Blizzard Infuriate Devs, End Remote Work, Cut Profit Sharing Bonus, Insult QA

[htag]

Dropping remote work, disrespecting employees, and giving less than expected bonuses? This is how you reduce your payroll without paying severance.

This is doubly disappointing because they have recently shipped some good products and have promising products shipping in the near future.

[Kinrany]

> This is how you reduce your payroll without paying severance.

Unlike with severance, your best employees leave first

[aussieguy1234]

In this scenario the highest achieving employees will be the ones that will quit first, as they will be in the most demand and therefore have the most options.

[raverbashing]

Yes. You also reduce your chance of shipping successful products

[runlevel1]

I've worked with some fantastic folks who came from Blizzard. Their descriptions of its company culture become increasingly depressing the more recent their departure.

[philippejara]

could we get the link switched to an actual written source instead of some youtube person speaking for 20 mins?

[_rs]

There are a bunch of links in the video description that seem to back most of this up

[Ygg2]

20min? Is that you, YongYea?

Edit: it was.

[moneywoes]

Unfortunately, it seems this is the trend now for all software jobs

[lfkdev]

I don't know why this is always said here, sure there are layoffs in some huge tech companies. But thats it. At least in Germany, my LinkedIn still gets mutliple messages per Day and my Salary is looking good.

[tennisflyi]

Welcome to the shit show.

[rr808]

2017-2022 did seem too good to be true. Back to the grindstone! I hope all the people attracted to the industry enjoy coding so much they can put up with poor wages.

[Mandatum]

Slack and Salesforce just did the same thing.

[langsoul-com]

Beware of working in a passionate industry. You will get treated like shit and there's nothing you can do about it. Someone else would gladly take that work for half or even free.

Other it businesses can't do this shit without suffering heavily, but game studios can because passionate works will be willing to join.

There are exceptions, but those are exceptions for a reason.

[paxys]

This is exactly why my advice to CS students always is – find a job writing business software. You can pursue your passions on the side, contribute to open source, volunteer or do whatever else you want, but hold on to that stable, "boring" 9-5 job like your life depends on it. Ten or twenty years later you are going to look back and thank yourself for going down this path while your peers who chased more flashy jobs are abused, burned out and have lost all passion for the art.

[hackerlight]

This is classic supply and demand doing its thing. People in passionate industries (artists, musicians, game devs) have a hard time because there's a large over supply of people who want to do it relative to less glamorous/fun jobs which creates a supply surplus, pushing down the cost of labor.

[reset8]

Will stick to working an easy job and putting my passion into an AI that creates games for me so companies like Blizzard’s cease to exist.

I didn’t ask to be born and didn’t sign a contract to believe a bunch of GenX and older CEOs are “powerful people” due to political status quo.

CEOs and the like can get fucked. We are not their serfs.

[hinkley]

It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them.

[salawat]

>Insult QA

Blizzard, if you weren't dead to me already, you now are.

[jimbob45]

You and I zeroed in on the same section. I zipped through the video and found the pertinent part[0]. It's not so much an insult as it is unequal treatment for QA (which...is an insult). QA makes the world spin though. Never a good idea to take them for granted.

[0]https://youtu.be/NVDpaqFLD24?t=158

[butt___hugger]

Pretty much every game company has always insulted QA, it's a major problem in the industry.