If you haven't read the state of California's claims here you should. It's the result of a two year investigation and the claims are.. shocking.
I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.
This "we like you" can and does lead to discrimination.
But here's the even darker side of this. Toxic cultures of sexual harassment as alleged in the complaint against Activision-Blizzard always come down to a few key individuals who then "spread" by hiring or promoting other people who are like then. I doubt this is ever explicit. It's more that you can sense a fellow predator (make no mistake: they are preying on vulnerable staff).
So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread. Those who oppose it will leave. Those who tow the lines get promoted.
And it's leadership's responsibility to root this out and eliminate it. Heads should roll here. Maybe even J Allen Brack's and/or Bobby Kotick's. If you want to take credit for the successes you also have to take responsibility for the giant failures here.
Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.
I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever.
There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.
But the bigger, weirder argument you seem to be making is that you shouldn't hire people that you like. I would say life is too short to be spending it around people you don't like, if you can help it.
I say that it is very possible to hire only people you like, and still end up with a diverse workplace free from abuse. You just need to start with good leaders.
Bobby Kotick is worth $600 million according to a brief Google search. That's enough fuck you money I'm surprised he hasn't just retired yet. Of course, when you can convince the board to pay you $155 million more, that's a good incentive to keep working I guess. Especially since work at that level is probably just a handful of meetings in a boardroom and a few more on the golf course per year (I don't mean CEOs in general, but CEOs of large corporations like his, where the decisions boil down to pretty much "How many absurd microtransactions can we get away with in Call of Duty this year?").
Anyway I highly doubt his head can really roll from this.
I agree with most of your comment but I want to add one level of nuance.
There's a bad way to do "culture fit" which you describe. There's also a good way: list the things you want in your culture (openness to criticism, appetite for learning, honesty, unafraid of challenges, or what have you) and then you construct questions specifically to find those things out, grade the result and weigh together into a culture fit score.
The good way to determine culture fit is to ask the candidate about the specific things you want in your culture, not go by general feeling because then you're indeed measuring something your biased System 1 likes, which is probably just the chimpanzee in your brain trying to determine how likely your blood relations with this person is.
I agree with 98% of this :-). And it absolutely flows from the top. What is more, good leadership knows this and understands that no matter how something happened, they are responsible for it. The entire games industry however has a reputation for being "bad" at empowering good leadership.
But let's talk about 'culture' for a moment.
In my experience, the tech workers in the US make their "work" their "life" way too frequently to be healthy. What I mean by that is that they do not choose to separate their "work" life from their "non-work" life in any meaningful way. As a result the parts that would nominally be "non-work" like friendships where you travel together, or date, or share political affiliations, or other causes, are not kept separate from your "work" life.
It isn't easy. People interact on social media and at work and so if you're angrily criticizing the plight of the Palestinians on social media, your pro-Israel co-worker may bring that conflict into work with them, which make it harder to get things done. And even when you support the notion that employees are their own people and what they do in their own time is their own business, and not to bring it to work, it shows up anyway.
For a long time people have advocated to "not bring your work home." That helps you maintain family relationships because at home that is your priority. We now also have to "not bring home to work."
I am aware of the situation of an excellent engineer who lost their job because at "home" they were a supporter of the policies of an administration that many of their co-workers despised. I can assure you from my experience with this person that their technical capabilities were in no way diminished by their political preferences, and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
So ActiBliz really needs to be corrected here, and firmly, because they allowed a non-professional culture to emerge and flourish within their company at the expense of many of their employees. But it isn't just "bro" culture, it is any non-business culture.
It is one of the under appreciated complexities of what a good manager can overcome.
> Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.
It is tone deaf and irrelevant, but they should not lose their job over that. Let the person who has never held a poor opinion throw the first stone.
> I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.
I mean I do kind of agree, but I'm not sure if "hire people you dislike" works either? It probably needs to be more of a situation of like "if you're a stanford grad the world isn't just other stanford grads" or something.
