a culture from the start that was toxic as hell, so all the people who would've stood against it got pushed out before they became a significant portion of their workforce. They selected for what they wanted and against what they didn't, which is effective leadership in a nutshell. It was just also despicable. Don't fucking blame the people who had to put up with it. They did nothing wrong. Go for the people who use their power and privilege to shit on the lives of other people.[/QUOTE]
It is their company. They have the right to select who they want and select people who they want and who would fit in. They also have the right to push out the people that they don't want.
Yes, there are of course limits and yes there are extremes. But what we are seeing in today's society is that even quite innocent or minor stuff gets punished so hard. And that people are punished for something way more than they should.
We are getting to a point where you are punished in society and in a job for not 'respecting' transgenders. Where if you do not use the pronoun or honorific that they want to hear, you will be fired. Again if this is the culture of the company, it is their right. but nowadays companies are forced due to media backlash or because they are being forcefully changed from within.
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