18 ms·

California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment

424 points by cyb_ 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago
A federal mandate on pay transparency would put an end to all of the unequal pay issues once and for all. What’s the downside?
- alfl 5y ago
  How much money do you make?
  - duxup 5y ago
    Would what someone claims online make any difference to you?
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      The point is to drive home how they might feel about publicity announcing and verifying their income for the world to see.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        Pay transparency does not necessarily mean a specific individual is tied with a specific amount of money.
        sib 5y ago
        Yes, but in many cases it does (not-huge companies with enough data on role, experience, location to disambiguate)...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    This is such a stupid retort. I'm totally fine with my salary being public iff everyone's salary is public.
    - stackedinserter 5y ago
      Start from yourself.
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    I would answer this, but it would give my potential next employer the opportunity to lowball me. This would not be the case if the pay transparency that parent describes were already a thing, because I would have the same ability to check the salaries of that company. But without that mandate happening, whoever moves first loses. That's why salary transparency should be mandated, because otherwise no one has any motivation to move, so no one will.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  IDK in your country, in mine the downside was that we all knew such pay gap is mostly non-existant, so they mandated a pay gap law but data is locked under trade unions gatekeeping.
  - neither_color 5y ago
    Of course it doesn't exist, because if it did any CEO could say "let's hire women instead of men and save 25%"
    - spaniard89277 5y ago
      In my country most salaries are mandated with trade-union agreements, even variable compensations. Only very specific and niche cases behave outside that framework. If any trade union or person believed that there was a real pay gap in any company, they could sue and win if true. Even way before current law. With the new law, it's even easier, as they get access to all the microdata basically. But nothing lands on courts yet.
    - cool_dude85 5y ago
      By this logic, racial and gender pay gaps should never have existed. Why didn't any visionary CEO in America hire blacks instead of whites in 1950 and save 50% on labor?
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Because they were also kept out of the schools that would give them the qualifications to work those jobs. No cost savings if your engineer or accountant was never trained. So companies hired them for the menial jobs which paid less universally.
        cool_dude85 5y ago
        No black engineers or accountants in 1950? Whats the pay gap between you and a knowledgeable employee?
- disposablex 5y ago
  Certainly depends on if where you fall in the system; are you taking advantage of getting paid more than those around you with no transparency or could you benefit from transparency because you're lacking information?
- simion314 5y ago
  The self proclaimed guys that are at the same time 10X devs and 10x negociaters think that all the simpletons will be envious and hate on them. It could be that some of the double 10x guys are not paid 10x times as "simpletons" (most of the time this ones are stuck to cleanup the 10x devs garbage output)
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  While I agree with this perspective, I also feel like there's a lot of cultural baggage around this that makes a transition it a hard sell for the time being.
- tolbish 5y ago
  Paycheck transparency, paycheck+stock option transparency, or transparency of all benefits? Didn't Steve Jobs have a salary of $1?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Privacy would be one downside. I'm not sure I want my friends, acquaintances, home contractors, ect knowing how much I make.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Pay transparency doesn't necessarily mean you're personally identifiable. That aside, what are the downsides?
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Not necessarily, but it is probably the most common way it has been implemented in the US, and a potential downside depending on implementation. Another downside is that it could release competitive information from private companies.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        Sure, and the upside is a strengthened position as a prospective employee. As an employee or prospective employee to a new organization, what's the downside?
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        If you are currently underpaid, it could reduce you leverage with the prospective employer. I have 2Xed my pay because a new employer didn't know my current rate.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        They still wouldn't know your rate. As I mentioned before, pay transparency isn't necessarily personally identifiable. Hypothetically you could've 4X'd your rate. Maybe your 2X rate is actually a lowball. Who's to say?
        5y ago
- ipnon 5y ago
  Federal mandates are non-starters politically in America, for better or for worse, especially in regards to speech and privacy. There is a massive cohort of Americans who vehemently oppose the government mandating what they must publicly share about themselves. This doesn't seem feasible.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I don't understand the privacy rebuttals. Pay transparency doesn't mean your personal salary is identifiable.
    - stagger87 5y ago
      Maybe you should have specified that. Even with that said, I work at a small enough company where anonymous salaries could still easily be associated with an individual, and I would still not like that, for privacy reasons.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        Specified what? Pay transparency has never meant personally identifiable salaries.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      It depends on the size and diversity of the company. If your company size is small and they list 10 tech leads and only one has 20 years experience, or a masters, or is female, then it's pretty easy to work that back to them. They've shown similar things for anonymous medical records not being so anonymous. So larger populations and smaller number of attributes would probably make it better, but not foolproof.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        No matter what the company will know everyone's salaries. The question is mainly whether you want to be ignorant, or not. Usually these things (at least with the government) don't list experience, or educational attainment.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  The downside is that it's a tyrannical intrusion into private business.
  - taurath 5y ago
    Private business operates under the umbrella of government regulations and if they didn’t you and I would have a much worse life.
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      Try an argument that's structurally capable of distinguishing between good and bad ideas.
- jedberg 5y ago
  I agree it should be done, but the main downside is that a single pay number lacks a lot of nuance. At companies with open pay policies, a lot of times you will see one person complaining that another person is making more than them, and then a long meeting has to take place where all the special skills of that other person are explained. Having to do that repeatedly would get onerous. Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. Edit: To clarify, I'm absolutely in favor of pay transparency laws. But any time you make a government policy, there are always winners and losers. It's always a balance between how much you're harming the losers and who they are. In this case, the losers would be the businesses and their owners, which is all that I'm pointing out. But I'd say that the employees should be the winners here, and I say this as a business owner myself.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    > Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. I don't follow - to rephrase what you're saying, it's bad for small business owners because their (underpaid) employees will be paid more by (larger) other businesses? Sounds like the employees of said businesses will overwhelming benefit if what you're saying is true.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      Absolutely. It would be great for the employees, just not the businesses.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        Ah, I misunderstood - I thought you were arguing that was a downside for an employee. Apologies.
  - short_sells_poo 5y ago
    > Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. That sounds a bit like (apologies for the strawman): "small business needs to be able to exploit employees to survive." If small business can't survive without that, perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?
- baskire 5y ago
  Many bay area tech companies decided to push Diversity representation as a top issue. Many achieved results by lowering the bar for diverse candidates to get entry level positions. 3 years later, those same diversity candidates start to notice that on AVERAGE their diversity-segment gets paid less on average that white/asian males. BUT what the statistics show is that the bar for white/asian males happened to be higher, because the diversity initiatives prevented them from being accepted for lower-tier jobs...the same jobs the company skewed towards diverse candidates. As such, they also were paid more on average, not due to discrimination but because their group was discriminated in getting the lower-paying jobs in the company.
- sinsterizme 5y ago
  I really would not want this. I already compare myself to my peers and feel the pressure enough. I don't want to have the salary figures as an extra metric to obsess about. I think it would lead to a lot of resentment and be generally unproductive
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I'm sorry, but you'd rather be ignorant to potential pay discrepancies not in your favor because you might just feel bad? If you were the best person on your team and were being paid the least you wouldn't want to know? I honestly don't understand your view.
    - taurath 5y ago
      People, to the great benefit of companies, tend to actually negotiate up front and then not want to think about money as long as they consider it “enough” for their lifestyle, at least not wanting to revisit it on a weekly or monthly basis. It allows people to fool themselves that they do what they do for something other than money, and or they’re afraid of any conflict in the workplace (and thereby instability).
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Then don't look at them.
- paulddraper 5y ago
  > A federal mandate on pay transparency would put an end to all of the unequal pay issues once and for all. Were you...being serious?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I wouldn't want everyone to know my income. Have you thought about all repercussions of that transparency?
google234123 5y ago
Blizzard's full response: "The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California."
- conception 5y ago
  Classic - “The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today." Even if that’s true, which lol, I love “we may have ruined any number of women’s lives in the past but surely you can’t hold us accountable for that today!”
  - michaelhoffman 5y ago
    Not the Blizzard workplace of today, but according to the DFEH, it IS the Blizzard workplace of a time within the statute of limitations.
  - CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