I find it greatly insightful that when the Swedish government studied gender segregation in the education system, the most common reason men left the profession was "culture fit". It highlight how culture fit is not specific to one industry or one gender, but rather as an universal aspect and likely major root cause in gender segregating behavior.
The issue goes much further than simply "we like you". How safe one feel in ones choices and decision is heavily influenced by choices of peers. If other Stanford grads work at the same place I do, then how bad can the decision to stay be? Similar, if every Stanford grads left, then is the decision to stay still safe or am I missing something.
The relation between culture fit and the probability that someone will commit a crime (like sexual harassment) seems less direct but I suspect there are an connection there. At a society level we know that mixing demographics will reduce trust, and with reduced trust we see an increase in crime.
I think you are making a lot of assumptions here. Were it even the one responsible for hiring that misbehaved?
It is correct to be angry about this, but your answer seems to be vindictive. Next step is to wait for the verdict.
> So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread.
Most businesses operate without sexual misdemeanor happening. On the contrary, I doubt the measures now announced by Kotick will ever be non-toxic. Because here you institute a group that will turn on random employees as they see fit. It is the wrong medicine in my opinion.
Useful would be to accuse the people responsible and use the law against them in a court of justice without arbitration.
Kotick voted for group punishment and I don't really understand how anyone would want to work at Activision to be honest because that isn't the way to get a non-toxic workplace. I doubt we will see much cooperation here.
This seems to largely match a lot of the same things that happened with Riot Games over the last couple of years. I am hoping that these actions can help spread awareness of any issues that may be present at Blizzard and past, current, and future employees won't face the same issues. It is a long road to be traveled to get there.
I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the visibility raised when Riot went through this was outside of the Riot gates where employees were congregated.
Without speculating on the claims, I do find it interesting that the DFEH has lawsuits against both Riot Games and Blizzard for similar issues. I recall reading that Riot's response was that the DFEH was not working in good faith: are both of these companies aligning their responses, is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken?
> I do find it interesting that the DFEH has lawsuits against both Riot Games and Blizzard for similar issues
Yes, because Riot's C-level executive was literally dry humping interns and shoving their ass into faces and still has their job? Clearly "visibility" has not worked past creating PR articles.
Does DFEH have the same problem with any other major game studio there that isn't embroiled in this type of behaviour?
I've played League before. The player base is ludicrously, absurdly toxic, and if they are hiring anything from there, then, well...
> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken?
No chance DEFH is out of line.
The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known.
Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp. That was in 2018... That's the _average_ person who is making a video game.
The industry is broken. Self-identifying gamers are one of the most toxic online communities long preyed on by groups like pick-up artists and men's rights activists. The games targeting this group of self-identifying gamers have overindexed on machismo for decades. Every problem can be solved with violence and the reward is fame, money, and women. Why is there Overwatch porn and not Candy Crush porn? For marketers these gamers are fish in a barrel.
Game companies who make games for this audience rely on this audience as their talent pool because no one else will build these games on absurd timelines at great cost to every other aspect of their life. They are in effect paid in 'cool points' which matter only to those already hazed or yet-to-be-hazed.
Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses.
I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lining up for the latest AAA title no matter what they hear about the company that created it. Imho change therefore has to come from something other than public opinion. This lawsuit is exactly that: the government enforcing a code of behavior because the market clearly cannot do it on its own. The system is working.
The thing is, your "average gamer" won't know or care about any of this. I work in the industry and according to our own stats the "average gamer" is a 20-30 year old, owns a console, and buys exactly three games every year - fifa, CoD, and one other title that got the most advertising that year.
I used to live with such guys at uni, had them as flatmates - you wouldn't catch them dead talking about video games, "nerd" was probably the worst insult for them, and they religiously bought every single Fifa every year to "play with their mates" and CoD to play some multiplayer. Year on year. So yeah, I'm absolutely tempted to believe those stats, and I'm also absolutely tempted to believe any backlash from this will be minimal to Activision.
Where they'll feel it the most is in hiring. Everyone in the industry is watching and if they don't fix their house, it will be very hard for them to hire and retain the engineers and designers who build and run their games.
