Taro Logo

Good Community, Toxic Politics

Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Blizzard for 4 years
February 10, 2019
Irvine, California
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative Outlook
Pros

Commitment to diversity, a tight-knit community, and good benefits.

Cons

Support teams still looked down on or were seen as cost centers.

There is no CTO currently.

The new President is still getting up to speed.

Budgets are tight and getting worse.

There is an unwillingness to fire people who aren’t actually a fit for the position they’re hired for.

Deeply toxic internal politics exist between departments (particularly, Battle.Net vs. the rest of the company, and Battle.Net vs. itself).

Advice to Management

Stop promoting technical people with a lack of soft skills to positions where they’ll manage dozens or hundreds of people.

Read up on the Peter Principle.

Listen to the cries of individual contributors when they say a lack of leadership is killing previously effective teams.

Learn how to hire people from the outside who will adhere to the Core Values.

Hiring hostile, inexperienced candidates for leadership/management positions and then making excuses for them when turnover on a team skyrockets isn’t doing anyone any favors.

#1 advice: have exit interviews for Internal Mobility moves.

People aren’t leaving Battle.Net for game teams because they want to; they’re leaving it because it’s a hostile work environment.

Was this helpful?

Blizzard Interview Experiences