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

A story ran on Bloomberg earlier at present with the headline “Blizzard Supervisor Departs In Protest of Worker Rating System”. It sounds very businessy, possibly one thing that will 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 referred to as stack rating, through which staff are ranked on a bell curve and managers should give low scores to a sure share of employees, in keeping with folks accustomed to the change who requested to not be named discussing a personal matter. Managers had 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 must forgive me right here, as regardless of my tenure on this job I nonetheless reside and work in Australia and so aren’t totally 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 high quality, even when they’re going a nice job, shall be focused—and undergo financially—simply to fulfill a quota?

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

When workforce leads requested why we had to do that, World of Warcraft administrators defined that whereas they didn’t agree, the explanations given by government management had been that it was necessary to squeeze the bottom-most performers as a manner to verify everyone continues to develop. This kind of coverage encourages competitors between staff, sabotage of each other’s work, a need for folks to search 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 beneath a system like this, which he and different managers (who had been requested to maintain it a secret!) had managed to “circumvent or skip” for the previous couple of years however which had lately begun to be enforced. He reportedly advised employees he could be leaving the corporate if the coverage was not reversed, however shortly after the e-mail was despatched he was referred to as into HR and “terminated”.

Should you work at Blizzard and have been impacted by this coverage, and want to share your experiences, you may contact us right here.

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