Are you lumping in the workers of Blizzard with the "masses" of gamers saying actions by either wont have a consequence? That's what it reads like.
I think ultimately the workers staging a walk out or even stopping work would have the quickest and surest effect. The government setting labor standards isn't always the most effective, not to mention no one knows the pain suffered or actions needed more than the workers themselves.
Two years ago, during the Blitzchung / Hong Kong incident, I deleted the Battle.net account I had held since Warcraft III. I would encourage everyone else to do so too. It's definitely easier now that Blizzard no longer makes the best (or even good) games in any genre.
> Why it matters: Walkouts are a drastic measure for developers in a largely non-unionized field, a testament to just how angry employees currently are.
It sends a message, but I wouldn't say it's _that_ drastic considering the demand for developers and difficulty hiring in the Orange County area.
Yeah I don't think Blizzard is going to be able to bring in scabs to replace software devs. This comment reveals how poorly the industry is understood by outsiders, or at least this one journo.
Isn’t game dev overflowing with people? I’ve heard salaries for places like EA and people seem to make a lot less there than in comparable non game jobs.
This is interesting, given that Activision itself was founded by disgruntled Atari developers who'd walked out...whereupon the then-CEO of Atari, a former textile company executive who'd referred to the developers as "towel designers", discovered that he couldn't just call up a temp agency and have them send over a bunch of people who could cram a fun, playable game into 4K of memory.
Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what changes they're hoping to achieve with it.
"Staff are asking Activision Blizzard to adopt new recruiting, hiring and promotion policies to improve representation across all employee levels."
What exactly does this means? What is "representation across all employee levels" and why not competency?
In the US-based company I work for, we have a "diversity and inclusion" program that had resulted in promoting cafeteria managers to director level and hiring any (all) applicants of certain races in certain countries (varies by country) because targets had to be met. I have a friend in US that was told by all his mentors : "come on, you are a white male, you have no chance to be promoted". Is this what these people want?
Interesting. I've been thinking that based on how high up the chain of command the allegations suggest Activision's cultural problems are, it seemed a lot like the only way for Activision to "right the ship" would be to replace senior leadership (including possibly up to the CEO level).
I found that outcome unlikely, but if the employees put pressure on ownership in this way, it may perhaps create enough incentive for the ownership to oust the top-level leadership. Not sure.
Last I heard, Blizzard was hemorrhaging WoW users as well. Not a great run for them over the past couple years, with the terrible Warcraft III remaster as well.
Blizzard is done for. Everyone important left. There's no one to work on StarCraft 3 / WarCraft 4 and their reputation is deservably not what what it used to be only a few years ago. Like almost until the "you all have phones, right" moment.
Activision ruined the company. Sure, the market changed but Blizzard was doing much better under Vivendi.
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.
This "we like you" can and does lead to discrimination.
But here's the even darker side of this. Toxic cultures of sexual harassment as alleged in the complaint against Activision-Blizzard always come down to a few key individuals who then "spread" by hiring or promoting other people who are like then. I doubt this is ever explicit. It's more that you can sense a fellow predator (make no mistake: they are preying on vulnerable staff).
So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread. Those who oppose it will leave. Those who tow the lines get promoted.
And it's leadership's responsibility to root this out and eliminate it. Heads should roll here. Maybe even J Allen Brack's and/or Bobby Kotick's. If you want to take credit for the successes you also have to take responsibility for the giant failures here.
Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.
[+] [-] nineplay|4 years ago|reply
"culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria.
Things I've seen teams consider "culture"
- will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery?
- will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us?
- is the candidate entertained by all the Star Wars lingo we use?
If you don't find these discriminatory, think about how well a recent poster from Gaza would have done with them. Not well, I suspect
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849054
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|4 years ago|reply
There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.
But the bigger, weirder argument you seem to be making is that you shouldn't hire people that you like. I would say life is too short to be spending it around people you don't like, if you can help it.
I say that it is very possible to hire only people you like, and still end up with a diverse workplace free from abuse. You just need to start with good leaders.
