Jason Schreier/Bloomberg: Blizzard Workers Share Salaries in Revolt Over Wage Disparities

[seroun]

Honestly, I don't get why people are poor. It is just so easy to get a job that pays well, pays you in a legal way, while living your life, I don't really know how other people can't do that.

And I don't get why Blizzard employees can't simply get another job! Sure, you might have to relocate, find a new place to live, maybe find new means of transport, adapt to your new living situation, adapt to your new job and the people who work there, do the paper bureaucracy that you might have to do, save the money to pay your new place, moving your things, but that isn't so hard. Why should they ask for more of Blizzard who is making more than enough money to cover liveable wages in the location they are set? It's not like Blizzard could change headquarters with the money they have, and it's not like Blizzard chose to be headquartered in one of the most expensive areas of the United States! Their employees could simply move somewhere else. Geez.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

Honestly, I don't get why people are poor. It is just so easy to get a job that pays well, pays you in a legal way, while living your life, I don't really know how other people can't do that.

And I don't get why Blizzard employees can't simply get another job! Sure, you might have to relocate, find a new place to live, maybe find new means of transport, adapt to your new living situation, adapt to your new job and the people who work there, do the paper bureaucracy that you might have to do, save the money to pay your new place, moving your things, but that isn't so hard. Why should they ask for more of Blizzard who is making more than enough money to cover liveable wages in the location they are set? It's not like Blizzard could change headquarters with the money they have, and it's not like Blizzard chose to be headquartered in one of the most expensive areas of the United States! Their employees could simply move somewhere else. Geez.

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You forgot that they also have no right to be unhappy, because we looked online and the same inequality is everywhere else too.

 

[LexiStarrDust]

Man, I always thought this website was progressive, but the hyper capitalists here are pretty shocking. I wonder if some of the same people in this topic showed (I imagine fake/fashionable) support for BLM protests while in this thread arguing for the notion that all those underpaid black Amazon warehouse workers are just too lazy to get a better job so it's their fault their underpaid. Cognitive dissonance in some of these topics is astounding.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

If I were underpaid I would simply become a millionaire instead.

Edit: btw this was not free advice, I am a professional money advice person and if you read this you owe me 20.000€

 

[Khamsinvera]

The hard data is that Jason Schrier went and talked to a bunch of people who actually worked there and then wrote us a story telling us what the people who actually work there think. It was published by Bloomberg, one of the leading sources of finance journalism in the world.

Trying to logic police your way around it to basically argue that they must all be wrong just makes you look really fucking stupid.

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"Logic police" - that's funny.

If that counts as "hard data" to you, hey - you choose what to believe in.

i'm saying this for your own benefit: you really, seriously need to get your head out of your ass

i know you put a lot of work into copy and pasting numbers from the spreadsheet and Glassdoor, but don't be so proud of your research that your only response to someone breaking down why it's incredibly flawed is "so you'd rather trust this other thing?", for real

additionally, the way you've interpreted this article is incredibly bizarre

yes, it's pretty easy to trust Bloomberg's reporting that more than half of Blizzard workers were unhappy with their compensation, that Blizzard's response to that sparked an outcry, that a number of Blizzard employees have struggled to make ends meet, and that some Blizzard employees anonymously started circulating compensation information - "BUT ACCORDING TO MY RESEARCH BLIZZARD HAS COMPETITIVE WAGES, FAKE NEWS" is a nonsensical response to everything that was reported in the piece, and it's absolutely hilarious that you've convinced yourself we'd be better off believing your conclusion that everything is just fine

maybe center the various Blizzard employees who have stepped forward to express their struggles and frustrations working with the company, seriously

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Now, if you take the time to actually read what I've posted - there are teams (mainly CS) that are not fairly compensated, we could have an actual discussion.

However, if you chose not to look at the data objectively and offer your own insights on the various breakouts while taking the article at face value - well, that's your prerogative.

 

[jetpacks was yes]

Man, I always thought this website was progressive, but the hyper capitalists here are pretty shocking. I wonder if some of the same people in this topic showed (I imagine fake/fashionable) support for BLM protests while in this thread arguing for the notion that all those underpaid black Amazon warehouse workers are just too lazy to get a better job so it's their fault their underpaid. Cognitive dissonance in some of these topics is astounding.

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Indeed, it's pretty sickening

 

[TraderPoe]

This doesn't mean anything. Nintendo can be underpaying folks too, just not as bad as Blizzard. Let's not take a tweet as proof that Nintendo is some great, fair-paying company.

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Nintendo pays below average in the states too.

 

[seroun]

You forgot that they also have no right to be unhappy, because we looked online and the same inequality is everywhere else too.

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Exactly! How DARE THEY BE UNHAPPY WHEN GLASSDOOR EXISTS!


PD: Note that my post above was complete sarcasm, and this one is as well.

 

[UF_C]

Has Jim Sterling put out a video on this yet?

 

[Nerokis]

Now, if you take the time to actually read what I've posted - there are teams (mainly CS) that are not fairly compensated, we could have an actual discussion.

However, if you chose not to look at the data objectively and offer your own insights on the various breakouts while taking the article at face value - well, that's your prerogative.

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oh, I see, the measuring stick for "objectivity" is the extent to which someone is willing to believe your "research" undermines the reporting that there was an internal survey indicating widespread discontent at Blizzard, that there was further widespread discontent to Blizzard's response, or the various stories we've heard of current/former Blizzard employees struggling while figures like Bobby Kotick are grossly compensated

i'll say this, that comic goes well with the whole "so you'd rather trust actual reporting, Blizzard employees, etc. to my deeply flawed research??" sentiment

 

[Kill3r7]

Has Jim Sterling put out a video on this yet?

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Yep.

 

[UF_C]

Yep.

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Oh boy. Can't wait to watch it later

 

[Kittens McMittens]

"Logic police" - that's funny.

If that counts as "hard data" to you, hey - you choose what to believe in.



Now, if you take the time to actually read what I've posted - there are teams (mainly CS) that are not fairly compensated, we could have an actual discussion.

However, if you chose not to look at the data objectively and offer your own insights on the various breakouts while taking the article at face value - well, that's your prerogative.

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That's totally what you're doing though. Neither of us has the numbers, but a professional reporter went to speak to the people actually involved and reported on what they actually had to say. That's a real data point, whether you like it or not.

 

[hyouko]

Even if Blizzard's employees are paid competitively in a vacuum, cost-of-living differences might mean that they are scraping by (or not making ends meet) where they actually live. I'd trust the people who say they are struggling; they have no reason to lie about this.

 

[coconut gun]

Man, I always thought this website was progressive, but the hyper capitalists here are pretty shocking. I wonder if some of the same people in this topic showed (I imagine fake/fashionable) support for BLM protests while in this thread arguing for the notion that all those underpaid black Amazon warehouse workers are just too lazy to get a better job so it's their fault their underpaid. Cognitive dissonance in some of these topics is astounding.

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this websites only ever been progressive in the thinnest of social senses. if you ever wanna get real depressed check out how many people were excitedly supporting people like klobuchar, buttigieg, biden and warren in the PoliEra threads during the height of the primaries.

most people here think that progress would be replacing kotick with a woman ceo, not restructuring the company to make it genuinely more fair for workers.

 

[Kill3r7]

this websites only ever been progressive in the thinnest of social senses. if you ever wanna get real depressed check out how many people were excitedly supporting people like klobuchar, buttigieg, biden and warren in the PoliEra threads during the height of the primaries.

most people here think that progress would be replacing kotick with a woman ceo, not restructuring the company to make it genuinely more fair for workers.

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How do you restructure a publicly traded company? The workers can unionize but otherwise the company is free to operate as they see fit.

 

[Kawngi]

 

[Anatole]

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Now this is very cool. I have high hopes.

 

[platypotamus]

If I were underpaid I would simply become a millionaire instead.

Edit: btw this was not free advice, I am a professional money advice person and if you read this you owe me 20.000€

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Aww shit, do you offer any fellow 'potamus discounts or anything, I accidentally read it before I saw your edit?

 

[YaBish]

Collective action here could be the start of something much bigger. Rooting for the employees at ActiBlizzard.

If you're still around and we haven't chased you off, thanks for the reporting on this jschreier

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

Aww shit, do you offer any fellow 'potamus discounts or anything, I accidentally read it before I saw your edit?

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Sure!
You still owe me 20.000€ but you a free signed copy of my book "How to avoid paying 20.000€ for reading comments on the internet"

 

[platypotamus]

Sure!
You still owe me 20.000€ but you a free signed copy of my book "How to avoid paying 20.000€ for reading comments on the internet"

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Wow, with that kind of deal, I better take 2!

 

[Apathy]

I remember back in my early 20's I wanted to work in the games industry and Blizzard specifically cause I really loved their games. Seeing what they have become under Activision is just sad. They went from being my favorite developers, to me not even caring about any product they make now

 

[Maximo]

I remember back in my early 20's I wanted to work in the games industry and Blizzard specifically cause I really loved their games. Seeing what they have become under Activision is just sad. They went from being my favorite developers, to me not even caring about any product they make now

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Yeah same here, I can't in good confidence support them anymore.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Yes just like it's people's choices to have to work at Amazon warehouses. /s

Why is it so hard for some people to have the slightest amount of empathy here? Have you ever worked a minimum wage job? Have you ever had to clean shit off the floor of a supermarket because someone came in and had an accident? And when you told them that wasn't your job that you could leave if you didn't like it? Do you know how easy it is to become a QA tester? Or other lower level job in the hierarchy of video game development? You can't just go somewhere else, certainly not during a pandemic, certainly not to just another video game company. That's just ignoring how things are.



I think there's a real element to some of these conversations that consist of "I like x company so I'll forget they use capitalism too". I can't judge how bad Nintendo is compared to other companies but pretending they aren't bad is just being blind to the elements of capitalism. All one has to do is look at how Sakurai talked about developing Smash. That being said, on salaries, it's hard to judge without real data anyway.

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I'm not going to say Nintendo is good in this regard because frankly I have no idea, but I don't think Sakurai's experiences are a fair complaint when Sakurai has been a freelancer for ages and I get the feeling that a lot of the stuff with him and Smash is a result of his own workaholism rather than anything forced on him, especially given he's continued to keep a close professional relationship with Nintendo for so long after becoming a free agent. I feel like if Sakurai was unhappy with how Nintendo treated him he wouldn't have a hard time finding someone else to work for

 

[dojo32161]

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Ayyyy, that's good to hear, hope they succeed, and hopefully this leads to others in the game industry doing the same.

 

[Deleted member 4852]

Can someone explain what a "fair promotion" is

 

[Deleted member 56752]

Ayyyy, that's good to hear, hope they succeed, and hopefully this leads to others in the game industry doing the same.

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Activision sucks man

 

[SageShinigami]

Ya'll shouldn't respond to people arguing in bad faith. They're not looking for discussion, they're looking for irritation.

 

[EVIL]

I gave breakouts for other roles like CS, Artists, etc. in a follow-up - did you miss that part perchance?

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oh I did, and you keep citing sources on the "non dev" roles, from places like glassdoor which are vastly more inaccurate than jason's article and yet you like to trust that at a heartbeat because its glassdoor which is 100% based on anonymous data and is impossible to validate.

You also conveniently glance over there rest of my posts, that tell you there is no way to 100% prove or disprove anything regarding this article since the data point are really not there, otherwise jason could have used glassdoor to compose an article but yet here he spent actual time doing actual investigate journalism to talk with the actual people who work at blizzard and have worked at other companies in the past.

