Blizzard Entertainment reviews

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 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 to 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.

- Some enormous egos get away with abhorrent behavior because they’re seen as valuable to the company. - The company culture is *beyond* toxic. In addition to what’s been in the news, devs on the major game teams are treated as gods. Most other disciplines, especially QA and CS, are treated like 2nd/3rd class, skillless, wholly replaceable bit players whose primary function is in service to devs. - Low pay across the board except for the rare few dozen who are either execs or particularly special/tenured devs. Blizz trades on its (former) reputation as a supposed leader in the industry in order to convince you that you should be happy to be able to work at Blizz and accept a lower salary for the “privilege” of being able to be here. They go out of their way to sell you on the company kool aid and try to brainwash you into believing Blizz is your “family,” knowing that, psychologically, this tactic increases retention rates. - High cost of living area coupled with Blizz’s reluctance (prior to pandemic…unsure what long term strat will end up being now) to allow remote work opportunities for almost anyone other than engineers and some designers only exacerbates the pay problem. - The depth of unbelievably poor / inexperienced / incompetent leadership in many departments is astounding. - Crunch is just a standard and accepted part of the job. - Nepotism / favoritism is rampant. There isn’t a place anywhere in the company you can go where the guys (guys specifically) getting all the positions of power and money are the ones making friends in the right places or are literally related to the powerful. - You get pigeonholed. It’s very tough to convince anyone you have skills and potential outside of the job/discipline you were hired for (unless, again, you make the right friends). - HR is complicit in the toxic culture. Their willingness to act on harassment or other claims is directly proportional to the level of “star” quality the accused holds.