    Are we reading the same thing? In the very first sentence they claim that the DFEH's descriptions of the past are distorted and false.
    - ransom1538 5y ago
      Yes it was misread.
JonathanMerklin 5y ago
On topic: Does anyone know if there is some precedent for lawsuits like this? From years of experience in the art of existing as a human, I would guess A-B can't possibly be the only organization with these problems, but if a lawsuit like this has happened before, it must have been targeting a much lower profile company that flew under my cultural radar. Mostly off topic: I wouldn't consider myself a gamer (anymore), and I get that it's about high revenue examples, but I thought "Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush" was quite the structural anapest to begin the article.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  While it's not a precedent in the legal sense of the term, there's been a case in France against Ubisoft that has striking similarities [1]: [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/ubisoft-ceo-and-others-blamed-for-institutional-harassment/ar-AAMeoWI https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/ubisoft-ceo-a...
- giantg2 5y ago
  They are being sued u der California law. I think that specific law is fairly new and I can't recall any big cases in the news about it, but there may be stuff that wasnt reported. The other possibility is that places settle out of court in private negotiations. Either way, my impression is that there isn't much out there.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Does anyone know if there is some precedent for lawsuits like this? Yes, lawsuits (both private and public) over sexual harassment and pay discrimination have a lot of history. > From years of experience in the art of existing as a human, I would guess A-B can't possibly be the only organization with these problems, but if a lawsuit like this has happened before, it must have been targeting a much lower profile company that flew under my cultural radar. DFEH is, since last year, involved in (by intervening in an existing class action) a similar suit against Riot Games that blew up after DFEH objected to a proposed $10M settlement saying it should be more like $400M. That case has slid off into a mess I can't quite trace easily; it looks like the DFEH and DLSE public claims, plus one private plaintiff who never signed an arbitration agreement are proceeding in court and other private plaintiffs were forced into arbitration but may also benefit from the public claims in court.
jimbob45 5y ago
>Years after the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate targeted women in the video game world Ironically, GamerGate started as an expose on how dishonest and corrupt video game journalism had become and now journalists dishonestly hijack GG to push whichever agenda suits them. Edit: It seems that there is confusion about what caused GG and what specific event brought the most followers to GG. I won't discredit anyone's opinion and I'll point out that GG is mostly in the past now. However, it would have been wise to academically split up GG into discrete fragments such that we could more accurately talk about its stages. I foresee a time when we look back on the riots of 2020 and some will claim that it was mainly looting, others will claim it was about anti-police demonstrations, others will claim it was about defending a fentanyl wife-beater, and others still will claim it was to destabilize the US. Everyone will simultaneously be right because all of those things did happen...but everyone will simultaneously be wrong because it was never about just one of those things.
- k__ 5y ago
  To be honest, after I saw the fallout from GG, the online harassment seems like a much bigger problem than a bunch of corrupt game journalists.
  - TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
    Sure, but it's not a competition. My understanding is that GG began due to undisclosed conflicts of interest among some journalists and game developers. This was later used to justify a crusade to abuse people on social media. Although I think you're correct that the ethics in journalism issue was used as a smokescreen by bad faith actors.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Some gamers started harassing a developer because they didn't like her game. It intensified after her ex boyfriend accused her of cheating on him with a journalist and several other people. Some gamers imagined she had sex with that journalist and others for positive reviews. The ex boyfriend said even he didn't mean to accuse her of that.[1] And those gamers connected the conflict of interest allegations to social issues right away. Gamergate's name was inspired by a video that said journalism's decline began with writing about things like sexual harassment and representation.[2] [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-gamergate https://www.pcmag.com/news/everything-you-never-wanted-to-kn... [2] 2:26 in https://archive.org/details/InternetAristocratQuinnspiracyTheory https://archive.org/details/InternetAristocratQuinnspiracyTh...
KittenInABox 5y ago
Apparently one director had groped so many women that his suite was known as the "Cosby Suite". As spoken by one of the victims [0]. [0]https://twitter.com/skrutsick/status/1418006293495762944?s=20 https://twitter.com/skrutsick/status/1418006293495762944?s=2...
- tclancy 5y ago
  It's amazing to me things like this are getting downvoted. Can't imagine why women feel their voices aren't heard when some people will mass downvote any comment in a thread that disagrees with their preconceived notions of how the world is. "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"
  - arkitaip 5y ago
    HN has always been sexist and generally bigoted towards minorities. Not much has changed in the years since it was founded.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      That may be true, bit we're talking about women, who are emphatically not a minority :)
      - munk-a 5y ago
        That is technically true overall, but when it comes to software development and especially gaming they are very much in the minority. So much so that at most gaming companies of 50-100 folks you can count the women working there (outside of the art department) on one hand.
        raxxorrax 5y ago
        Absence of one gender in a certain industry is not sufficient evidence for discrimination.
        5y ago
pelasaco 5y ago
Welcome To Texas!
- kyrra 5y ago
  Not sure about Activision side, but Blizzard has long had an Austin office: https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/austin https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/austin It started out mainly to hire more GMs for World Of Warcraft (had a few people in my larger social circle that worked there). But it looks to have expanded to include some non-game engineering roles.
- wedn3sday 5y ago
  You're welcome to them.
wnevets 5y ago
The accusations I've been reading are simply awful and outright depressing. A woman may have committed suicide over the harassment.
mediaman 5y ago
I'm really surprised that Blizzard thinks a state suit against them for sexual discrimination, harassment, and a litany of odious behaviors by managers is best answered by calling them "unaccountable State bureaucrats," as they did in their PR damage control release. It's like they think it's 1995 and MeToo never happened. In the suit, the state even attempted a mediated resolution to prevent it from going to court. But Blizzard refused to cooperate, essentially taunting the state to bring a case, which they now have. It really makes you question whether Bobby Kotick is the right guy as CEO. Not only did he fail to demonstrate ethical leadership, but his handling of this crisis is massively destructive of shareholder value.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Its interesting to see how the quality of the games Blizzard produces and the company culture both seemed to decline sharply in lockstep after being acquired by Activision in 2008.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spoom 5y ago
    I remember Activision generally being a publisher of terrible licensed games in the 90s, so I wasn't too surprised by that.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      Even Blizzard wasn't spared from making a bad licensed game in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Task_Force_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Task_Force_(vid...
  - phillryu 5y ago
    After 2008 Blizzard produced Hearthstone, Overwatch and Reaper of Souls which consensus 'fixed' Diablo 3 and were all pretty great. So I can't comment about the culture but I disagree with the general narrative that Blizzard's games have gone off a cliff. That might still be coming, but it hasn't happened quite yet. Edit: snipped the bit about Hero's of the Storm since that was post acquisition
duxup 5y ago
I often wonder how does nobody say anything? Then I remember when a recruiter told a friend on speakerphone that they thought he wasn't a culture fit and he asked what they meant and the recruiter said "Everyone here is young and they were worried you're too old." I didn't say anything, he didn't ... at that time we needed a job / to break into the industry, not to get our names out there in a fight about a place that didn't want to hire guys like us. (We're both doing fine now.)
- mediaman 5y ago
  It's amazing when cultures are so bad that people whose sole job is recruiting fail to follow the most basic federal regulations involved in their job (assuming your situation was in the US). If you're going to be awful, at least...don't obviously violate federal law while being awful?
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    This may not have been a violation. Age discrimination is only illegal if the person is over 40. You could easily be “culture fitted out” for being mid-thirties when everyone at a startup is early to mid twenties. And yes, it really is that bad in SV (or at least was pre-COVID, not sure if anything has really changed).
    - northwest65 5y ago
      > Age discrimination is only illegal if the person is over 40. Sarcasm?
      - meowster 5y ago
        No, the law has a lower bound, and it's 40.
        northwest65 5y ago
        Fascinating; do you know what the logic was behind that?
giantg2 5y ago
"'akin to working in a frat house.' Male employees drank on the job and came to work hungover, the lawsuit said." Isn't that the big selling point of game industry - the hours can be terrible but the free snacks/beer/games culture keeps people there? The other stuff seems pretty bad.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Yeah, that one stood out to me too. I don't think there is anything inherently sexist about letting employees drink on the clock or come in hungover.
  - MisterTea 5y ago
    At my brothers old dev job the women drank with the men. And by drinking I remember visiting and seeing one of the woman devs with a half empty bottle of rum and a can of coke at her desk. FWIW, the boss was an alcoholic, though thankfully the happy kind of drunk. Weird shop for sure.
  - metalforever 5y ago
    As a woman in tech, the problem is that men start hitting on you when they’ve had a few beers. This happens extremely frequently, so much that I have personally decided to discount what people say to me when they’re drunk at company events
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      This is a sexist comment and could be career-ending if made by someone of the opposite sex. For a demonstration why: "The problem is that (class of people that encompasses billions of unrelated individuals worldwide) start (any kind of negative action in particular)" No matter what you fill those variables with, it remains a broad, harmful generalization. I'm sorry you had to work with unprofessional assholes that won't take 'no' for an answer, but your experience is not license to slander literally half of the planet.
      - 5y ago
tpoacher 5y ago
