Blizzard Company-Wide Meeting Reportedly Made Employees Feel "Extremely Unimportant And Unsupported”

[erek]

Rank stacking and emotional tampons being issued in the deluge

“The controversial town hall meeting comes after Blizzard settled with both the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the tune of millions of dollars, and as multiple groups within Blizzard have unionized.”

Source: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/b...ely-unimportant-and-unsupported/1100-6511643/

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Time for the union to earn their dues.

Also Blizzard continues the tradition of no longer being Blizzard. They’re a trash dev now, there is nothing significant about what they’re doing. I expect they will spend all of their relational capital relatively quickly as they push for annual release cycles, overwork their people, do unfavorable management decisions, and their products continues to downward spiral.

The faster gamers learn that blizzard isn’t blizzard the better. Nostalgia needs to die. Good games need to win.

 

[Brackle]

Time for the union to earn their dues.

Also Blizzard continues the tradition of no longer being Blizzard. They’re a trash dev now, there is nothing significant about what they’re doing. I expect they will spend all of their relational capital relatively quickly as they push for annual release cycles, overwork their people, do unfavorable management decisions, and their products continues to downward spiral.

The faster gamers learn that blizzard isn’t blizzard the better. Nostalgia needs to die. Good games need to win.

Dragonflight was a huge step in the right direction. But imo thats it.

 

[wizzi01]

Oh no they have to go back to the office whatever will they do?

 

[Lakados]

Oh no they have to go back to the office whatever will they do?

probably get groped.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Oh no they have to go back to the office whatever will they do?

Quit obviously. The only businesses for digital jobs that want people back in the office are ones that want to micro manage their people.

Every time people leave Blizzard, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, (Konami), and make their own studio/games it’s a win for gamers. I hope there is a massive exodus from Blizzard and we can get some good games again.

 

[Lakados]

Quit obviously. The only businesses for digital jobs that want people back in the office are ones that want to micro manage their people.

Every time people leave Blizzard, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, (Konami), and make their own studio/games it’s a win for gamers. I hope there is a massive exodus from Blizzard and we can get some good games again.

I would wager that half of the move to push them back to the office is to see if they can downsize their employees without having to perform any layoffs, layoffs at this stage would require union input and there and they would need to negotiate a collective agreement and blah blah blah, so instead they implement a bunch of unfavorable and unpopular workplace decisions the union has no real input on and see who walks away, then decide from there.

This pushes out the people who were already on the fence about leaving and keeps only those who are happy there or need to be there, helps slim things up because they need to start slimming up for the event the Microsoft purchase does fail, Activision would likely spin them off and prep them for an independent sale instead. Activision and Blizzard will be sold, if not to Microsoft then to somebody else, and they are prepping to look more attractive because if the Microsoft deal fails their stock will plummet and they need to look lean so it doesn't fall as far.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I would wager that half of the move to push them back to the office is to see if they can downsize their employees without having to perform any layoffs, layoffs at this stage would require union input and there and they would need to negotiate a collective agreement and blah blah blah, so instead they implement a bunch of unfavorable and unpopular workplace decisions the union has no real input on and see who walks away, then decide from there.

This pushes out the people who were already on the fence about leaving and keeps only those who are happy there or need to be there, helps slim things up because they need to start slimming up for the event the Microsoft purchase does fail, Activision would likely spin them off and prep them for an independent sale instead. Activision and Blizzard will be sold, if not to Microsoft then to somebody else, and they are prepping to look more attractive because if the Microsoft deal fails their stock will plummet and they need to look lean so it doesn't fall as far.

Only makes sense if and only if they are sold. If that happens (which in the merger thread I could update again, the current prospects from industry observers is: it's not looking good) then they could care less about what kind of personnel is retained, so long as they get maximum dollar value.
If the sale doesn't go through, which again, is looking less likely, then indiscriminately losing employees is the exact way you don't want to do this. It's possible that everyone from a particular department could all just leave making it literally impossible for games to be completed. That would necessitate getting new hires, on-boarding, that person getting up to speed, and likely having to re-figure out things that were already figured out.
Certain jobs like QA may not be as important: but if it's artists, designers, programmers that leave en masse it's bad for business. It would be hilarious if Diablo IV either gets delayed or gets released as a trash pile mess as a result of this (more likely it's released as a trash pile mess because Blizzard isn't Blizzard).

This is just a demonstration of corporate mismanagement on top of mismanagement.

 

[techie81]

Time for the union to earn their dues.

Also Blizzard continues the tradition of no longer being Blizzard. They’re a trash dev now, there is nothing significant about what they’re doing. I expect they will spend all of their relational capital relatively quickly as they push for annual release cycles, overwork their people, do unfavorable management decisions, and their products continues to downward spiral.

The faster gamers learn that blizzard isn’t blizzard the better. Nostalgia needs to die. Good games need to win.

Whatever creativity and potential blizzard had left, the unions will completely kill it off.

 

[erek]

Time for the union to earn their dues.

Good games need to win.

Kerbal Space Program 2 is due out, along with Company of Heroes 3

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Whatever creativity and potential blizzard had left, the unions will completely kill it off.

Not sure what industries you work in, but unions in general are a net positive for everyone involved. What's more depressing is that people in this country don't see their benefit. European countries make the US look like a joke. The US should be championing the middle class and not trying to put more money in Daddy Kotick's pockets.

 

[techie81]

Not sure what industries you work in, but unions in general are a net positive for everyone involved. What's more depressing is that people in this country don't see their benefit. European countries make the US look like a joke. The US should be championing the middle class and not trying to put more money in Daddy Kotick's pockets.

I work in healthcare and no, they aren't positive in any shape or form. They increase costs, destroy initiative and protect shitty employees.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I work in healthcare and no, they aren't positive in any shape or form. They increase costs, destroy initiative and protect shitty employees.

Okay. I guess you prefer the current way things are done: which is to have toxic environments, firing for any reason up to and including managements fault (complete and total job insecurity), zero workers rights, not paying fair wages that at least meet national averages for given jobs, zero PTO, zero sick days, lack of any and all insurance (ironic given your profession), pay raises and bonuses for management but not even cost of living adjustments yearly for anyone else, and the expectation that your job owns you.
I sincerely hope you're working in management as that's the only way you come out ahead on this deal. Otherwise you're advocating against yourself and basically anyone else that works for a living in the US. The reason why Blizzard is even unionized in the first place is because everything I just stated was Blizzard's playbook.

 

[M76]

Quit obviously. The only businesses for digital jobs that want people back in the office are ones that want to micro manage their people.

And ones who don't trust their employees to work unless they stand over their shoulders.

A work arrangement based on mistrust is doomed anyway, better to leave that ship asap.

 

[LukeTbk]

Apple, Google did something very similar last year I think, 3 days a week on location mandatory, Disney is at 4.

It is not just a desire to micro manage (it is not like the people so high that they take that decision will),
The answer is more complicated. Researchers at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

I would imagine those company have impressive data to look at (and It would be almost strange to presume being better at knowing the efficacy for them of remote vs in person, why would the Apple-MIcrosoft of the world wrong about this, who could possibly know more ?)

It could be that they are not good at it, or in some case like Apple they build such extraordinary campus that obviously in person work is better versus remote than a lot of the competition and there is the nature of the work, for something like a video game it seems that there would be many obvious reason to want in person some of the time work and not pure remote that goes over micro management (which I would imagine is possible in a remote work context has well if you want it).

The kind of people taking those decision, take a private plan, than a helicopter, than a ride in a SUV to go in person to a climate conference, I can easily imagine sincerity to them valuing in person contact that goes over micromanaging people.

 

[erek]

Apple, Google did something very similar last year I think, 3 days a week on location mandatory, Disney is at 4.

