A great feature from Cecilia detailing first hand accounts of an intersection of toxic gaming and business culture.
https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483
It's a very in-depth, highly sourced, and detailed article but worth the read. It baffles me that many people are going to read this and simply shrug it off as a hit piece or for pushing some kind of agenda.
Lock if old
https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483
Hiring a woman into a leadership position proved impossible for Lacy, she said, and she left the company in part because of the sexism she'd personally experienced. She said her direct manager would ask her if it was hard working at Riot being so cute. Sometimes, she said, he'd imply that her position was a direct result of her appearance. Every few months, she said, a male boss of hers would comment in public meetings about how her kids and husband must really miss her while she was at work.
One day, Lacy conducted an experiment: After an idea she really believed in fell flat during a meeting, she asked a male colleague to present the same idea to the same group of people days later. He was skeptical, but she insisted that he give it a shot. "Lo and behold, the week after that, [he] went in, presented exactly as I did and the whole room was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is amazing.' [His] face turned beet red and he had tears in his eyes," said Lacy. "They just didn't respect women."
In her interview at Riot in 2015, one woman was asked to recall her favorite trinket from a 2004 World of Warcraft raid. She had already detailed what games she played and how often she played them. Throughout the hour-long interview, she said, her interviewer had been fact-checking her, looking for holes in the story of her gamer upbringing. "I was trying to prove to this executive that I wasn't lying about playing games," she said. To demonstrate she was a real, Riot-style gamer, she recalls wondering in desperation, "Should I just ask this guy to log onto my World of Warcraft profile?" Eventually, she was hired, despite hearing from a confidant later that her interviewer didn't think she had the "grit" to work there. Another confidant told her that the tone of her interview would have never happened were she a man.
Working at Riot isn't just about doing a job—it's about enthusiastically participating in the company's culture. What that means, among other things, is that successful hires across the company ought to be video game fans and specifically, according to three sources with knowledge of Riot's recruitment practices, hardcore video game fans. "We want passionate gamers who are talented professionals," read the first line on Riot's hiring page until late June. "Loving what you do is mandatory, and you won't fully appreciate a gamer's perspective unless you are one. We're not looking for the feedback averse. You need conviction, passion, and horsepower to excel at Riot." Those lines are no longer there. Now, the page includes the line, "Whatever you play, if you make time to play, you're a gamer," apparently softening Riot's cultural standards for gaming.
During hiring, Riot vets whether potential employees will be "culture fits." According to three sources familiar with Riot's recruiting practices, Riot focuses on finding what the company calls "core gamers" who can empathize with League players, and especially with the grind for competitive skill points. On paper, that makes sense. People who work at Riot need to understand the product they're putting out and the community they're meant to serve. But in practice, four sources say, the company preferencing core gamers when it hires not just game developers, but all of its full-time employees—from office managers to finance specialists—means preferencing a certain kind of person.
Those sources said that talented women have fallen through Riot's hiring processes because they weren't considered "core gamers," which one source described as "an excuse." Two sources familiar with Riot's hiring practices say the company checks interviewees' League of Legends stats prior to bringing them on campus for interviews. In an e-mail, a Riot representative told Kotaku, "During the interview process, we often expect Rioters to try out League of Legends, and for some League development roles require familiarity with the game, but we're not evaluating for skill." To correct hiring mistakes, Riot has a program called "queue dodge"; new hires who are deemed cultural "mismatches" can receive 10% of their annual salary, up to $25,000, if they leave.
It's a very in-depth, highly sourced, and detailed article but worth the read. It baffles me that many people are going to read this and simply shrug it off as a hit piece or for pushing some kind of agenda.
Lock if old
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