Blizzard

• Amazing people and culture.
• Ability and encouragement to be yourself (within reason).
• Incredible fan base.
• Lots of fun perks and swag.

• Underpaid
• Overworked
• Overly Political
• Shifting business priorities

Let me start by saying that a lot of people work at Blizzard because they want to be there. They are super passionate about the company and what they're working on. The company says a lot of good things and makes great games. They provide pretty good benefits and additional perks to sweeten the deal.

But they also significantly underpay and overwork the vast majority of their employees. Most people there will gladly accept this because, hey, they work at Blizzard! But I don't think those two things should be mutually exclusive. Blizzard needs to take better care of their people financially.

There are a lot of really amazing people at Blizzard and they do genuinely care for each other, but it's never great to continually say that you're struggling to make ends meet, that you feel as if you're underpaid, and have management say they know and are working on it with no change ever taking place. It's even worse when they do implement changes that don't actually do anything but cause the new hires to make more than the tenured people training them.

When leadership sends messages like "get a second job" or "you're not rockstars, don't expect to be paid like rockstars," it really hurts morale. When people are encouraged to grow themselves and their careers but then blackballed and listed as a "flight risk" for their department and denied promotions, it can make people sour.

Additionally, being at Blizzard used to feel like being at a family company. As the business has grown, it has become more corporate and driven by the bottom line. Their tag line has been "Creating the most epic entertainment experiences ever," but right now, it feels like it is much closer to Activision's motto of "We make games that sell." The last few years have been exceptionally hard, especially on more tenured people.

I still think Blizzard is full of incredibly talented and devoted people. I think they make really good games. I believe that they care deeply about their community and fans. But until they stop exploiting that passion for profit, I wouldn't recommend Blizzard as a good place to work.