It is not just a desire to micro manage (it is not like the people so high that they take that decision will),
The answer is more complicated. Researchers at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

I would imagine those company have impressive data to look at (and It would be almost strange to presume being better at knowing the efficacy for them of remote vs in person, why would the Apple-MIcrosoft of the world wrong about this, who could possibly know more ?)

It could be that they are not good at it, or in some case like Apple they build such extraordinary campus that obviously in person work is better versus remote than a lot of the competition and there is the nature of the work, for something like a video game it seems that there would be many obvious reason to want in person some of the time work and not pure remote that goes over micro management (which I would imagine is possible in a remote work context has well if you want it).

The kind of people taking those decision, take a private plan, than a helicopter, than a ride in a SUV to go in person to a climate conference, I can easily imagine sincerity to them valuing in person contact that goes over micromanaging people.

heard some are mandating 3-4 days in, and Friday can't be one of the days you're from home either

 

[wizzi01]

Not sure what industries you work in, but unions in general are a net positive for everyone involved. What's more depressing is that people in this country don't see their benefit. European countries make the US look like a joke. The US should be championing the middle class and not trying to put more money in Daddy Kotick's pockets.

Sounds like you've never been in a union. The only thing union's do is help protect the crappy employees from getting fired so they keep getting those dues. This is coming from someone who had almost 15 years in unions.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Sounds like you've never been in a union. The only thing union's do is help protect the crappy employees from getting fired so they keep getting those dues. This is coming from someone who had almost 15 years in unions.

Only the truly indoctrinated speak in absolutes.

 

[staknhalo]

Quit obviously. The only businesses for digital jobs that want people back in the office are ones that want to micro manage their people.

Every time people leave Blizzard, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, (Konami), and make their own studio/games it’s a win for gamers. I hope there is a massive exodus from Blizzard and we can get some good games again.

AI gonna be making game models, textures, and maps soon...

 

[wizzi01]

Only the truly indoctrinated speak in absolutes.

Are you speaking absolutely?

 

[LukeTbk]

Sounds like you've never been in a union. The only thing union's do is help protect the crappy employees from getting fired so they keep getting those dues. This is coming from someone who had almost 15 years in unions.

It can help to capture profit.

Think for an obvious example, the nhl (or other pro league) players union, they manage to get 50% or so of the revenues going their way.

Or when transport when from horse to truck, an employee would be able to transport much more in an easier, safer more comfortable work how without worker organizing themselve would they be able to have a share of the superb efficacy boost of their industry going their way, now that less and easier to find worker are needed to transport the same goods.

In place when replacement is hard to find which give an inherent power of negotiation to individuals workers it can make less sense.

 

[blackmomba]

What's the last new IP that blizzards put out? Not part 2-3-4 or expacs or remasters... Gotta go back to overwatch no?

 

[DukenukemX]

Also Blizzard continues the tradition of no longer being Blizzard. They’re a trash dev now, there is nothing significant about what they’re doing. I expect they will spend all of their relational capital relatively quickly as they push for annual release cycles, overwork their people, do unfavorable management decisions, and their products continues to downward spiral.

The problem with Blizzard and most companies in general is that they're publicly traded, which pits these companies between consumers and shareholders. This is how the game industry nearly crashed in the early 2000's thanks to the stock market. We almost never got Steam because of this. No wonder Valve never became publicly traded. Blizzard almost got their freedom from this until Activision bought them up. The center of all this was Sierra.

The faster gamers learn that blizzard isn’t blizzard the better. Nostalgia needs to die. Good games need to win.

That would be terrible. Nostalgia is what reminds the industry of what good games should be. Just because it's old doesn't mean it isn't good The industry knows this because that's why old games are coming back like Demon Souls and Dead Space. When was the last time anyone made a good horror game like Dead Space? Resident Evil Village was OK but nothing like Dead Space and before that Resident Evil 2 Remake was a big hit. The industry is too focused on yearly releases of franchises and punishing their employee's to crunch hard to get a game that will likely not appeal to anyone. Roblox and Minecraft are the top games right now, with GTAV still not too far behind. When the industry is too focused with live service games and gets upset with Elden Ring's success, you know there's something wrong.

