Blizzard’s ‘Office Rating’ For Staff Sounds Like Hell [Update]

A story ran on Bloomberg earlier in the present day with the headline “Blizzard Supervisor Departs In Protest of Worker Rating System”. It sounds very businessy, possibly one thing that might land on the Linkedin information feed of a HR supervisor, however the stuff it’s describing is necessary as a result of it sounds completely dystopian.

Right here’s how that “worker rating system” is described within the report:

In 2021, Blizzard, a unit of Activision Blizzard Inc., carried out a course of known as stack rating, during which staff are ranked on a bell curve and managers should give low rankings to a sure share of workers, in accordance with folks acquainted with the change who requested to not be named discussing a personal matter. Managers have been anticipated to offer a poor “growing” standing to roughly 5% of staff on their groups, which might decrease their profit-sharing bonus cash and will hamper them from receiving raises or promotions within the close to future…

You’ll need to forgive me right here, as regardless of my tenure on this job I nonetheless dwell and work in Australia and so aren’t absolutely in control on the specifics of American workplace circumstances, however what the fuck? You’re telling me this firm has carried out a system the place 5% of its workforce, even when they’re doing simply advantageous, even when they’re going a nice job, will probably be focused—and endure financially—simply to satisfy a quota?

No surprise persons are pissed! A type of folks, Brian Birmingham, a co-lead developer on World of Warcraft Basic, acquired so mad that in accordance with Bloomberg’s report he emailed workers final week to “to specific his frustration with this technique”.

When group leads requested why we had to do that, World of Warcraft administrators defined that whereas they didn’t agree, the explanations given by govt management have been that it was necessary to squeeze the bottom-most performers as a method to verify all people continues to develop. This type of coverage encourages competitors between staff, sabotage of each other’s work, a want for folks to seek out low-performing groups that they are often the best-performing employee on, and in the end erodes belief and destroys creativity.

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Birmingham goes on to say he can’t work under a system like this, which he and other managers (who were asked to keep it a secret!) had managed to “circumvent or skip” for the last few years but which had recently begun to be enforced. He reportedly told staff he would be leaving the company if the policy was not reversed, but shortly after the email was sent he was called into HR and “terminated”.

If you work at Blizzard and have been impacted by this policy, and would like to share your experiences, you’ll be able to contact us right here.

UPDATE 8:48pm ET – Birmingham has launched a prolonged assertion on Twitter increasing on his ideas concerning the coverage and concerning the company management scenario typically. It begins right here: