[HN Gopher] California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay...
___________________________________________________________________
California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual
harassment
Author : cyb_
Score : 259 points
Date : 2021-07-22 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| wnevets wrote:
| The accusations I've been reading are simply awful and outright
| depressing. A woman may have committed suicide over the
| harassment.
| ketzo wrote:
| 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.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| This take is a little too extreme, it is one you see a lot on
| the internet, but if you talk to actual women in the industry
| there are much more varied experiences. Some don't perceive any
| problems at all, others do but consider it minor, others are
| depressed and angry as hell.
| cryptoz wrote:
| > it is one you see a lot on the internet, but if you talk to
| actual women in the industry
|
| You seem to imply that women on the internet are not actually
| in the industry? Not sure what you're saying here, unless you
| mean IRL, in which case,
|
| it is likely that women are not as comfortable talking IRL to
| men about these issues as they are online. I'm not a woman,
| but I sure am more comfortable discussing these things
| online. Seems like it would go both ways.
|
| > Some don't perceive any problems at all,
|
| A person's perception or lack thereof of a problem does not
| mean that the problem does not exist. Millions or billions of
| people are discriminated against every day without knowing it
| in the moment, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen or
| cause harm.
| will4274 wrote:
| You might want to reread the article. It isn't about harassment
| or misogyny from individuals. It's about a corporate culture
| and leadership that allegedly encouraged the same.
|
| I believe that the leadership team doesn't encourage sexual
| harassment where I work. I know that people get fired for
| harassing others.
|
| Maybe I'm naive and all the CEOs at all the tech companies
| encourage their subordinates to harass women. Or maybe you just
| need to get another job, at a place that doesn't suck. Or maybe
| you just need to read the article.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| 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.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I suggest that you have some mental issues to sort out, is
| there someone you can talk to?
| [deleted]
| adamrezich wrote:
| misogyny in tech is an innate, intractable problem that is
| literally impossible to solve? why would any woman work with
| any nonzero number of men in tech, then? I changed my career
| trajectory when I realized the video game industry wasn't a fit
| for me in terms of politics, work-family balance, and (to a
| lesser extent) religion... if this problem is truly unsolvable
| and endemic to software development, shouldn't women, looking
| out for their best interests, pursue other fields of work?
|
| (note that I don't actually believe this supposition, I'm just
| following it to the logical conclusion.)
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It might be an innante intractable problem of your religion,
| though.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| The OP said nothing about it being " an innate, intractable
| problem that is literally impossible to solve"
| adamrezich wrote:
| OP made unabashedly broad claims about an entire
| generalized industry, saying something happens everywhere,
| yes even at your company where you think everything is fine
| and there's no problems, yes, it happens there too. this
| implies that literally every measure possible taken at
| every possible corporation in the entire broad field of
| "software" continues to be ineffective at solving these
| problems, and that we must be aware of this. OP went out of
| their way to both leave no room for nuance in this
| assertion and to provide zero solutions or ideas for
| solutions for solving this problem, and implied that it was
| endemic to women working together with men (in software, I
| guess). what other possible alternative interpretation is
| there?
| cryptoz wrote:
| > this implies that literally every measure possible
| taken at every possible corporation in the entire broad
| field of "software" continues to be ineffective at
| solving these problems
|
| OP did not imply that; read their comment again, you will
| note that they actually stated the opposite of your
| accusation quite clearly. That there is more work to do
| (their point) directly contradicts your assumptions.
|
| > implied that it was endemic to women working together
| with men....what other possible alternative
| interpretation is there?
|
| The only interpretation of OP that I can see is that
| there exists a problem and that being aware of the
| problem existing is a key factor in solving it.
|
| I have no idea where you got these ideas from in OP's
| comment, I read quite the opposite from it actually.
| mediaman wrote:
| 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.
| ecf wrote:
| > this crisis is massively destructive of shareholder value
|
| So far the markets haven't reflected that. How long does it
| normally take for serious allegations to start affecting the
| stock price?
| taurath wrote:
| This is what paying someone $150 million in a year gets you.
| Try the $10 CEO I'll bet it'll go better.
| randyrand wrote:
| was MeToo something significant? I thought it was just a
| hashtag "movement" like countless others.
| azornathogron wrote:
| It seemed significant in the media arena to me. I mean, it
| basically took down Harvey Weinstein, right? That's not
| nothing.