The least Blizzard can do is let employee's work from home. It's the least they could do with all the sexual harassment they've been caught doing. Better that than hiding cleavage in games because they don't wanna seem like horny perverts. Just let the employee's work from home instead of replacing photos of women in the game with fruit.

 

[sleepeeg3]

This pushes out the people who were already on the fence about leaving and keeps only those who are happy there or need to be there

I think this is exactly what companies try to do. However, the people who are "happy" to be there are sometimes the do-nothing lifers that are happy just collecting a paycheck. You may squeeze out the talented people who were happy just doing their job without commuting.

That said, I think a hybrid work environment is ideal.

Fully remote means the corporation has no reason to keep employees and the employees have no reason to be loyal to the company.
Your job ends up getting outsourced.
The corporation requires you to work longer hours.
It creates silos as people only care about themselves and there are fewer cross-department personal relationships.
It's tougher to onboard newer employees, rather than coaching them in person.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Sounds like you've never been in a union. The only thing union's do is help protect the crappy employees from getting fired so they keep getting those dues. This is coming from someone who had almost 15 years in unions.

Actually I worked in Teamsters Local 63 as part of M-Sort operation in Ontario, California. And for reference, Ontario is the third largest hub in the US, and the largest east of the Mississippi. If it was in a plane from central or eastern US, it goes through Ontario. As does virtually all west coast ground operations.
I then moved into operations management where I worked for Sunrise Sort, which was responsible for all the most expensive packages that UPS deals with: Next Day Early AM. That meant I basically worked every Holiday for every year that I was at UPS.

And I can tell you unequivocally that UPS is better as a result of unions. Without union protection UPS would do what Amazon is doing now: abusing employees, utilize college aged individuals as a disposable workforce, give zero full time options, and give zero retirement options as well as no medical insurance or PTO. People can actually work at UPS for 25 years and retire as a result of the Union. That will never happen at Amazon.

So not only are you ignorant in my opinion about unions, but also about me. If you want to differ on opinions, that's fine, but keep your assumptions about me out of your mouth.

Apple, Google did something very similar last year I think, 3 days a week on location mandatory, Disney is at 4.

It is not just a desire to micro manage (it is not like the people so high that they take that decision will),
The answer is more complicated. Researchers at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

I would imagine those company have impressive data to look at (and It would be almost strange to presume being better at knowing the efficacy for them of remote vs in person, why would the Apple-MIcrosoft of the world wrong about this, who could possibly know more ?)

It could be that they are not good at it, or in some case like Apple they build such extraordinary campus that obviously in person work is better versus remote than a lot of the competition and there is the nature of the work, for something like a video game it seems that there would be many obvious reason to want in person some of the time work and not pure remote that goes over micro management (which I would imagine is possible in a remote work context has well if you want it).

The kind of people taking those decision, take a private plan, than a helicopter, than a ride in a SUV to go in person to a climate conference, I can easily imagine sincerity to them valuing in person contact that goes over micromanaging people.

All studies by the fact that they're done in the first place are flawed. By simply observing, results are changed. The other part of this equation especially related to things like work is to have internal bias' checked. Because often times the results become what the people paying for the research wanted, that is to say: confirmation bias.
To look at other fields of study, like health, cigarette companies and sugar companies were able to "spin their data" for 50+ years virtually unopposed. The size of these companies is virtually meaningless. In fact the bigger companies likely have more of an agenda they want to "prove" than a smaller one.

This is also to say nothing about trying to keep your employees at all. Productivity reaches zero when you've lost that employee: and that's a very real situation that they're entering into now. Onboarding new employees and getting them up to speed costs tens of thousands of dollars. More if you count their lack of productivity as a major factor due to not really knowing what their job is for usually 6+ months. Keeping your employees as well as keeping them happy is generally better for productivity.

That would be terrible. Nostalgia is what reminds the industry of what good games should be.

You're missing my entire point. Nostalgia is directly responsible for the rehashing and reiteration you bring up later in this post. It's trying to sell games based on the idea of "good by association" or otherwise selling through name/brand recognition. Instead of creating a game worth playing.

Just because it's old doesn't mean it isn't good The industry knows this because that's why old games are coming back like Demon Souls and Dead Space. When was the last time anyone made a good horror game like Dead Space? Resident Evil Village was OK but nothing like Dead Space and before that Resident Evil 2 Remake was a big hit.

You're the guy that goes on and on about backwards compatibility. You can continue to play all the 'original' RE games for the next 100 years. The same with the original Dead Space games.
Big hits also don't mean much to me. CoD, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, and Battlefield every other year are also "big hits".

The industry is too focused on yearly releases of franchises and punishing their employee's to crunch hard to get a game that will likely not appeal to anyone. Roblox and Minecraft are the top games right now, with GTAV still not too far behind. When the industry is too focused with live service games and gets upset with Elden Ring's success, you know there's something wrong.

Right, and the something wrong is that most of the industry is focused on how to make "guaranteed money" as best as they understand it. And guaranteed money is all based around IP and nostalgia. Rehash the same thing, hopefully make it 5% better while not accidentally destroying its soul and the core game-play loop. Too bad those last things happen eventually 100% of the time for every organization that doesn't put creative first. Nintendo is basically the only exception to this at this point. Blizzard was, up until they merged with Activision. Now they're producing trash like the rest of them.

This is in stark contrast to making new and inventive game play loops, and novel stories - precisely like Minecraft and Elden Ring. Or Cyberpunk 2077. We have a ton of new titles in the game section of this forum worth looking forward to that are not IP/nostalgia driven.

 

[1_rick]

Sounds like you've never been in a union. The only thing union's do is help protect the crappy employees from getting fired so they keep getting those dues. This is coming from someone who had almost 15 years in unions.

Anyone who disagrees should look at NYC's rubber rooms for teachers.

I wouldn't say that's the *only* thing they do, but that's plenty bad on its own.

 

[MelonSplitter]

Okay. I guess you prefer the current way things are done: which is to have toxic environments, firing for any reason up to and including managements fault (complete and total job insecurity), zero workers rights, not paying fair wages that at least meet national averages for given jobs, zero PTO, zero sick days, lack of any and all insurance (ironic given your profession), pay raises and bonuses for management but not even cost of living adjustments yearly for anyone else, and the expectation that your job owns you.
I sincerely hope you're working in management as that's the only way you come out ahead on this deal. Otherwise you're advocating against yourself and basically anyone else that works for a living in the US. The reason why Blizzard is even unionized in the first place is because everything I just stated was Blizzard's playbook.

He didn't say that. Not even close.

 

[LukeTbk]

All studies by the fact that they're done in the first place are flawed. By simply observing, results are changed. The other part of this equation especially related to things like work is to have internal bias' checked. Because often times the results become what the people paying for the research wanted, that is to say: confirmation bias.

That why I do look more at good data employer actions than study, microsoft-apple etc...

 

[kirbyrj]

I'm part of a union, and I'm not going to sit here and lie and say that the union doesn't protect shitty employees who should be fired. That being said, I enjoy the collectively bargained pay rate the union has gotten me...<shrug>.

And on the subject of remote work...some people need supervision, otherwise there wouldn't be 147 different "undetectable mouse jigglers" available at Amazon right now.

 

[erek]

AI gonna be making game models, textures, and maps soon...

Not soon but already

https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/3d-character-generator

https://beta.character.ai/

https://www.reddit.com/r/procedural...gpt3_ai_dungeon_generator_is_finished_mostly/

 

[DukenukemX]

You're missing my entire point. Nostalgia is directly responsible for the rehashing and reiteration you bring up later in this post. It's trying to sell games based on the idea of "good by association" or otherwise selling through name/brand recognition. Instead of creating a game worth playing.