So, what happens to the Diablo servers and, given the drm, Diablo itself, once the company shuts down / gets bankrupt? I should at least hurry and play my copy while the servers are still running, I guess.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  Activision Blizzard isn't going anywhere anytime soon lol
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  As much as I would love to see the company crash and burn due to how they've butchered Blizzard, they aren't going anywhere. They'll settle the lawsuit out of court for an undisclosed sum, their stock price will take a temporary hit, and in a year you'll never even notice that it happened.
- ffggvv 5y ago
  you have a deeply distorted idea of these sort of lawsuits if you think they would magically go bankrupt from it
thekashifmalik 5y ago
I really struggle to understand this equal pay business; I'm not (and don't ever expect to be) paid the same as other equally qualified engineers on my team. Each engineer's pay is the product of their skill level, how they negotiated as well as competing offers they had. This model rewards those who put in the effort and is definitely biased towards people with certain personalities (disagreeable, etc). If we want to change this model, fine, but that's not the world we live in right now and I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a better world.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  What do your negotiating skills contribute to an engineering team that they should be affecting your compensation to the same extent as your skill level?
  - lazide 5y ago
    Negotiating skills ARE useful engineering skills (as much as we would like to pretend otherwise), just not included in the typical skills bucket.
  - addison-lee 5y ago
    Good negotiation skills = good communication skills. Communication is a skill that 80% of the engineers I meet don’t have. Don’t be upset that someone negotiated a higher salary than you when they were hired, you could have tried just the same.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I don't buy this. I've known a lot of people, especially from a south-east asian background, that are extremely reserved when it comes to self-advocacy wage-wise and still remain extremely strong and clear communicators in the areas that matter. Additionally various factors of neurodiversity bring this into an even worse light, being mildly Autistic can make this difficult to accomplish even if you're able to communicate well with the team on a day-by-day basis.
adamrezich 5y ago
it's kind of off-putting how many different grievances are bundled together here—many different accusations about a wide variety of topics intended to paint a very broadly negative view of the company culture, everywhere from management to lower-level (male) employees. while I don't doubt that many of the grievances are true and merited, I have a hard time believing things could be as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically as the overall picture depicted here. it would be one thing if several women were speaking out about a specific individual or perhaps about the general attitude of management as a whole, but the broad-brush way the whole company is being portrayed here definitely gives me pause—especially when people on social media are dogpiling on yet another semi-annual "everyone in tech just hates women" event, by bringing in tangentially or wholly-unrelated issues and allegations from their own workplace, while painting an entire industry as innately, seemingly incurably misogynistic. when you bring up both a coworker's suicide and guys drinking and being hungover at work in the same legal complaint, it makes the overall negative portrayal seem weak and reaching at best. whatever the case, as always, hopefully justice will be served regardless.
- ketzo 5y ago
  Okay, I don’t mean to play this card, but I’m assuming from your username that you’re a dude. > I have a hard time believing things could be as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically as the overall picture depicted here. This is literally, like, the cartoonishly shitty response. The specific allegations in this suit are, like you said, over the course of many years, and across a huge number of different roles. Why on earth would you immediately jump to “well, these many different egregious incidents are probably just one-offs”? Yeah, okay, every single Blizzard employee probably doesn’t show up to work and immediately spit in the face of the nearest woman. But if your takeaway from this suit is “it’s probably not that bad all the time,” you are taking away the wrong thing. Yours is the kind of attitude that allows shit like this to happen. It is, frankly, kind of disgusting. Please reevaluate how you came to this conclusion.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    Activision Blizzard is a very large company (10,000+ employees in 196(!!) countries), and this suit claims that a proportionally small number of allegations over the course of many years is indicative of widespread corporate culture. meanwhile, like I said, it pulls in a suicide and dudes drinking and being hungover on the job, as well as pay issues and sexual harassment. notice that I did not claim any allegations were untruthful or lacked merit, merely that the overall picture being painted seems disingenuous. if the suicide connection was less tenuous (or omitted entirely), the drinking/hungover stuff wasn't mentioned, and the suit wasn't trying to paint the whole company's culture in a negative light, I would have no comment except, "cool, assuming these allegations are true, I wish the people filing the suit the best of luck in getting justice." it's the extrapolation of discrete events into a scathing indictment of the corporate culture and the tangential, tenuous things mentioned (as a means of bolstering the idea the the corporate culture is misogynistic) that gives me pause. I don't see a problem with this line of thinking. maybe the corporate culture really is as anti-woman as depicted here—that's for the courts to determine. meanwhile, I find it hard to believe 100% at face value, like many people here and elsewhere on social media are doing. I don't understand what my sex has to do with this evaluation—you said you hated to "play that card," but you didn't play any card at all, you just pointed out my presumed sex based on my handle, and didn't connect it to anything.
meibo 5y ago
In case anyone is interested, the WoW subreddit has put together a list of former and current female employees confirming and commenting on these allegations: https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_blizzard_sued_by_california_over_frat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_bliz...
- devwastaken 5y ago
  I hope that this is used for good, and not evil, but knowing "gamer" culture all of these individuals are going to receive harassment and doxxing. There's a lot of money on the line for Blizzard and those involved in professional "esports" by extension. This is why people don't speak. I hope these individuals will be able to find good work elsewhere when blizzard inevitably ousts them. California should be fining Blizzard into the ground, but given Blizzards response they've calculated out how much it'll cost and figured it's cheaper to do this.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I hope these individuals will be able to find good work elsewhere when blizzard inevitably ousts them. California should be fining them into the ground, but given Blizzards response they've calculated out how much it'll cost and figured it's cheaper to do this. Nah, I think the tone of their response shows that they think that a PR strategy based in rolling the dice on getting culture-war attachment and hoping that the upcoming recall succeeds before the case is resolved, resulting in an Administration from the faction whose rhetoric they are mirroring, who might then be inclined to dismiss the case. Since the PR strategy doesn't really constrain their substantive legal strategy, and there is some chance of that PR strategy actually working (though it seems remote), its maybe not a bad idea, ignoring moral and ethical considerations.
    - cartoonworld 5y ago
      Dang, what a gambit. Assuming rational actors, it must look pretty bad from the top of the inside to yolo this kind of hail mary. I wonder what this looked like passing by legal? I mean if PR let this out, assuming they even have that kind of throttle, surely the lawyers would want to take a long look. This will definitely come up in court, wont it?
madbitch 5y ago
Fucking disgusting. Reading this makes my blood boil. This is a big reason why me and my other female engineer friends ask about gender ratio during job interviews: sometimes a mostly male organization will be treat its female employees fine, but sometimes it will disrespect them, harass them, and treat them like garbage.
- mustacheemperor 5y ago
  Scrolling down this thread and reading the flagged and greying comments makes my blood boil all over again. To quote one (awful) take, > I’ll care when women worry about misandry. Want to see the perpetuation of misogyny in the tech industry occurring in real time? Just take a skim through the rationalization, defensiveness, and whataboutism littering the bottom and following pages of this thread. This is a community including a high proportion of engineers and engineering leadership and the problems endemic to our industry are on full display in this filing and in the responses posed by more than a few members of this community. If anyone reading this is privileged enough to have been insulated from these problems before, has truly been skeptical about whether this is a problem in our field today: this should be all the proof you need. Edit: Enough users have opted to downvote this comment that it now sits at -2 and I think I am entitled to at least a reply explaining why.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    HN is /r/kotakuinaction level commentary on this. Which is not even surprising, really.
  - ajnin 5y ago
    I guess the reason you're being downvoted is that you're complaining about comments which have already been downvoted, which brings nothing to the discussion, and also you're drawing conclusions about a community that does not exist.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  Say you ask about the ratio, in an interview. I would tell you, but, like most companies I've worked at, I doubt the answer would impress you. What do you do with the information? If you base your decision on it, and I presume pass over the company for having a poor ratio, how is that company ever supposed to change?
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
Most of this sounds horrifying, and if its true I hope they throw the book at them. However this one line seems like it would be hard to prove: They(women) were also assigned to lower-level positions and passed over for promotions, despite doing more work than their male peers in some cases I know many people who are really good at filling out their TPS reports, and never break the rules. They don't ever get promoted, because they do so much in their current role, and since they never break the rules, they never get to be highlighted for "showing initiative." Though if the rest of it proves to be true, it would not look good.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > However this one line seems like it would be hard to prove Its a civil case. If it goes to trial, the standard of proof is “preponderance of the evidence” (basically, on the evidence presented, is the allegation more likely true than false), not the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Systematic gender discrimination in promotions (absent a smoking gun like a document in which that is outright stated, or testimony of multiple ex-managers to having been involved in such a policy) may be challenging to demonstrate even in that context, but it is very far from impractical.
