A lawsuit against Activision Blizzard was dismissed last month because, according to a judge in the Southern California District Court where the complaint was brought, the plaintiffs didn’t play enough Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to make an informed case against the maligned publisher. For once in Activision Blizzard’s many contentious legal battles, things ended smoothly.
Appears this case was one of those IP troll adjacent lawsuits, where they hope the publisher will just settle with them to make it go away.
If you look into what “game” they are saying COD:IW infringed on, it is an obviously false claim. I did enjoy that the judge basically said, how can you bring this case if you didn’t play the game? and closed it.
I hate it when the money I pay to credit card thieves evaporates!
Jay Wilson, in his recent talk, also talked about how Blizzard changed under Activision.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1617647012903784463
Managers were expected to give a poor “developing” status to roughly 5% of employees on their teams, which would lower their profit-sharing bonus money and could hamper them from receiving raises or promotions in the near future at the Irvine, California-based company, known for games like Overwatch and World of Warcraft .
“When team leads asked why we had to do this, World of Warcraft directors explained that while they did not agree, the reasons given by executive leadership were that it was important to squeeze the bottom-most performers as a way to make sure everybody continues to grow,” Birmingham wrote in the email, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. “This sort of policy encourages competition between employees, sabotage of one another’s work, a desire for people to find low-performing teams that they can be the best-performing worker on, and ultimately erodes trust and destroys creativity.”
This kind of bullshit is stupid.
I worked for multiple companies that did this kind of shit. Every employee is ranked against one another, and when promotions come around strong performers walk away, because the company can’t give out too many raises. Rather than paying an extra 5k a year on someone, they lose a great employee.
Mind-boggling that some companies still use this kind of ranking system, trying to objectively rank employees against eachother using each separate manager’s subjective thoughts on an employee’s performance.
Did they always do this or is this a new thing at Blizzard?
Mindboggling to me that companies still do stacked ranking. Seems like many of the original proponents actually looked at things and realized it wasn’t giving them what they wanted?
In a vacuum, the trade of 5k for one person seems foolish, but isn’t the alternative that the money needs to come from somewhere? Meaning someone else would get less of a raise?
Well, recruiting and replacing someone costs a hell of a lot more than 5k. If you don’t have cash equivalent to a rounding error for special circumstances and exceptional employees, you are managing your business wrong.
It isn’t the principle of a merit based system that is wrong, just the stupid rigidity of stack ranking systems that make no sense.
If you have 2 incredible employees, but only can give one raise, because there is no wiggle room, the 99% as good performer gets 100% punished.
It also fosters competition between employees, as you pit people against each other.
Colleague has a question about a system? Don’t have time to help you, because I got to think about my own ranking.
Yeah, but then that $5K doesn’t go out to shareholders, and that’s what’s really important.
Sure, but privately owned companies pull this shit too.
Thread from the guy in question.
I think it originated with Jack Welsh and GE. No surprise there I guess.
Doesn’t seem so (note, I’m using nitter )
*Edit: Depends on how ‘new’ is defined
Here’s another article on it:
I remember MSFT dropping stack ranking in 2013 after some public criticism. I’m guessing that’s still the case?
The Proletariat union vote has been withdrawn. Sounds like they don’t think they have enough support after the CEO basically guilted the employees for considering a union:
Sounds like somebody is getting a bonus.
So… If an overwhelming majority of the engineers actually signed cards, wouldn’t they be unionized? Seems like maybe that guy’s description of events might not be accurate. Sounds like a majority of engineers did not in fact want to unionize.
But you’ll be judged on that too - especially if the colleague is a contractor/MSP. Because you should be training them, so they can then rank you at a ‘2’ and send you on your way.
They aren’t worried about replacing you. Your replacement is already there, and you trained them.