That's not the reason why they rehash old games. It's fantastically cheaper to make because the game has already been made for you. You barely need to market it since everyone knows it was a good game. You know it'll sell because it already did sell well in the past. The problem is that the industry doesn't hire good talent, and the good talent is forced to make games with live services. In many ways good game design works against the profits of the company since good games aren't grindy copy paste quests in a meaningless open world game that they sell you the solution to their game design with micro-transactions. There's a reason why Ubisoft is falling apart because that's all their games are. Indie developers tend to experiment more in their games since they don't cater to shareholders. Hi-Fi Rush is a new rhythm game that is shocking people because it hardly got any marketing and so far maybe game of the year. This isn't new to games, like Rayman Legends that did something similar and was made by Ubisoft.


Lots of older games put a lot more emphasis in music and sound compared to modern games and it's somehow a lost art until Hi-Fi Rush.

You're the guy that goes on and on about backwards compatibility. You can continue to play all the 'original' RE games for the next 100 years. The same with the original Dead Space games.
Big hits also don't mean much to me. CoD, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, and Battlefield every other year are also "big hits".

I'm not for re-releases sold at $60 or $70 pricing, but it's does bring the industry back to what gamers want. Blizzard didn't want to bring back old World of Warcraft expansions and they got meme'd about it, but this did show that maybe the direction of their new expansions was going the wrong way and not what gamers wanted. Classic WoW did influence their new expansions for the better, as did Resident Evil 2 which brought Capcom back to making better horror games. Elden ring reminded the industry that people want open world games with well crafted open worlds, and not copy paste easy content that people can just steam roll through. The entire Souls franchise made the entire game industry think about how to make games, because the Souls games went back to a time when games were hard.

Also, recent Far Cry games suck, though I'd argue they always sucked, as did Assassin's Creed games. CoD and Battlefield maybe successful.

Right, and the something wrong is that most of the industry is focused on how to make "guaranteed money" as best as they understand it. And guaranteed money is all based around IP and nostalgia. Rehash the same thing, hopefully make it 5% better while not accidentally destroying its soul and the core game-play loop. Too bad those last things happen eventually 100% of the time for every organization that doesn't put creative first. Nintendo is basically the only exception to this at this point. Blizzard was, up until they merged with Activision. Now they're producing trash like the rest of them.

Nintendo does remakes too. Link's Awaking and the new remake of Metroid Prime for examples. All the Wii U games are on Switch but given the title "Deluxe". You want to fix the game industry then they need to stop being publicly traded. Blizzard only makes online games and hasn't made a good one for a long time. Not everyone wants to play online games. They won't ever stop making online games because of monthly fees and micro-transactions. I'm sure somebody at Blizzard pitched a good idea for a single player game and was then quickly flushed down the toilet due to how it won't increase their stock value like CoD and Battlefield does. I think that's why Bungie got the boot because Destiny wasn't making them the money they had hoped for. Not that it didn't make a lot of money, just not World of Warcraft, CoD, Candy Crush levels of money.

 

[Lakados]

I think this is exactly what companies try to do. However, the people who are "happy" to be there are sometimes the do-nothing lifers that are happy just collecting a paycheck. You may squeeze out the talented people who were happy just doing their job without commuting.

That said, I think a hybrid work environment is ideal.

Fully remote means the corporation has no reason to keep employees and the employees have no reason to be loyal to the company.
Your job ends up getting outsourced.
The corporation requires you to work longer hours.
It creates silos as people only care about themselves and there are fewer cross-department personal relationships.
It's tougher to onboard newer employees, rather than coaching them in person.

Oh yeah, sometimes that happy is just happy to have a job because they don't know how they got that one and they sure as shit know that they got it because somebody in recruitment was sleeping and put their papers in the wrong folder.