- rukuu001 5y ago
  TFA excludes it, but from page 12 of the filing [0] there's an example of someone with measurably worse performance getting promoted ahead of a female colleague: "... In another example, a female employee who worked at Blizzard Entertainment was assigned to a lower level, denied equal pay, and passed over for a promotion despite multiple factors that suggested she earned it: (1) highly rated performance reviews; (2) she generated significantly more revenue in her marketing campaigns than her male counterpart; and (3) she ran almost twice as many campaigns as her male counterpart." 0 - https://aboutblaw.com/YJw https://aboutblaw.com/YJw
  - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    I'm saying that If she's making twice as much money where she is, why would you want her to do a different job? Though combined with all the other allegations it doesn't look like it's just standard corporate unfairness/politicking.
metalforever 5y ago
This issue is endemic and has been a constant problem throughout my career. They’re just big enough that they got caught.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
On the one hand, I feel like its easy to make allegations, on the other, I hope they win, California needs money for 20k trash cans for the homeless to sleep next to.
bogwog 5y ago
This part really helps put it into perspective: > In a tragic example of the harassment that Defendants allowed to fester in their offices, a female employee committed suicide while on a company trip due to a sexual relationship that she had been having with her male supervisor. The male supervisor was found by police to have brought a butt plug and lubricant on this business trip. Another employee confirmed that the deceased female employee may have been suffering from other sexual harassment at work prior to her death. Specifically, at a holiday party before her death, male co-workers were alleged to be passing around a picture of the deceased's vagina. (I had to manually type that out because the source doc is a scanned PDF; might have typos) source: https://aboutblaw.com/YJw https://aboutblaw.com/YJw
- rasz 5y ago
  and yet no criminal charges have been brought, WTF?
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    What crime would you charge?
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Distributing images of certain body parts the person depicted believed private is disorderly conduct in California.[1] [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=647.&lawCode=PEN https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
      - KittenInABox 5y ago
        If someone is so humiliated by this that they commit suicide why would they go through the emotional agony of going to court and having their humiliation litigated in front of a judge and to be put into public record under their name forever?
ketzo 5y ago
If you're reading this, there's a pretty solid chance that you're a male working in the software industry. It is super, super critical for you to know: this happens where you work, too. No, not "this could happen where you work." I'm telling you that if you work with women in engineering, they deal with this shit anywhere from weekly to hourly. It comes from "the nice manager," from a QA on another team, from a tech lead, from a customer. Misogyny and harassment are happening around you, and you need to be looking for it. If your first thought upon reading this was "well, I'm just glad that could never happen here," you are wrong, and you need to be on your guard.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  I’ll care when women worry about misandry. But insisting I care while women engage in illegal sexism for their own benefit is an abusive, one-sided relationship. Study after study confirms that women are preferentially hired and receive privilege in education. Study after study shows women dominated fields like HR and education are incredibly sexist. Women are allowed to organize on the basis of sex for more sexist privilege at most universities and businesses. Ask any man who has worked in a majority female department if lewd comments, inappropriate pictures, etc happen there. When women do their part to end sexism, I’ll care. Until then, it’s just entitled whining.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chickenpotpie 5y ago
    There’s never been a female President and almost every single CEO in the country is a man but HR is mostly women so it’s equal right? /s
    - grammarnazzzi 5y ago
      CEO positions tend to be filled by the most highly competitive personality types. People willing to sacrifice most of their life to attain a single goal. Perhaps women tend to choose to lead more balanced lives because they find it more rewarding and meaningful. Why more men are CEOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbH0Q39JCPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbH0Q39JCPk
Decabytes 5y ago
I had been considering resubbing and trying out The Burining Crusade in WOW, but then I found Final Fantasy XIV. I've played many FF games over the years. My cousins played FFXI but I was too young to play at the time so I never got to. I love MMOs and for me there is nothing like the excitement of playing a good MMO with friends. It's just nice to play a game whose leadership makes the player base feel as if they are important. Obviously we can never know what is actually going on behind Square Enix's doors but Yoshi-P makes me believe the things he says are true at least. I'm tired of playing games whose companies are actively hostile to the players (and to be fair after the whole Artifact debacle I'm starting to feel this way about Valve too). When I was younger I never considered myself someone who would be playing older games (early 2010s and older) instead of the latest ones. I used to be so excited for the new releases. But a game without microtranscactions, little to know DLC and a good modding scene has become more important to me than the newest stuff. It's honestly been disheartening as a gamer to have lost my enthusiasm for the newer stuff. But maybe part of that is just getting older and busier as well. On the bright side my hardware is plenty powerful for the games I play, which is great considering the silicone shortage and all.
lyptt 5y ago
I worked for AB a few years back and it was easily the worst job I've ever had. Incredibly toxic work culture, and frequent gaslighting by managers. I'll never work for a big games company again after that experience.
taurath 5y ago
I find the comments section here to be about 60/40 men who believe it to be a problem, and men who are denying there are problems or minimizing/excusing them, which matches my experience w men in workplaces. Long looong way to go.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- adreamingsoul 5y ago
  I would hope that there are a majority of men who do think it is a problem but for whatever reason are silent on the issue. Case in point, I was not going to comment.
- lovetocode 5y ago
  I am a man and I haven’t seen anything like this in my workplace but I can say I have been sexual harassed by several women at two of my old jobs. So statistically, if men are less likely to be targeted then it must be happening. So even though I haven’t seen it outside my own experience, it’s scary to think how much of it is likely happening behind the scenes. I say this as a father of two daughters and husband to a woman who was physically assaulted by her former boss.
  - taurath 5y ago
    I’m sorry that’s happened to you, and I think that’s a good perspective. It’s sometimes hard to grapple with something that one doesn’t personally experience, but I’m glad people are slowly becoming more aware.
blibble 5y ago
I posted saying yesterday that Blizzard's fall from grace has been absolutely spectacular to watch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911924 then 2 hours later this news appeared apparently there's worse news coming out later this week too
baud147258 5y ago
>Years after the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate targeted women in the video game world Ironically, GamerGate started as an expose on how dishonest and corrupt video game journalism had become, though it all went downhill from there. And now journalists dishonestly hijack GG to push whichever agenda suits them, though at least this time the writer didn't act as if it was still relevant today.
roudaki 5y ago
I am big proponent of STFU and do your job. No "we are family here". No dating people from work. Because some people really really need that next pay-check. There are people paying off their chemotherapy that have to go to work reading about this and worrying about their livelihood. Nobody deserves that. Nobody has a right to get you to worry about how are you gonna survive next mortgage payment. And over what? people acting like they are in highschool. Stuff like this boils my blood before we even get to politics. Life is hard enough. I will not burden you with my family issues and I will work as hard as I can but in return you let me do the work and worry only about what I am working on. Everything else goes under grow the f up and get a life outside company.
alexitorg 5y ago
Australian here. Could someone explain why the state government is suing anyone? Wouldn't it be more normal to charge them with breaking a law?
- evgen 5y ago
  Various regulatory agencies have the power to initiate torts against companies or individuals who are violating the law in addition to making criminal complaints. In most cases, a regulatory action is civil and not criminal. Your company dumped chemicals in a river that you knew probably were bad for the fish? The company will get hit with a civil action. It is possible that the specific person who decided upon this course of action or knowingly helped out will face individual criminal charges, but in most cases corporations do not face criminal charges.
France_is_bacon 5y ago
So....if you're a single guy, and you start a company and you WANT to have a party place with frat house attitude and exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness in life, I take it that a company founder that is a guy should only hire other single men that share those same values? I don't know, I'm just asking other's opinions here.
- username90 5y ago
  It is fine as long as your fratboy culture doesn't include nor ignore sexual harassment or sexism. At the end of the day it is your responsibility as an employer to provide a safe and fair work environment for everyone, it is illegal to not do it. Lots of women love partying, they aren't really a problem, the problem is that a some guys harass women at parties and you as an employer will need to take that seriously if partying happens at work.
  - France_is_bacon 5y ago
    I mean, that's why I wrote that should one hire single men only. That way, there won't be any type of sexism or harassment. I am beginning to think that the Islamic way of strictly separating men and women makes sense. Let women work at companies founded by women, and men with men. That way, everyone wins, so it seems to me. I don't know, I'm just thinking aloud here.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Employment law is a real thing, and people take it seriously. If you are thinking of hiring people you should probably look into it.
  - sativallday 5y ago
    "culture fit"
- tetromino_ 5y ago
  Here's a man who worked at Blizzard saying that he was repeatedly sexually harassed by his (male) supervisors and HR was useless: https://twitter.com/bkcrusco/status/1418241726792142849 https://twitter.com/bkcrusco/status/1418241726792142849 Frat house culture at a company is universally shitty.
runbathtime 5y ago
Get out of Ca.
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
A lot more on the topic here: https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_blizzard_sued_by_california_over_frat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_bliz... Apparently their office was basically a frat house.