[+] [-] cableshaft|4 years ago|reply
Anyway I highly doubt his head can really roll from this.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-06-22-activision-bli...
[+] [-] kqr|4 years ago|reply
There's a bad way to do "culture fit" which you describe. There's also a good way: list the things you want in your culture (openness to criticism, appetite for learning, honesty, unafraid of challenges, or what have you) and then you construct questions specifically to find those things out, grade the result and weigh together into a culture fit score.
The good way to determine culture fit is to ask the candidate about the specific things you want in your culture, not go by general feeling because then you're indeed measuring something your biased System 1 likes, which is probably just the chimpanzee in your brain trying to determine how likely your blood relations with this person is.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|4 years ago|reply
But let's talk about 'culture' for a moment.
In my experience, the tech workers in the US make their "work" their "life" way too frequently to be healthy. What I mean by that is that they do not choose to separate their "work" life from their "non-work" life in any meaningful way. As a result the parts that would nominally be "non-work" like friendships where you travel together, or date, or share political affiliations, or other causes, are not kept separate from your "work" life.
It isn't easy. People interact on social media and at work and so if you're angrily criticizing the plight of the Palestinians on social media, your pro-Israel co-worker may bring that conflict into work with them, which make it harder to get things done. And even when you support the notion that employees are their own people and what they do in their own time is their own business, and not to bring it to work, it shows up anyway.
For a long time people have advocated to "not bring your work home." That helps you maintain family relationships because at home that is your priority. We now also have to "not bring home to work."
I am aware of the situation of an excellent engineer who lost their job because at "home" they were a supporter of the policies of an administration that many of their co-workers despised. I can assure you from my experience with this person that their technical capabilities were in no way diminished by their political preferences, and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
So ActiBliz really needs to be corrected here, and firmly, because they allowed a non-professional culture to emerge and flourish within their company at the expense of many of their employees. But it isn't just "bro" culture, it is any non-business culture.
It is one of the under appreciated complexities of what a good manager can overcome.
[+] [-] eloff|4 years ago|reply
It is tone deaf and irrelevant, but they should not lose their job over that. Let the person who has never held a poor opinion throw the first stone.
[+] [-] overgard|4 years ago|reply
I mean I do kind of agree, but I'm not sure if "hire people you dislike" works either? It probably needs to be more of a situation of like "if you're a stanford grad the world isn't just other stanford grads" or something.
[+] [-] belorn|4 years ago|reply
The issue goes much further than simply "we like you". How safe one feel in ones choices and decision is heavily influenced by choices of peers. If other Stanford grads work at the same place I do, then how bad can the decision to stay be? Similar, if every Stanford grads left, then is the decision to stay still safe or am I missing something.
The relation between culture fit and the probability that someone will commit a crime (like sexual harassment) seems less direct but I suspect there are an connection there. At a society level we know that mixing demographics will reduce trust, and with reduced trust we see an increase in crime.
[+] [-] mcguire|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
It is correct to be angry about this, but your answer seems to be vindictive. Next step is to wait for the verdict.
> So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread.
Most businesses operate without sexual misdemeanor happening. On the contrary, I doubt the measures now announced by Kotick will ever be non-toxic. Because here you institute a group that will turn on random employees as they see fit. It is the wrong medicine in my opinion.
Useful would be to accuse the people responsible and use the law against them in a court of justice without arbitration.
Kotick voted for group punishment and I don't really understand how anyone would want to work at Activision to be honest because that isn't the way to get a non-toxic workplace. I doubt we will see much cooperation here.
[+] [-] 0x500x79|4 years ago|reply
I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the visibility raised when Riot went through this was outside of the Riot gates where employees were congregated.
Without speculating on the claims, I do find it interesting that the DFEH has lawsuits against both Riot Games and Blizzard for similar issues. I recall reading that Riot's response was that the DFEH was not working in good faith: are both of these companies aligning their responses, is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken?
[+] [-] ev1|4 years ago|reply
Yes, because Riot's C-level executive was literally dry humping interns and shoving their ass into faces and still has their job? Clearly "visibility" has not worked past creating PR articles.