But yeah Hybrid for most is absolutely needed, you need some actual face time with your coworkers and managers but it doesn't necessarily need to be 2 days a week, shit it could be some sort of company team-building bullshit on the first Monday of the month.
Hell make it a departmental paintball battle, Managers vs Janitors, Devs vs Testers.
There are lots of ways to build teams and workplace comradery other than dragging their ass through a shitty commute, for them to then do the same thing they were going to do anyway, only now with crappy lighting, in an office that is both too hot and too cold, while making small talk with people who are similarly annoyed, all bonding over how bad the coffee is. But hey, at least Management managed to find the worst pizza place in the city to deliver the greasiest cheese ball pizzas possible for Hawaiian shirt day, and just as you sit down from scarfing down that cheese to top it off Becky in accounting who has told everybody all week about her awesome new diet decides to microwave last nights salmon outside your office just in time for you to start in on that really annoying task you really need to focus on.

 

[Tengis]

What about how unions almost destroyed the US auto industry? I remember reading a big article like a decade ago about how non-union Toyota employees had similar pay and benefits to the GM employees, but GMs cost per man hour was like 2.5x higher. They attributed that to unions iirc.

 

[Lakados]

What about how unions almost destroyed the US auto industry? I remember reading a big article like a decade ago about how non-union Toyota employees had similar pay and benefits to the GM employees, but GMs cost per man hour was like 2.5x higher. They attributed that to unions iirc.

GM attributed it to unions, but when they needed a bailout it was shown to be the result of an overabundance of middle management and ineffectual corporate policies that prioritized cost savings at the expense of the labor to implement them.
I remember reading one horror story about how they changed a policy on the acceptable tolerances for the bolts they could use which let them cut those costs in half by sourcing them from another supplier but resulted in frequent equipment failures, defects, and general assembly stoppages which then required more time to fix, but because they weren't hiring more staff they just had a large increase in overtime to keep production on schedule. But that not only added more costs but also increase accident rates as tired people make more mistakes, which led to more slowdowns and more overtime and more accidents in a shitty cycle of expenditures, which very quickly eclipsed any savings the new bolt supplier could ever have made. Then instead of blaming the new policy on the bolts they turn around and blame the unions and employees for being too expensive and ineffectual.

 

[sharknice]

Every silicon valley company wants their employees in the office because they're in silicon fucking valley. They think that location is vital to their success, otherwise the company wouldn't be there. It costs wayyyy more money to be there than pretty much anywhere else in the US.
If they let people work from home their location would be pointless and they would close the office.

Unions can be good for employees, but whether you like unions or not they aren't beneficial to the actual consumers (us), saying they are is a huge fucking stretch. Employess potentially get better pay, work less hours, mabye better benefits. Yay for them I guess.
But it doesn't make the games any better. Working less hours means they'll take longer to release, paying more per employee means they'll have less budget for the actual development, and it will probably result in a lower quality game because you do always have some shittier employees being protected by the union. And don't forget about all the rules unions always come up with that slow things down. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever worked a union job. Maybe you'll feel good purchasing a game from a company that treats their employees better, but it's not going to be a better game.

But Blizzard is a garbage company and unions have nothing to do with it. Barely any of the employees are in a union. It's a small number of QA people. The company started going downhill years ago when they "merged" with Activision. All the good people already left because they can do better.

 

[t1337duder]

Well if they just make everyone black and gay, then everything will be better.

 

[Lakados]

Every silicon valley company wants their employees in the office because they're in silicon fucking valley. They think that location is vital to their success, otherwise the company wouldn't be there. It costs wayyyy more money to be there than pretty much anywhere else in the US.
If they let people work from home their location would be pointless and they would close the office.

Unions can be good for employees, but whether you like unions or not they aren't beneficial to the actual consumers (us), saying they are is a huge fucking stretch. Employess potentially get better pay, work less hours, mabye better benefits. Yay for them I guess.
But it doesn't make the games any better. Working less hours means they'll take longer to release, paying more per employee means they'll have less budget for the actual development, and it will probably result in a lower quality game because you do always have some shittier employees being protected by the union. And don't forget about all the rules unions always come up with that slow things down. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever worked a union job. Maybe you'll feel good purchasing a game from a company that treats their employees better, but it's not going to be a better game.