424 points by cyb_ 5y ago

A federal mandate on pay transparency would put an end to all of the unequal pay issues once and for all. What’s the downside?

alfl 5y ago
How much money do you make?
- duxup 5y ago
  Would what someone claims online make any difference to you?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    The point is to drive home how they might feel about publicity announcing and verifying their income for the world to see.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Pay transparency does not necessarily mean a specific individual is tied with a specific amount of money.
      - sib 5y ago
        Yes, but in many cases it does (not-huge companies with enough data on role, experience, location to disambiguate)...
- Spivak 5y ago
  This is such a stupid retort. I'm totally fine with my salary being public iff everyone's salary is public.
  - stackedinserter 5y ago
    Start from yourself.
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  I would answer this, but it would give my potential next employer the opportunity to lowball me. This would not be the case if the pay transparency that parent describes were already a thing, because I would have the same ability to check the salaries of that company. But without that mandate happening, whoever moves first loses. That's why salary transparency should be mandated, because otherwise no one has any motivation to move, so no one will.
spaniard89277 5y ago
IDK in your country, in mine the downside was that we all knew such pay gap is mostly non-existant, so they mandated a pay gap law but data is locked under trade unions gatekeeping.
- neither_color 5y ago
  Of course it doesn't exist, because if it did any CEO could say "let's hire women instead of men and save 25%"
  - spaniard89277 5y ago
    In my country most salaries are mandated with trade-union agreements, even variable compensations. Only very specific and niche cases behave outside that framework. If any trade union or person believed that there was a real pay gap in any company, they could sue and win if true. Even way before current law. With the new law, it's even easier, as they get access to all the microdata basically. But nothing lands on courts yet.
  - cool_dude85 5y ago
    By this logic, racial and gender pay gaps should never have existed. Why didn't any visionary CEO in America hire blacks instead of whites in 1950 and save 50% on labor?
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Because they were also kept out of the schools that would give them the qualifications to work those jobs. No cost savings if your engineer or accountant was never trained. So companies hired them for the menial jobs which paid less universally.
      - cool_dude85 5y ago
        No black engineers or accountants in 1950? Whats the pay gap between you and a knowledgeable employee?
disposablex 5y ago
Certainly depends on if where you fall in the system; are you taking advantage of getting paid more than those around you with no transparency or could you benefit from transparency because you're lacking information?
simion314 5y ago
The self proclaimed guys that are at the same time 10X devs and 10x negociaters think that all the simpletons will be envious and hate on them. It could be that some of the double 10x guys are not paid 10x times as "simpletons" (most of the time this ones are stuck to cleanup the 10x devs garbage output)
alpha_squared 5y ago
While I agree with this perspective, I also feel like there's a lot of cultural baggage around this that makes a transition it a hard sell for the time being.
tolbish 5y ago
Paycheck transparency, paycheck+stock option transparency, or transparency of all benefits? Didn't Steve Jobs have a salary of $1?
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Privacy would be one downside. I'm not sure I want my friends, acquaintances, home contractors, ect knowing how much I make.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Pay transparency doesn't necessarily mean you're personally identifiable. That aside, what are the downsides?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Not necessarily, but it is probably the most common way it has been implemented in the US, and a potential downside depending on implementation. Another downside is that it could release competitive information from private companies.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Sure, and the upside is a strengthened position as a prospective employee. As an employee or prospective employee to a new organization, what's the downside?
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        If you are currently underpaid, it could reduce you leverage with the prospective employer. I have 2Xed my pay because a new employer didn't know my current rate.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        They still wouldn't know your rate. As I mentioned before, pay transparency isn't necessarily personally identifiable. Hypothetically you could've 4X'd your rate. Maybe your 2X rate is actually a lowball. Who's to say?
        5y ago
ipnon 5y ago
Federal mandates are non-starters politically in America, for better or for worse, especially in regards to speech and privacy. There is a massive cohort of Americans who vehemently oppose the government mandating what they must publicly share about themselves. This doesn't seem feasible.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I don't understand the privacy rebuttals. Pay transparency doesn't mean your personal salary is identifiable.
  - stagger87 5y ago
    Maybe you should have specified that. Even with that said, I work at a small enough company where anonymous salaries could still easily be associated with an individual, and I would still not like that, for privacy reasons.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Specified what? Pay transparency has never meant personally identifiable salaries.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It depends on the size and diversity of the company. If your company size is small and they list 10 tech leads and only one has 20 years experience, or a masters, or is female, then it's pretty easy to work that back to them. They've shown similar things for anonymous medical records not being so anonymous. So larger populations and smaller number of attributes would probably make it better, but not foolproof.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      No matter what the company will know everyone's salaries. The question is mainly whether you want to be ignorant, or not. Usually these things (at least with the government) don't list experience, or educational attainment.
SamReidHughes 5y ago
The downside is that it's a tyrannical intrusion into private business.
- taurath 5y ago
  Private business operates under the umbrella of government regulations and if they didn’t you and I would have a much worse life.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    Try an argument that's structurally capable of distinguishing between good and bad ideas.
jedberg 5y ago
I agree it should be done, but the main downside is that a single pay number lacks a lot of nuance. At companies with open pay policies, a lot of times you will see one person complaining that another person is making more than them, and then a long meeting has to take place where all the special skills of that other person are explained. Having to do that repeatedly would get onerous. Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. Edit: To clarify, I'm absolutely in favor of pay transparency laws. But any time you make a government policy, there are always winners and losers. It's always a balance between how much you're harming the losers and who they are. In this case, the losers would be the businesses and their owners, which is all that I'm pointing out. But I'd say that the employees should be the winners here, and I say this as a business owner myself.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. I don't follow - to rephrase what you're saying, it's bad for small business owners because their (underpaid) employees will be paid more by (larger) other businesses? Sounds like the employees of said businesses will overwhelming benefit if what you're saying is true.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Absolutely. It would be great for the employees, just not the businesses.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood - I thought you were arguing that was a downside for an employee. Apologies.
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  > Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees. That sounds a bit like (apologies for the strawman): "small business needs to be able to exploit employees to survive." If small business can't survive without that, perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?
baskire 5y ago
Many bay area tech companies decided to push Diversity representation as a top issue. Many achieved results by lowering the bar for diverse candidates to get entry level positions. 3 years later, those same diversity candidates start to notice that on AVERAGE their diversity-segment gets paid less on average that white/asian males. BUT what the statistics show is that the bar for white/asian males happened to be higher, because the diversity initiatives prevented them from being accepted for lower-tier jobs...the same jobs the company skewed towards diverse candidates. As such, they also were paid more on average, not due to discrimination but because their group was discriminated in getting the lower-paying jobs in the company.
sinsterizme 5y ago
I really would not want this. I already compare myself to my peers and feel the pressure enough. I don't want to have the salary figures as an extra metric to obsess about. I think it would lead to a lot of resentment and be generally unproductive
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but you'd rather be ignorant to potential pay discrepancies not in your favor because you might just feel bad? If you were the best person on your team and were being paid the least you wouldn't want to know? I honestly don't understand your view.
  - taurath 5y ago
    People, to the great benefit of companies, tend to actually negotiate up front and then not want to think about money as long as they consider it “enough” for their lifestyle, at least not wanting to revisit it on a weekly or monthly basis. It allows people to fool themselves that they do what they do for something other than money, and or they’re afraid of any conflict in the workplace (and thereby instability).
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Then don't look at them.
paulddraper 5y ago
> A federal mandate on pay transparency would put an end to all of the unequal pay issues once and for all. Were you...being serious?
raxxorrax 5y ago
I wouldn't want everyone to know my income. Have you thought about all repercussions of that transparency?

google234123 5y ago

Blizzard's full response: "The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California."

conception 5y ago
Classic - “The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today." Even if that’s true, which lol, I love “we may have ruined any number of women’s lives in the past but surely you can’t hold us accountable for that today!”
- michaelhoffman 5y ago
  Not the Blizzard workplace of today, but according to the DFEH, it IS the Blizzard workplace of a time within the statute of limitations.
- CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
  Are we reading the same thing? In the very first sentence they claim that the DFEH's descriptions of the past are distorted and false.
  - ransom1538 5y ago
    Yes it was misread.

JonathanMerklin 5y ago

On topic: Does anyone know if there is some precedent for lawsuits like this? From years of experience in the art of existing as a human, I would guess A-B can't possibly be the only organization with these problems, but if a lawsuit like this has happened before, it must have been targeting a much lower profile company that flew under my cultural radar. Mostly off topic: I wouldn't consider myself a gamer (anymore), and I get that it's about high revenue examples, but I thought "Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush" was quite the structural anapest to begin the article.

0xcde4c3db 5y ago
While it's not a precedent in the legal sense of the term, there's been a case in France against Ubisoft that has striking similarities [1]: [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/ubisoft-ceo-and-others-blamed-for-institutional-harassment/ar-AAMeoWI https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/ubisoft-ceo-a...
giantg2 5y ago
They are being sued u der California law. I think that specific law is fairly new and I can't recall any big cases in the news about it, but there may be stuff that wasnt reported. The other possibility is that places settle out of court in private negotiations. Either way, my impression is that there isn't much out there.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Does anyone know if there is some precedent for lawsuits like this? Yes, lawsuits (both private and public) over sexual harassment and pay discrimination have a lot of history. > From years of experience in the art of existing as a human, I would guess A-B can't possibly be the only organization with these problems, but if a lawsuit like this has happened before, it must have been targeting a much lower profile company that flew under my cultural radar. DFEH is, since last year, involved in (by intervening in an existing class action) a similar suit against Riot Games that blew up after DFEH objected to a proposed $10M settlement saying it should be more like $400M. That case has slid off into a mess I can't quite trace easily; it looks like the DFEH and DLSE public claims, plus one private plaintiff who never signed an arbitration agreement are proceeding in court and other private plaintiffs were forced into arbitration but may also benefit from the public claims in court.

jimbob45 5y ago

>Years after the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate targeted women in the video game world Ironically, GamerGate started as an expose on how dishonest and corrupt video game journalism had become and now journalists dishonestly hijack GG to push whichever agenda suits them. Edit: It seems that there is confusion about what caused GG and what specific event brought the most followers to GG. I won't discredit anyone's opinion and I'll point out that GG is mostly in the past now. However, it would have been wise to academically split up GG into discrete fragments such that we could more accurately talk about its stages. I foresee a time when we look back on the riots of 2020 and some will claim that it was mainly looting, others will claim it was about anti-police demonstrations, others will claim it was about defending a fentanyl wife-beater, and others still will claim it was to destabilize the US. Everyone will simultaneously be right because all of those things did happen...but everyone will simultaneously be wrong because it was never about just one of those things.

k__ 5y ago
To be honest, after I saw the fallout from GG, the online harassment seems like a much bigger problem than a bunch of corrupt game journalists.
- TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
  Sure, but it's not a competition. My understanding is that GG began due to undisclosed conflicts of interest among some journalists and game developers. This was later used to justify a crusade to abuse people on social media. Although I think you're correct that the ethics in journalism issue was used as a smokescreen by bad faith actors.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Some gamers started harassing a developer because they didn't like her game. It intensified after her ex boyfriend accused her of cheating on him with a journalist and several other people. Some gamers imagined she had sex with that journalist and others for positive reviews. The ex boyfriend said even he didn't mean to accuse her of that.[1] And those gamers connected the conflict of interest allegations to social issues right away. Gamergate's name was inspired by a video that said journalism's decline began with writing about things like sexual harassment and representation.[2] [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-gamergate https://www.pcmag.com/news/everything-you-never-wanted-to-kn... [2] 2:26 in https://archive.org/details/InternetAristocratQuinnspiracyTheory https://archive.org/details/InternetAristocratQuinnspiracyTh...

KittenInABox 5y ago

Apparently one director had groped so many women that his suite was known as the "Cosby Suite". As spoken by one of the victims [0]. [0]https://twitter.com/skrutsick/status/1418006293495762944?s=20 https://twitter.com/skrutsick/status/1418006293495762944?s=2...

tclancy 5y ago
It's amazing to me things like this are getting downvoted. Can't imagine why women feel their voices aren't heard when some people will mass downvote any comment in a thread that disagrees with their preconceived notions of how the world is. "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"
- arkitaip 5y ago
  HN has always been sexist and generally bigoted towards minorities. Not much has changed in the years since it was founded.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    That may be true, bit we're talking about women, who are emphatically not a minority :)
    - munk-a 5y ago
      That is technically true overall, but when it comes to software development and especially gaming they are very much in the minority. So much so that at most gaming companies of 50-100 folks you can count the women working there (outside of the art department) on one hand.
      - raxxorrax 5y ago
        Absence of one gender in a certain industry is not sufficient evidence for discrimination.
      - 5y ago

pelasaco 5y ago

Welcome To Texas!

kyrra 5y ago
Not sure about Activision side, but Blizzard has long had an Austin office: https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/austin https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/austin It started out mainly to hire more GMs for World Of Warcraft (had a few people in my larger social circle that worked there). But it looks to have expanded to include some non-game engineering roles.
wedn3sday 5y ago
You're welcome to them.

wnevets 5y ago

The accusations I've been reading are simply awful and outright depressing. A woman may have committed suicide over the harassment.

mediaman 5y ago

I'm really surprised that Blizzard thinks a state suit against them for sexual discrimination, harassment, and a litany of odious behaviors by managers is best answered by calling them "unaccountable State bureaucrats," as they did in their PR damage control release. It's like they think it's 1995 and MeToo never happened. In the suit, the state even attempted a mediated resolution to prevent it from going to court. But Blizzard refused to cooperate, essentially taunting the state to bring a case, which they now have. It really makes you question whether Bobby Kotick is the right guy as CEO. Not only did he fail to demonstrate ethical leadership, but his handling of this crisis is massively destructive of shareholder value.

cwkoss 5y ago
Its interesting to see how the quality of the games Blizzard produces and the company culture both seemed to decline sharply in lockstep after being acquired by Activision in 2008.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Spoom 5y ago
  I remember Activision generally being a publisher of terrible licensed games in the 90s, so I wasn't too surprised by that.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    Even Blizzard wasn't spared from making a bad licensed game in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Task_Force_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Task_Force_(vid...
- phillryu 5y ago
  After 2008 Blizzard produced Hearthstone, Overwatch and Reaper of Souls which consensus 'fixed' Diablo 3 and were all pretty great. So I can't comment about the culture but I disagree with the general narrative that Blizzard's games have gone off a cliff. That might still be coming, but it hasn't happened quite yet. Edit: snipped the bit about Hero's of the Storm since that was post acquisition

duxup 5y ago

I often wonder how does nobody say anything? Then I remember when a recruiter told a friend on speakerphone that they thought he wasn't a culture fit and he asked what they meant and the recruiter said "Everyone here is young and they were worried you're too old." I didn't say anything, he didn't ... at that time we needed a job / to break into the industry, not to get our names out there in a fight about a place that didn't want to hire guys like us. (We're both doing fine now.)

mediaman 5y ago
It's amazing when cultures are so bad that people whose sole job is recruiting fail to follow the most basic federal regulations involved in their job (assuming your situation was in the US). If you're going to be awful, at least...don't obviously violate federal law while being awful?
- mdorazio 5y ago
  This may not have been a violation. Age discrimination is only illegal if the person is over 40. You could easily be “culture fitted out” for being mid-thirties when everyone at a startup is early to mid twenties. And yes, it really is that bad in SV (or at least was pre-COVID, not sure if anything has really changed).
  - northwest65 5y ago
    > Age discrimination is only illegal if the person is over 40. Sarcasm?
    - meowster 5y ago
      No, the law has a lower bound, and it's 40.
      - northwest65 5y ago
        Fascinating; do you know what the logic was behind that?

giantg2 5y ago

"'akin to working in a frat house.' Male employees drank on the job and came to work hungover, the lawsuit said." Isn't that the big selling point of game industry - the hours can be terrible but the free snacks/beer/games culture keeps people there? The other stuff seems pretty bad.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Yeah, that one stood out to me too. I don't think there is anything inherently sexist about letting employees drink on the clock or come in hungover.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  At my brothers old dev job the women drank with the men. And by drinking I remember visiting and seeing one of the woman devs with a half empty bottle of rum and a can of coke at her desk. FWIW, the boss was an alcoholic, though thankfully the happy kind of drunk. Weird shop for sure.
- metalforever 5y ago
  As a woman in tech, the problem is that men start hitting on you when they’ve had a few beers. This happens extremely frequently, so much that I have personally decided to discount what people say to me when they’re drunk at company events
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    This is a sexist comment and could be career-ending if made by someone of the opposite sex. For a demonstration why: "The problem is that (class of people that encompasses billions of unrelated individuals worldwide) start (any kind of negative action in particular)" No matter what you fill those variables with, it remains a broad, harmful generalization. I'm sorry you had to work with unprofessional assholes that won't take 'no' for an answer, but your experience is not license to slander literally half of the planet.
    - 5y ago

tpoacher 5y ago

So, what happens to the Diablo servers and, given the drm, Diablo itself, once the company shuts down / gets bankrupt? I should at least hurry and play my copy while the servers are still running, I guess.

adamrezich 5y ago
Activision Blizzard isn't going anywhere anytime soon lol
JohnWhigham 5y ago
As much as I would love to see the company crash and burn due to how they've butchered Blizzard, they aren't going anywhere. They'll settle the lawsuit out of court for an undisclosed sum, their stock price will take a temporary hit, and in a year you'll never even notice that it happened.
ffggvv 5y ago
you have a deeply distorted idea of these sort of lawsuits if you think they would magically go bankrupt from it

thekashifmalik 5y ago

I really struggle to understand this equal pay business; I'm not (and don't ever expect to be) paid the same as other equally qualified engineers on my team. Each engineer's pay is the product of their skill level, how they negotiated as well as competing offers they had. This model rewards those who put in the effort and is definitely biased towards people with certain personalities (disagreeable, etc). If we want to change this model, fine, but that's not the world we live in right now and I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a better world.

InitialLastName 5y ago
What do your negotiating skills contribute to an engineering team that they should be affecting your compensation to the same extent as your skill level?
- lazide 5y ago
  Negotiating skills ARE useful engineering skills (as much as we would like to pretend otherwise), just not included in the typical skills bucket.
- addison-lee 5y ago
  Good negotiation skills = good communication skills. Communication is a skill that 80% of the engineers I meet don’t have. Don’t be upset that someone negotiated a higher salary than you when they were hired, you could have tried just the same.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I don't buy this. I've known a lot of people, especially from a south-east asian background, that are extremely reserved when it comes to self-advocacy wage-wise and still remain extremely strong and clear communicators in the areas that matter. Additionally various factors of neurodiversity bring this into an even worse light, being mildly Autistic can make this difficult to accomplish even if you're able to communicate well with the team on a day-by-day basis.

adamrezich 5y ago

it's kind of off-putting how many different grievances are bundled together here—many different accusations about a wide variety of topics intended to paint a very broadly negative view of the company culture, everywhere from management to lower-level (male) employees. while I don't doubt that many of the grievances are true and merited, I have a hard time believing things could be as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically as the overall picture depicted here. it would be one thing if several women were speaking out about a specific individual or perhaps about the general attitude of management as a whole, but the broad-brush way the whole company is being portrayed here definitely gives me pause—especially when people on social media are dogpiling on yet another semi-annual "everyone in tech just hates women" event, by bringing in tangentially or wholly-unrelated issues and allegations from their own workplace, while painting an entire industry as innately, seemingly incurably misogynistic. when you bring up both a coworker's suicide and guys drinking and being hungover at work in the same legal complaint, it makes the overall negative portrayal seem weak and reaching at best. whatever the case, as always, hopefully justice will be served regardless.

ketzo 5y ago
Okay, I don’t mean to play this card, but I’m assuming from your username that you’re a dude. > I have a hard time believing things could be as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically as the overall picture depicted here. This is literally, like, the cartoonishly shitty response. The specific allegations in this suit are, like you said, over the course of many years, and across a huge number of different roles. Why on earth would you immediately jump to “well, these many different egregious incidents are probably just one-offs”? Yeah, okay, every single Blizzard employee probably doesn’t show up to work and immediately spit in the face of the nearest woman. But if your takeaway from this suit is “it’s probably not that bad all the time,” you are taking away the wrong thing. Yours is the kind of attitude that allows shit like this to happen. It is, frankly, kind of disgusting. Please reevaluate how you came to this conclusion.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  Activision Blizzard is a very large company (10,000+ employees in 196(!!) countries), and this suit claims that a proportionally small number of allegations over the course of many years is indicative of widespread corporate culture. meanwhile, like I said, it pulls in a suicide and dudes drinking and being hungover on the job, as well as pay issues and sexual harassment. notice that I did not claim any allegations were untruthful or lacked merit, merely that the overall picture being painted seems disingenuous. if the suicide connection was less tenuous (or omitted entirely), the drinking/hungover stuff wasn't mentioned, and the suit wasn't trying to paint the whole company's culture in a negative light, I would have no comment except, "cool, assuming these allegations are true, I wish the people filing the suit the best of luck in getting justice." it's the extrapolation of discrete events into a scathing indictment of the corporate culture and the tangential, tenuous things mentioned (as a means of bolstering the idea the the corporate culture is misogynistic) that gives me pause. I don't see a problem with this line of thinking. maybe the corporate culture really is as anti-woman as depicted here—that's for the courts to determine. meanwhile, I find it hard to believe 100% at face value, like many people here and elsewhere on social media are doing. I don't understand what my sex has to do with this evaluation—you said you hated to "play that card," but you didn't play any card at all, you just pointed out my presumed sex based on my handle, and didn't connect it to anything.

meibo 5y ago

In case anyone is interested, the WoW subreddit has put together a list of former and current female employees confirming and commenting on these allegations: https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_blizzard_sued_by_california_over_frat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_bliz...

devwastaken 5y ago
I hope that this is used for good, and not evil, but knowing "gamer" culture all of these individuals are going to receive harassment and doxxing. There's a lot of money on the line for Blizzard and those involved in professional "esports" by extension. This is why people don't speak. I hope these individuals will be able to find good work elsewhere when blizzard inevitably ousts them. California should be fining Blizzard into the ground, but given Blizzards response they've calculated out how much it'll cost and figured it's cheaper to do this.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I hope these individuals will be able to find good work elsewhere when blizzard inevitably ousts them. California should be fining them into the ground, but given Blizzards response they've calculated out how much it'll cost and figured it's cheaper to do this. Nah, I think the tone of their response shows that they think that a PR strategy based in rolling the dice on getting culture-war attachment and hoping that the upcoming recall succeeds before the case is resolved, resulting in an Administration from the faction whose rhetoric they are mirroring, who might then be inclined to dismiss the case. Since the PR strategy doesn't really constrain their substantive legal strategy, and there is some chance of that PR strategy actually working (though it seems remote), its maybe not a bad idea, ignoring moral and ethical considerations.
  - cartoonworld 5y ago
    Dang, what a gambit. Assuming rational actors, it must look pretty bad from the top of the inside to yolo this kind of hail mary. I wonder what this looked like passing by legal? I mean if PR let this out, assuming they even have that kind of throttle, surely the lawyers would want to take a long look. This will definitely come up in court, wont it?

madbitch 5y ago

Fucking disgusting. Reading this makes my blood boil. This is a big reason why me and my other female engineer friends ask about gender ratio during job interviews: sometimes a mostly male organization will be treat its female employees fine, but sometimes it will disrespect them, harass them, and treat them like garbage.

mustacheemperor 5y ago
Scrolling down this thread and reading the flagged and greying comments makes my blood boil all over again. To quote one (awful) take, > I’ll care when women worry about misandry. Want to see the perpetuation of misogyny in the tech industry occurring in real time? Just take a skim through the rationalization, defensiveness, and whataboutism littering the bottom and following pages of this thread. This is a community including a high proportion of engineers and engineering leadership and the problems endemic to our industry are on full display in this filing and in the responses posed by more than a few members of this community. If anyone reading this is privileged enough to have been insulated from these problems before, has truly been skeptical about whether this is a problem in our field today: this should be all the proof you need. Edit: Enough users have opted to downvote this comment that it now sits at -2 and I think I am entitled to at least a reply explaining why.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  HN is /r/kotakuinaction level commentary on this. Which is not even surprising, really.
- ajnin 5y ago
  I guess the reason you're being downvoted is that you're complaining about comments which have already been downvoted, which brings nothing to the discussion, and also you're drawing conclusions about a community that does not exist.
deathanatos 5y ago
Say you ask about the ratio, in an interview. I would tell you, but, like most companies I've worked at, I doubt the answer would impress you. What do you do with the information? If you base your decision on it, and I presume pass over the company for having a poor ratio, how is that company ever supposed to change?

