Blizzard workers voice frustration after reportedly rough Q&A

destructoid.com:

Internal issues at Activision Blizzard are carrying over into public forums. Following a company-wide Q&A with Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, workers have been voicing their frustrations online, as Activision Blizzard backs Ybarra’s statements.

Details of the meeting were shared with Game Developer, who reports that the company-wide Q&A was scheduled to cover the results of an employee satisfaction survey. As part of the meeting, Ybarra and studio executives answered pre-screened questions about several topics, including the stack ranking that recently drew ire and rolling back remote work practices. Employees were also told they’d receive only 58% of their profit-sharing bonus.

As part of the meeting, Ybarra reportedly downplayed the use of a stack ranking policy that engineer Brian Birmingham left the company over. A Blizzard spokesperson confirmed the Q+A took place and that comments provided to Game Developer were accurate, while also saying Ybarra did not directly reference Birmingham’s comments.

The spokesperson gave the following explanation of Ybarra’s comments, which Game Developer reports lines up with its sources’ sentiments on the meeting:

“We don’t to stack rank employees 1 through X at Blizzard. We have high expectations for our teams. Managers set goals with every employee and we measure performance against those goals. We provide managers with guidelines for how to consider performance ratings across larger teams to ensure they’re more fair and unbiased, and there is flexibility.

“Leadership provides feedback across the company to ensure that ratings are not solely based on one manager’s opinion. Performance management is every manager’s job, it isn’t an easy one, and we appreciate them.”

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