Blizzard

The workforce has incredible skill and drive to make the best games they can. Some individual departments/teams have compassionate leadership with enough clout to fight for their employees.

Managers: Blizzard still promotes many individual contributors to management positions but neglects people-management training in favor of project management. Some managers are capable, compassionate advocates for their reports; others are ineffective at best or downright inept.

Retention: Management relies on a revolving door of starry-eyed applicants while underpaying and disrespecting current employees. Salaries are industry average at best, and promotions & bonuses are anemic, so the most skilled employees are constantly leaving for studios willing to pay their worth.

Since 2019, the ABK executive team has gaslighted middle management and straight-up ignored employee concerns over:

• Harassment: Even after multiple lawsuits, reporting harassment is at best a toss-up on whether the accuser, accused, or no one will be punished.
• Pay: Blizzard claims "industry competitive," but companies with similar name recognition and reach pay substantially more. Stack ranking and other logistical excuses rate employees below their actual performance.
• Advancement: 10% annual promotion budget. No remote work. If you're too senior to easily replace, you might be grudgingly granted "long term remote," which won't fly if you're trying to get a mortgage loan in another state. The policy is so vaguely defined, it seems as though every employee has read a different version of it, and it's impossible to place responsibility when you get denied. And because they don't want to provide remote arrangements, they have made no effort to equalize opportunity for local vs. remote workers.

"HR protects the company" has rarely been more true than at Blizzard/ABK. My dealings with ABK HR were collectively over a year of the most hostile, damaging work environment I've endured in over a decade in the industry.

Allow for and invest in remote work. Respect your employees. If you hate the idea of a union, stop creating conditions where one is needed.