There are no accurate sources that you can use to compile data to prove or disprove the article. Thus the only thing you spend doing is muddying the discussion with your fake news routine which is def not beneficial to the discussion.

I am not against injecting a dose of facts into any discussion, but the fact here is, that you cannot, and its impossible, without going to the equal lengths Jason has gone and actually do an industry investigation into wages. The only thing you manage to do is to focus people on your doubt and not the issue at hand.

 

[Deleted member 4852]

Exactly! How DARE THEY BE UNHAPPY WHEN GLASSDOOR EXISTS!


PD: Note that my post above was complete sarcasm, and this one is as well.

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I think it has demonstrated that the data is out there for everybody and that best thing one can do is arm themselves with knowledge before excepting a position that they will later regret

 

[Nanashrew]

Considering the cost of living for the area... This is uhhh quite low.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

Can someone explain what a "fair promotion" is

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Something a lot of unionised workplaces have is promotion boards. So, rather than individual managers giving promotions to people they like cos their faces fit, they have to draw up a person specification and then there are open interviews. It's still open to abuse because sometimes a manager is able to get a comically specific person specification out, meaning there's literally one person on earth who fits it. However, it's generally better because people tend to feel the system is fairer and you sometimes get someone coming through who nobody had noticed who is actually perfect for the role.

 

[Puroresu_kid]

Anyone who supports this ridiculously myth that games are priced to cheaply needs to stop sucking corporate dicks.

 

[Deleted member 8901]

From CCP bootlicking to ripping off your own employees. How the mighty have fallen. Still no regrets deleting my Blizzard / Battle.Net account. Garbage ass company.

 

[coconut gun]

How do you restructure a publicly traded company? The workers can unionize but otherwise the company is free to operate as they see fit.

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apologies, what i shouldve said is restructuring our government and economy in a way that doesnt encourage these disgusting levels of wealth disparity.

within our current economic systemd whats happening at activision is 100% by design and operating as intended.

 

[Arrahant]

If I were underpaid I would simply become a millionaire instead.

Edit: btw this was not free advice, I am a professional money advice person and if you read this you owe me 20.000€

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Thank you for your time!

 

[Deleted member 4852]

Something a lot of unionised workplaces have is promotion boards. So, rather than individual managers giving promotions to people they like cos their faces fit, they have to draw up a person specification and then there are open interviews. It's still open to abuse because sometimes a manager is able to get a comically specific person specification out, meaning there's literally one person on earth who fits it. However, it's generally better because people tend to feel the system is fairer and you sometimes get someone coming through who nobody had noticed who is actually perfect for the role.

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Sorry, I'm not sure I am understanding. Are you saying that the manager determines the job requirements/qualifications and then another person interviews the candidates and picks the person that best meets those requirements/qualifications?

 

[Merc]

For one of the biggest and most profitable companies in gaming, they sure don't treat their employees good with good salaries at all. Terrible practices.

 

[Khanimus]

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Awesome.

 

[Inyourprime]

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Damn. Good luck. Hoping this works.

 

[bbg_g]

Good for the employees on getting to action. Hopefully this spawns a lot more people in the industry to unionize. With all the crap that happens in the gaming industry I'm sad that there hasn't been more movement on this.

Sorry, I'm not sure I am understanding. Are you saying that the manager determines the job requirements/qualifications and then another person interviews the candidates and picks the person that best meets those requirements/qualifications?

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In unions there are job titles, roles and pay grades. So if someone wants to be a level designer, there will be agreed upon responsibilities and roles and an expected range for that job title so anyone in the company can look up any job title and see what the expected pay range is.

So when there comes a need where a new position is required, the manager will have to go through all the current job titles that exist to see what jobs or responsibilities will be required of this position. Lets say that there's some new things that are needed to be done but no job title currently does this. So what will usually happen is that it'll be a combination of responsibilities + the new ones that leads to the creation of a new job title. So the manager will have to take that new job title with a higher pay and responsibilities to HR, the boss and other higher ups in the union itself to make sure everything works out and is fair. Once that new job title is justified and agreed upon, the new job "lead level designer" is created and that job has to be posted for application. So whether it be external or internal, in order to get that job or be "promoted" from within, everybody has to apply for that job and all need to be interviewed using the same people and questions and methodology.

