Who was a new hire? Certainly not Brack who has been there since 2006. Do you mean newly promoted?
I think Blizzard might be protected by their own terrible reputation here. The folks left don’t care about horrid stuff- most of the folks who cared are already boycotting.
At worst, you see more of a push to China.
This was a situation I dealt with for years at my company. Too long. I had a direct report who was a brilliant jerk. Not at the level of Blizz, it was not nearly that extreme. But he’d make people cry in meetings, dress down project managers, openly condescend to new hires. Usually it was a woman.
So we’d go through the pattern. I’d talk to him, explain the problem, get his acceptance, an apology, and he’d be good for a few months. But I could tell he didn’t believe it, he was just saying what I wanted to hear so I’d stop hassling him. Then it’d happen again, and again.
But, he was our best programmer. Dude hit every deadline, could tackle any problem, never blew his estimates, could jump into and project and save it. He’d be named specifically on proposals to win us contracts because clients wanted him building their apps.
After another person quit and cited him specifically in the exit interview, I recommended we part ways with him. Like, he wasn’t going to change. And from there, it took my bosses months to get on board. It wasn’t until this guy botched a deployment (for the first time like ever) that he was let go.
When I worked at a Hollywood production company this was fairly standard. I remember a VP (who was usually a shy, soft spoken guy) screaming at a story editor “You fucked up! Just admit you fucked up!” in full earshot of everyone. At the same office the producer’s wife/co-producer had a sort of gopher/factotum guy named Mr. ‘Jones’ whom she would send on various errands. Whenever displeased she would loudly say, ‘You’d better start looking for a new job, Jones.’ An intern, I’d been told, was immediately fired when he addressed the producer too familiarly; another, while I was there, was fired for bragging to his mom (?) that he’d seen Arnold Schwarzenegger walk through the office.
I never saw anything sexual or Weinsteiny (although one of the execs did end up marrying his assistant later). But high tension and in-office screaming were fairly common. It didn’t even bother me that much. I sort of chuckled to myself that it was like that ‘Swimming with Sharks’ movie. I was pissed when the intern got fired over the Schwarzenegger thing, but I knew I had no power in the situation, so I didn’t do anything about it.
Wow.
“I’ve heard horror stories all of which I know are true and shouldn’t be dismissed,” tweeted Elsbeth Larkin, a tools software engineer for World of Warcraft. “The fact that [Activision Blizzard] dismissed it not once but twice is appalling.”
Mike Morhaime to women: now that I’m not in a position to change anything or be held responsible, I want to talk about the terrible things you went through when I ran Blizzard.
Does anyone think it’s a coincidence that he left just as the investigation started?
Edit: seeing tons of Twitter chatter corroborating the reports and adding more. This seems like a Weinstein situation: lots of terrible shit going down for a long while, that lots of people knew about but said nothing. The shitstorm for Blizzard has just begun.
Ex personnel manager at Blizz, though some of the Reddit comments blame him for some harassment as well:
https://reddit.com/r/wow/comments/oqsgt8/first_hand_account_of_harassment_at_blizzard/
This is my shocked face.
This refers to Brack/JAB
A sacrifice is going to have to be made: I think Brack will be out within two weeks, even though he only bears some, but not all, responsibility.
Someone’s gotta go under the bus to divert attention from Kotick.
“Achievements unlocked”
Naming Rob Bridenbecker and Rob Pardo at risk of being industry blacklisted:
Devilore is a CM at Blizzard btw
It’ll be interesting to see if corporate Activision changes their tune on Monday. I’m not sure the Kavanaugh-esque performative righteous indignation can stand given all the new and personal revelations that are coming out. Will they continue to pound the desk yelling “HOW DARE YOU” or will we see a softer message of “we’re listening and taking it seriously”?
It is just ridiculous that folks like Morhaime are acting like they didn’t know. They fucking created the company and the culture.
The awful thing is, you know the same is happening at Activision’s primary studios as well but they’re even more afraid to speak up. Hell, it’s probably happening in Kotick’s office.
Like @Hansey, I played Horde because of that! I still remember the time some guy in my group hit on me though, on my very unsexy undead mage, since it was a female voice in chat. I just ignored it. A group member that knew both of us laughed at him and said that I was old enough to be his Mom. I was, and when he asked and found out my son was his age he excused himself and logged off to “throw up and take a shower”. When he returned he was excruciatingly polite to me, and seemed honestly distraught. His friend wasn’t done and said at least I wasn’t an adult male pedo using a voice filter.
I wonder if that kid ever hit on another female horde player again.
Sounds like Blizzard was full of 12 year old boys, without any good friends to give them warnings.
If there’s one thing worse than dudes, it’s dudes online.
I remember falling in with a regular group in Lord of the Rings Online, using my usual Sarah Palin-esque avatar. One of the other players – I’m assuming he was a dude – kept calling me “cutie” in text chat. I mostly ignored it, but after he kept doing it, I finally had to tell him I was a dude. At which point he stopped talking to me altogether.
-Tom
I was reading this thread and had to stop it was so depressing. So many posts from women who’ve been outright assaulted in the workplace. When they felt brave enough to go to HR, HR would victim blame them.