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

Most of this sounds horrifying, and if its true I hope they throw the book at them. However this one line seems like it would be hard to prove: They(women) were also assigned to lower-level positions and passed over for promotions, despite doing more work than their male peers in some cases I know many people who are really good at filling out their TPS reports, and never break the rules. They don't ever get promoted, because they do so much in their current role, and since they never break the rules, they never get to be highlighted for "showing initiative." Though if the rest of it proves to be true, it would not look good.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> However this one line seems like it would be hard to prove Its a civil case. If it goes to trial, the standard of proof is “preponderance of the evidence” (basically, on the evidence presented, is the allegation more likely true than false), not the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Systematic gender discrimination in promotions (absent a smoking gun like a document in which that is outright stated, or testimony of multiple ex-managers to having been involved in such a policy) may be challenging to demonstrate even in that context, but it is very far from impractical.
rukuu001 5y ago
TFA excludes it, but from page 12 of the filing [0] there's an example of someone with measurably worse performance getting promoted ahead of a female colleague: "... In another example, a female employee who worked at Blizzard Entertainment was assigned to a lower level, denied equal pay, and passed over for a promotion despite multiple factors that suggested she earned it: (1) highly rated performance reviews; (2) she generated significantly more revenue in her marketing campaigns than her male counterpart; and (3) she ran almost twice as many campaigns as her male counterpart." 0 - https://aboutblaw.com/YJw https://aboutblaw.com/YJw
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  I'm saying that If she's making twice as much money where she is, why would you want her to do a different job? Though combined with all the other allegations it doesn't look like it's just standard corporate unfairness/politicking.

metalforever 5y ago

This issue is endemic and has been a constant problem throughout my career. They’re just big enough that they got caught.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

On the one hand, I feel like its easy to make allegations, on the other, I hope they win, California needs money for 20k trash cans for the homeless to sleep next to.

bogwog 5y ago

This part really helps put it into perspective: > In a tragic example of the harassment that Defendants allowed to fester in their offices, a female employee committed suicide while on a company trip due to a sexual relationship that she had been having with her male supervisor. The male supervisor was found by police to have brought a butt plug and lubricant on this business trip. Another employee confirmed that the deceased female employee may have been suffering from other sexual harassment at work prior to her death. Specifically, at a holiday party before her death, male co-workers were alleged to be passing around a picture of the deceased's vagina. (I had to manually type that out because the source doc is a scanned PDF; might have typos) source: https://aboutblaw.com/YJw https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

rasz 5y ago
and yet no criminal charges have been brought, WTF?
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  What crime would you charge?
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Distributing images of certain body parts the person depicted believed private is disorderly conduct in California.[1] [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=647.&lawCode=PEN https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
    - KittenInABox 5y ago
      If someone is so humiliated by this that they commit suicide why would they go through the emotional agony of going to court and having their humiliation litigated in front of a judge and to be put into public record under their name forever?

ketzo 5y ago

If you're reading this, there's a pretty solid chance that you're a male working in the software industry. It is super, super critical for you to know: this happens where you work, too. No, not "this could happen where you work." I'm telling you that if you work with women in engineering, they deal with this shit anywhere from weekly to hourly. It comes from "the nice manager," from a QA on another team, from a tech lead, from a customer. Misogyny and harassment are happening around you, and you need to be looking for it. If your first thought upon reading this was "well, I'm just glad that could never happen here," you are wrong, and you need to be on your guard.

bopbeepboop 5y ago
I’ll care when women worry about misandry. But insisting I care while women engage in illegal sexism for their own benefit is an abusive, one-sided relationship. Study after study confirms that women are preferentially hired and receive privilege in education. Study after study shows women dominated fields like HR and education are incredibly sexist. Women are allowed to organize on the basis of sex for more sexist privilege at most universities and businesses. Ask any man who has worked in a majority female department if lewd comments, inappropriate pictures, etc happen there. When women do their part to end sexism, I’ll care. Until then, it’s just entitled whining.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chickenpotpie 5y ago
  There’s never been a female President and almost every single CEO in the country is a man but HR is mostly women so it’s equal right? /s
  - grammarnazzzi 5y ago
    CEO positions tend to be filled by the most highly competitive personality types. People willing to sacrifice most of their life to attain a single goal. Perhaps women tend to choose to lead more balanced lives because they find it more rewarding and meaningful. Why more men are CEOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbH0Q39JCPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbH0Q39JCPk

Decabytes 5y ago

I had been considering resubbing and trying out The Burining Crusade in WOW, but then I found Final Fantasy XIV. I've played many FF games over the years. My cousins played FFXI but I was too young to play at the time so I never got to. I love MMOs and for me there is nothing like the excitement of playing a good MMO with friends. It's just nice to play a game whose leadership makes the player base feel as if they are important. Obviously we can never know what is actually going on behind Square Enix's doors but Yoshi-P makes me believe the things he says are true at least. I'm tired of playing games whose companies are actively hostile to the players (and to be fair after the whole Artifact debacle I'm starting to feel this way about Valve too). When I was younger I never considered myself someone who would be playing older games (early 2010s and older) instead of the latest ones. I used to be so excited for the new releases. But a game without microtranscactions, little to know DLC and a good modding scene has become more important to me than the newest stuff. It's honestly been disheartening as a gamer to have lost my enthusiasm for the newer stuff. But maybe part of that is just getting older and busier as well. On the bright side my hardware is plenty powerful for the games I play, which is great considering the silicone shortage and all.

lyptt 5y ago

I worked for AB a few years back and it was easily the worst job I've ever had. Incredibly toxic work culture, and frequent gaslighting by managers. I'll never work for a big games company again after that experience.

taurath 5y ago

I find the comments section here to be about 60/40 men who believe it to be a problem, and men who are denying there are problems or minimizing/excusing them, which matches my experience w men in workplaces. Long looong way to go.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
adreamingsoul 5y ago
I would hope that there are a majority of men who do think it is a problem but for whatever reason are silent on the issue. Case in point, I was not going to comment.
lovetocode 5y ago
I am a man and I haven’t seen anything like this in my workplace but I can say I have been sexual harassed by several women at two of my old jobs. So statistically, if men are less likely to be targeted then it must be happening. So even though I haven’t seen it outside my own experience, it’s scary to think how much of it is likely happening behind the scenes. I say this as a father of two daughters and husband to a woman who was physically assaulted by her former boss.
- taurath 5y ago
  I’m sorry that’s happened to you, and I think that’s a good perspective. It’s sometimes hard to grapple with something that one doesn’t personally experience, but I’m glad people are slowly becoming more aware.

blibble 5y ago

I posted saying yesterday that Blizzard's fall from grace has been absolutely spectacular to watch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911924 then 2 hours later this news appeared apparently there's worse news coming out later this week too

baud147258 5y ago

>Years after the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate targeted women in the video game world Ironically, GamerGate started as an expose on how dishonest and corrupt video game journalism had become, though it all went downhill from there. And now journalists dishonestly hijack GG to push whichever agenda suits them, though at least this time the writer didn't act as if it was still relevant today.

roudaki 5y ago

I am big proponent of STFU and do your job. No "we are family here". No dating people from work. Because some people really really need that next pay-check. There are people paying off their chemotherapy that have to go to work reading about this and worrying about their livelihood. Nobody deserves that. Nobody has a right to get you to worry about how are you gonna survive next mortgage payment. And over what? people acting like they are in highschool. Stuff like this boils my blood before we even get to politics. Life is hard enough. I will not burden you with my family issues and I will work as hard as I can but in return you let me do the work and worry only about what I am working on. Everything else goes under grow the f up and get a life outside company.

alexitorg 5y ago

Australian here. Could someone explain why the state government is suing anyone? Wouldn't it be more normal to charge them with breaking a law?

evgen 5y ago
Various regulatory agencies have the power to initiate torts against companies or individuals who are violating the law in addition to making criminal complaints. In most cases, a regulatory action is civil and not criminal. Your company dumped chemicals in a river that you knew probably were bad for the fish? The company will get hit with a civil action. It is possible that the specific person who decided upon this course of action or knowingly helped out will face individual criminal charges, but in most cases corporations do not face criminal charges.

France_is_bacon 5y ago

So....if you're a single guy, and you start a company and you WANT to have a party place with frat house attitude and exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness in life, I take it that a company founder that is a guy should only hire other single men that share those same values? I don't know, I'm just asking other's opinions here.

username90 5y ago
It is fine as long as your fratboy culture doesn't include nor ignore sexual harassment or sexism. At the end of the day it is your responsibility as an employer to provide a safe and fair work environment for everyone, it is illegal to not do it. Lots of women love partying, they aren't really a problem, the problem is that a some guys harass women at parties and you as an employer will need to take that seriously if partying happens at work.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
  I mean, that's why I wrote that should one hire single men only. That way, there won't be any type of sexism or harassment. I am beginning to think that the Islamic way of strictly separating men and women makes sense. Let women work at companies founded by women, and men with men. That way, everyone wins, so it seems to me. I don't know, I'm just thinking aloud here.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Employment law is a real thing, and people take it seriously. If you are thinking of hiring people you should probably look into it.
- sativallday 5y ago
  "culture fit"
tetromino_ 5y ago
Here's a man who worked at Blizzard saying that he was repeatedly sexually harassed by his (male) supervisors and HR was useless: https://twitter.com/bkcrusco/status/1418241726792142849 https://twitter.com/bkcrusco/status/1418241726792142849 Frat house culture at a company is universally shitty.

runbathtime 5y ago

Get out of Ca.

WhyNotHugo 5y ago

A lot more on the topic here: https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_blizzard_sued_by_california_over_frat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_bliz... Apparently their office was basically a frat house.