But Blizzard is a garbage company and unions have nothing to do with it. Barely any of the employees are in a union. It's a small number of QA people. The company started going downhill years ago when they "merged" with Activision. All the good people already left because they can do better.

But it shouldn’t take longer, instead of over working teams which statistically shows not only increases coding errors but also legibility the unions could push for adequate staffing from the get go.
Most developers staff for about 60% of the actual man power needed then pressure employees to work extra. This always results in the need for additional contracted staff in the final push, those new staff being unfamiliar with the project generate far more bugs than the seasoned staff and the model is generally known for why most games release in a buggy state on launch.
It has been shown that this model has little impact on sales while cutting staffing costs at the expense of burning out employees. To offset this many studios now instead keep most developers on as contractors and not employees so they just don’t renew them when the game launches keeping on a skeleton staff for patches and DLC.
It’s dirty and exploitative, which is why I generally support the unionized of the industry.

 

[M76]

It is not just a desire to micro manage (it is not like the people so high that they take that decision will),
The answer is more complicated. Researchers at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

And good riddance to that. The inter team thing was only demoralizing people. Teams were pitted against each other constantly hounded with the other team's performance. Everyone was trying to cherry pick the easiest tasks and doing shoddy work, because speed was more important than quality. If you did just one less unit of work than the other team, management made you feel like POS.

Low level employees communicating with members of the other team were frowned upon. Then after they finally got rid of the divisive teams structure people started to realize that the other team is not so bad after all.
Having insular teams within an organization is probably the worst management strategy, and having people on site only exaggerates its problems.

 

[DukenukemX]

What about how unions almost destroyed the US auto industry? I remember reading a big article like a decade ago about how non-union Toyota employees had similar pay and benefits to the GM employees, but GMs cost per man hour was like 2.5x higher. They attributed that to unions iirc.

As someone here who actually wrenches their cars, I can tell you that GM's problems weren't their unions but their cars. Part of the problem was that GM had too many divisions making the same car. The cars they did make were mostly throw away cars. Cars so poorly built that nobody in their right mind would ever pay money to keep them on the road, like I did. After the 2008 crash, GM was forced to close down their divisions that essentially made the same cars. I doubt GM was doing themselves favors in terms of costs by fighting themselves to sell the same car with a slightly different body design and a new name. It also didn't help that their cars in the 2000's had their ignition switches fall out of the car, thus killing all power and causing accidents. Even after 2008 GM is riddled with poor designs and crappy cars and there's a reason why Toyota is top dog. If you own a 3.6L V6 GM vehicle, I would think about selling it, asap.

If you think unions did it then you're ignoring the elephant in the room. The only good vehicles GM makes are the ones with V8 engines in them, not including the NorthStar engines because those were terrible.

 

[DukenukemX]

Unions can be good for employees, but whether you like unions or not they aren't beneficial to the actual consumers (us), saying they are is a huge fucking stretch. Employess potentially get better pay, work less hours, mabye better benefits. Yay for them I guess.
But it doesn't make the games any better. Working less hours means they'll take longer to release, paying more per employee means they'll have less budget for the actual development, and it will probably result in a lower quality game because you do always have some shittier employees being protected by the union. And don't forget about all the rules unions always come up with that slow things down. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever worked a union job. Maybe you'll feel good purchasing a game from a company that treats their employees better, but it's not going to be a better game.

Unions only cause problems for shareholders. If that pushes the company to cut costs by making worse products then that isn't the unions. That would be because the company is publicly traded. You can't blame a poorly made product against unions when the real culprit is the people on top who thought it was a good idea to outsource to the part of China that barely knew how to make stick house.

But Blizzard is a garbage company and unions have nothing to do with it. Barely any of the employees are in a union. It's a small number of QA people. The company started going downhill years ago when they "merged" with Activision. All the good people already left because they can do better.

Yea, when Activision is worried about their share price. Remember when they fired 800 people to boost their share price? Then soon after they posted the same jobs again because apparently they need people to run their company. It's not unions, but because they're a publicly traded company.