There's usually a committee or group of people including the manager that will review resumes with a rubric and score so everyone can score with some sort of objectivity and consistency in meeting the requirements of the job. Once everyone puts in their scores for top candidates then you can choose the people that scored highest for interviews. The same process will happen with the interview. The interviewers will ask the same questions and have scores for answers that tick certain requirements etc so again there's a score from several people and it's a collective agreement on who to hire and you can pin point why and what qualifications they have that made them get the job. This is also helpful if there were internal employees that applied but didn't get the job because if you have a good manager, you can ask them why you didn't get the job and they can pull the documents to list exactly where you came up short and give you direction on where you can improve to hopefully get that position in the future.

 

[Deleted member 4852]

Good for the employees on getting to action. Hopefully this spawns a lot more people in the industry to unionize. With all the crap that happens in the gaming industry I'm sad that there hasn't been more movement on this.



In unions there are job titles, roles and pay grades. So if someone wants to be a level designer, there will be agreed upon responsibilities and roles and an expected range for that job title so anyone in the company can look up any job title and see what the expected pay range is.

So when there comes a need where a new position is required, the manager will have to go through all the current job titles that exist to see what jobs or responsibilities will be required of this position. Lets say that there's some new things that are needed to be done but no job title currently does this. So what will usually happen is that it'll be a combination of responsibilities + the new ones that leads to the creation of a new job title. So the manager will have to take that new job title with a higher pay and responsibilities to HR, the boss and other higher ups in the union itself to make sure everything works out and is fair. Once that new job title is justified and agreed upon, the new job "lead level designer" is created and that job has to be posted for application. So whether it be external or internal, in order to get that job or be "promoted" from within, everybody has to apply for that job and all need to be interviewed using the same people and questions and methodology.

There's usually a committee or group of people including the manager that will review resumes with a rubric and score so everyone can score with some sort of objectivity and consistency in meeting the requirements of the job. Once everyone puts in their scores for top candidates then you can choose the people that scored highest for interviews. The same process will happen with the interview. The interviewers will ask the same questions and have scores for answers that tick certain requirements etc so again there's a score from several people and it's a collective agreement on who to hire and you can pin point why and what qualifications they have that made them get the job. This is also helpful if there were internal employees that applied but didn't get the job because if you have a good manager, you can ask them why you didn't get the job and they can pull the documents to list exactly where you came up short and give you direction on where you can improve to hopefully get that position in the future.

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Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

Sorry, I'm not sure I am understanding. Are you saying that the manager determines the job requirements/qualifications and then another person interviews the candidates and picks the person that best meets those requirements/qualifications?

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It depends on the workplace. When I worked in the civil service, I don't think the managers were involved in interviewing their own staff. They basically asked for staff and then the wheels churned and people came out the other side.

However sometimes the process was obviously fixed. I went through an interview because I was part of a cohort who all started at the same time on fixed term contracts. When we started getting near the end, it was decided that having so many people leave at once would be bad so they wanted to give us all permanent positions. The person who ended up conducting the actual interviews was a manager from the admin section right next to our section (with HR support), so most of us knew her. I think over 90% of people kept their jobs. You basically just had to demonstrate in an interview that you weren't an idiot and had been performing over the past period, which I think was fair.

So, the point is managers don't get sole discretion. At the very least they get HR support for grading interviews in a objective fashion, and even if they don't interview it will be some other local manager who does.

It's kind of bureaucratic, but it helps promote uniformity of decision making and candidate quality, which is important for large organisations. I wouldn't be surprised if even non-unionised workplaces did it. I don't see how you could run any kind of organisation at national / international scale by just letting individual managers hire and fire whenever.