Does DFEH have the same problem with any other major game studio there that isn't embroiled in this type of behaviour?
I've played League before. The player base is ludicrously, absurdly toxic, and if they are hiring anything from there, then, well...
Sexism:
[2018] https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...
[2018] https://twitter.com/MiniWhiteRabbit/status/10269232332814213...
[2019] https://www.vice.com/en/article/evyz7p/over-100-riot-games-e...
COO specific:
https://www.businessinsider.com/riot-games-suspends-coo-scot...
- tbh just google riot games farting
CEO specific:
[Feb 2021] https://www.wired.com/story/riot-games-ceo-culture-complaint...
[Mar 2021] https://www.dailyesports.gg/alienware-has-terminated-its-spo...
[+] [-] madamelic|4 years ago|reply
No chance DEFH is out of line.
The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known.
Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp. That was in 2018... That's the _average_ person who is making a video game.
[+] [-] username90|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] somehnacct3757|4 years ago|reply
Game companies who make games for this audience rely on this audience as their talent pool because no one else will build these games on absurd timelines at great cost to every other aspect of their life. They are in effect paid in 'cool points' which matter only to those already hazed or yet-to-be-hazed.
[+] [-] sandworm101|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gambiting|4 years ago|reply
I used to live with such guys at uni, had them as flatmates - you wouldn't catch them dead talking about video games, "nerd" was probably the worst insult for them, and they religiously bought every single Fifa every year to "play with their mates" and CoD to play some multiplayer. Year on year. So yeah, I'm absolutely tempted to believe those stats, and I'm also absolutely tempted to believe any backlash from this will be minimal to Activision.
[+] [-] joe-collins|4 years ago|reply
I know several current and former Team 2 (WoW) developers, from QA up to leads, and they are all unified in their rejection of their executives.
And I live nearby, so I'll be joining them on the pavement tomorrow.
[+] [-] thesausageking|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marricks|4 years ago|reply
I think ultimately the workers staging a walk out or even stopping work would have the quickest and surest effect. The government setting labor standards isn't always the most effective, not to mention no one knows the pain suffered or actions needed more than the workers themselves.
[+] [-] syshum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supergirl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devwastaken|4 years ago|reply
No king rules forever, my son.
[+] [-] edoceo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CobrastanJorji|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehlmao|4 years ago|reply
Activision Blizzard's Chief Compliance Officer released an absolutely disgusting statement in response to the lawsuit: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1418619091515068421
It's surreal knowing that she is also complicit in the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Townsend#Career).
[+] [-] runlevel1|4 years ago|reply
It sends a message, but I wouldn't say it's _that_ drastic considering the demand for developers and difficulty hiring in the Orange County area.
[+] [-] bagacrap|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Turing_Machine|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yosito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FanaHOVA|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __s|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonchang|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s5300|4 years ago|reply
Pretty fucked situation
[+] [-] pengaru|4 years ago|reply
Staging a virtual walk out where everyone just doesn't sign into Slack, Github, and/or read email for a day wouldn't have the same impact.
[+] [-] AdrianB1|4 years ago|reply
What exactly does this means? What is "representation across all employee levels" and why not competency?
In the US-based company I work for, we have a "diversity and inclusion" program that had resulted in promoting cafeteria managers to director level and hiring any (all) applicants of certain races in certain countries (varies by country) because targets had to be met. I have a friend in US that was told by all his mentors : "come on, you are a white male, you have no chance to be promoted". Is this what these people want?
[+] [-] shadowgovt|4 years ago|reply
I found that outcome unlikely, but if the employees put pressure on ownership in this way, it may perhaps create enough incentive for the ownership to oust the top-level leadership. Not sure.
[+] [-] DelightOne|4 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20210727183853/https://www.axios...
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841 - July 2021 (461 comments)
[+] [-] mym1990|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrower123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serverholic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
Activision ruined the company. Sure, the market changed but Blizzard was doing much better under Vivendi.
[+] [-] foolinaround|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayswede|4 years ago|reply