Do you have any data at all on how Blizzard's salaries stack up against other game companies? Or other tech jobs? Or... well, anything?

Why do I need to?

People who have full time jobs at Blizzard can't get by. If other game companies do that too, that's wrong as well. But Blizzard is the only company so far for which the employees compiled a document with their salaries to compare.

Really? That's specifically what I asked - do you have other data outside of this article? Someone's gone through and queried game companies, and confirmed that nobody else is comparing salaries?

(That seems super unlikely to me. More likely is that you read this piece, which took shots at a company you don't like, and you decided to spread it, even though it does absolutely NOTHING by itself about putting its info into a more general context, and you decided you don't need to worry about that.)

Why the heck did you take a job where you can't pay rent and afford food? Because nothing in that article says that they decreased anyones wages.

Read it again:

One veteran Blizzard employee told Bloomberg News they received a raise of less than 50 cents an hour. They are making less now than they did almost a decade ago because they are working fewer overtime hours than they did back then.

Is he Salary? Is he Hourly? I have no idea. And that does make a difference. This isn't even the same guy, this is just an example of a low raise.

This guy could make 200k a year, but because he is a manager that has to put in more hours. It could literally be 2 hours more a week.

I'm not saying that the wages are in a bad situation. But this article is cherry picking situations without any contextual data to back it up. It's like a said, a slam piece. You don't vilify a company if you have nothing to support it with other than anonymous stories.

Could Blizzard be Scrooge's that are milking their employees? Sure they could be, but there is no evidence in this article at all other than the higher ups are making a lot of money.

[Edit]

I just realized after reading Cruel's reply that this said less hours and not more.

Why the heck did you take a job where you can't pay rent and afford food? Because nothing in that article says that they decreased anyones wages.

Read it again:

One veteran Blizzard employee told Bloomberg News they received a raise of less than 50 cents an hour. They are making less now than they did almost a decade ago because they are working fewer overtime hours than they did back then.

Isn’t that a good thing according to you? They’re crunching less, right? Well guess what... fewer hours = less money. I worked fewer hours per week after my kids were born. I didn’t go complaining to the press that I was making less money than I used to.

*Goes back to lurking*

At the end of the day, it DOES sound like they have a massive pay disparity and that it's affecting morale. This is not some random indie dev scraping by on savings, this is Activision Blizzard we're talking about, and I think if they have employees are avoiding having kids because they don't feel financial stable enough, that it's fair to say maybe they aren't getting paid enough at the multi-billion dollar a year business.

I agree with this. But my original question still stands, because nobody's come close to addressing it yet:

Is Blizzard an outlier when it comes to employee compensation, or is there a problem with the industry in general? If the latter... how does getting mad at Blizzard help anyone?

1800s orphans on street corners weren't debating with their partners about whether or not they could have kids... I think the article is a bit sensationalist, especially considering Activision, a company that allegedly wanted to get Foie Gras out of Bungie, is an easy target as an evil corporation, but I don't think the responses here should respond in kind.

At the end of the day, it DOES sound like they have a massive pay disparity and that it's affecting morale. This is not some random indie dev scraping by on savings, this is Activision Blizzard we're talking about, and I think if they have employees are avoiding having kids because they don't feel financial stable enough, that it's fair to say maybe they aren't getting paid enough at the multi-billion dollar a year business.

I used that statement in reference to the article, not the actual people. Which for all I know is made up. Coming from this article I honestly don't know what is made up or fact because it doesn't really cite anything relevant about the employees. Even what Cody quoted wasn't even quoted from the employees.

So at the end of the day it does sounds like they COULD have a massive pay disparity, but from that article there is nothing to back that up. So until I see some sort of numbers or actual quotes from employees I'm going to assume it's a slam piece.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-03/blizzard-workers-share-salaries-in-revolt-over-wage-disparities

In 2018 messages on internal Blizzard communication channels reviewed by Bloomberg News, employees talked about money-saving measures they’ve taken to remain with the company. One employee wrote that they had to skip meals to pay rent and that they used the company’s free coffee as an appetite suppressant. Another said they would only eat oatmeal and bail on team lunches because they couldn’t afford to buy food at the company cafeteria. A third said they and their partner stopped talking about having kids because they knew they wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Blizzard doesn't pay a living wage.

Disparage between higher ups and others? I can see that. Problems? Sure. But that mostly feels like a slam piece. I have no doubt it's not the best studio to work for. However the quote is just stupid.

1. One employee wrote that they had to skip meals to pay rent and that they used the company’s free coffee as an appetite suppressant.

Why the heck did you take a job where you can't pay rent and afford food? Because nothing in that article says that they decreased anyones wages. So the only other case is that their rent went up. Blame your landlord and where you live, not your job that you chose.

I'm a little flummoxed at what blaming the landlord would accomplish in this case.

2. Another said they would only eat oatmeal and bail on team lunches because they couldn’t afford to buy food at the company cafeteria.

Hey I know, make a sandwich and not oatmeal. Can't afford a home made sandwich? Them maybe you really need to think about your priorities in life. A company cafeteria to me is a luxury.

Maybe expectations at the job don't give them an opportunity to bring in a home-made sandwich every day.

3. A third said they and their partner stopped talking about having kids because they knew they wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Yeah, cause kids are #$%@ing expensive. They also happen to be pretty cheap depending on how you do it. People have really high standards these days.

I'm all for equal wages, but I hate pieces that make it sound like these employees are 1800s orphans on a street corner. They made choices when they took the job, and yes they should be paid more, I think? But this article makes it sound like their hand was forced by some evil corporation.

1800s orphans on street corners weren't debating with their partners about whether or not they could have kids... I think the article is a bit sensationalist, especially considering Activision, a company that allegedly wanted to get Foie Gras out of Bungie, is an easy target as an evil corporation, but I don't think the responses here should respond in kind.

At the end of the day, it DOES sound like they have a massive pay disparity and that it's affecting morale. This is not some random indie dev scraping by on savings, this is Activision Blizzard we're talking about, and I think if they have employees are avoiding having kids because they don't feel financial stable enough, that it's fair to say maybe they aren't getting paid enough at the multi-billion dollar a year business.

Not making enough money to raise kids is a serious problem, and increasingly more so over time. But on the flip side, the majority of people throughout human history lived on so little money that we today can’t even comprehend it, yet they managed to raise families and survive through hardships far worse than we typically encounter in modern times. I’m not defending companies for under-paying their employees, just pointing out that a lot of people these days love to say they “can’t afford” things that people have done with far less for hundreds of thousands of years. Growing up with the expectation that our lives should be at least as comfortable as our parents’ is a thoroughly modern luxury.

Back to the point though, I think the sticking point here for some of us is that this piece and Cody are steamrolling over questions like “are these people’s wages comparable to similar positions at other companies across the industry?”. Because if their wages are roughly on par with industry standards, that means they’re predictable. Which means people can and should know what they’re getting into before taking these jobs.

Obviously, that doesn’t directly address the question of whether or not these people should be paid more for the work they’re doing, but I hesitate to even go there because it’s impossible to answer. We don’t have enough info. Maybe blizzard can and should pay them more. Or maybe if they increased wages, they’d have to cut their work force by 5-10%. Would that be better, or worse?

Personally, I just find it useless to get all outraged by the idea that a mega corporation is acting greedy. Like, OF COURSE THEY ARE. That doesn’t mean it’s ok, but what do people think they’re going to do, rid the world of every vice that exists? These employees are adults who willingly took jobs. They got themselves into it. If they’re being unfairly treated, they can leave. Of course, that means they’d have to go fund new jobs, and that’s freaking tough these days, but that’s the world we’re living in right now and it’s the challenge we’re all facing. I sympathize with anyone and everyone facing these challenges (this lockdown cost me my job and home, so I know well enough that times can be tough) but there’s a whiny and entitled undertone to arguments like the one Cody is trying to make that I find simply unhelpful. Every time my financial situation has improved, it’s because I stood in front of my boss and argued that I was worth more money, and my work performance compelled them to agree. There are times where I tried to make that argument, and my boss didn’t agree. So I left those jobs and went elsewhere. We’re all ultimately responsible for our own career choices. And when we end up in unfair situations, some of us complain, and others actually DO something about it.