| munk-a wrote:
| It also managed to absolutely torpedo an incredibly popular
| series - don't forget that Kevin Spacey went down during
| MeToo as well.
|
| I know that women still feel frequently disempowered in the
| workplace but I hope the movement helped them feel like
| they've got more widespread support than they did before.
| Once upon a time sexual harassment claims were seen as
| direct attacks on the success and health of a company "Gosh
| Susan, if you just told us in private we'd deal with it -
| instead you've cost all these people their jobs" - I think
| that impression has very much shifted. If you're being
| harassed then the company is failing at it's mission, any
| ill effect that comes to the company as a result of the
| report is a consequence the company should've (and failed
| to) protect themselves from by having a more robust and
| responsive HR department.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Due process is coming back into fashion.
| cwkoss wrote:
| 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]
| Spoom wrote:
| I remember Activision generally being a publisher of terrible
| licensed games in the 90s, so I wasn't too surprised by that.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Even Blizzard wasn't spared from making a bad licensed game
| in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Ta
| sk_Force_(vid...
| [deleted]
| phillryu wrote:
| 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
| emptysongglass wrote:
| In my opinion the downfall of Blizzard started even earlier
| in 2004. Ever since World of Warcraft their writing and
| worldbuilding has stumbled off a cliff. StarCraft's
| storyline was fantastic and its world spectacularly gritty.
| The weird whirring mechano-head of the adjutants and bodily
| entombed dragoons are just some examples of the kooky minds
| working at the studio at that time.
|
| With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I
| saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed
| out the magic for me. Blizzard wasn't alone in this but it
| broke my heart as a kid who grew up on Sabriel and The Book
| of the New Sun and Baldur's Gate and EverQuest to watch all
| those game companies lurch forward to a blank-eyed glossed
| future.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I agree with this. Early Blizzard games had amazing
| worldbuilding and great single player experiences, with
| good multiplayer options.
|
| After WoW's success they seemed to try to pigeonhole all
| of their properties in the same direction, SC2 and D3
| were quite clearly online/multiplayer first with single
| player as an afterthought, and the world depth felt
| lacking. Hearthstone's alright but feels like it has too
| much focus on PvP games and loot box mechanics.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Hearthstone's aesthetic reminds me of the parallel world
| of stuff that religious groups always make (Christian
| music, Christian books, etc), and I found it really
| offputting.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > and bodily entombed dragoons
|
| Meh. It is an undeniable direct Warhammer 40K plagiarism:
| before coming up with their own StarCraft universe,
| Blizzard tried and failed to secure rights for Warhammer
| 40K setting. So it is easy to see the source of their
| 'inspiration'.
|
| They had many bright moments, but this one is not one
| they came up with themselves.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Like dreadnoughts? I'd argue fantasy and science fiction
| is all iterating over itself endlessly and there's
| creative ways of doing it. Plunging dragoons into a
| liquid bath puts dragoons at something of a cross-section
| of evangelion and 40k tomb-mech.
|
| I could go on. The ghosts exhaling poison vapor with
| spider eyes or hydralisks vomiting buckets of saliva.
| Sunken colonies with their long knife-tongues; the Creep.
| As a whole I think Blizzard really made something
| special.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think Starcraft and Warcraft before it are both stellar
| examples of inventive remixing and borrowing from
| existing worlds. That is very different from plagiarism.
|
| Games Workshop does not own the copyright on nearly-dead-
| warriors-entombed-in-exoskeletons. Nor did they invent
| the idea of the nearly dead being sustained by
| cybernetics, or of using robotics to assist those of
| limited physical ability. We all are inspired by things.
|
| It's especially odd to talk about about "Warhammer" or
| "Starcraft" as if they are managed by a single human,
| when in fact all of these worlds are written and
| envisioned by a multi-generational army of creative
| people who are all drawing on sources to come up with
| ideas. Are all of the employees of GW who write about
| dreadnoughts plagiarizing the employee who came up with
| the idea?
| learc83 wrote:
| I grew up on Warcraft 2, and to me the cartoonish look of
| WoW was a direct continuation of the art style from that
| game. I was in the WoW beta. The first time I played it
| my initial reaction was that it looked exactly like I had
| stepped into Warcraft.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I see your point with Warcraft 2 though I do think a lot
| of the art from then leant more to the gritty like this
| one [1] that shows a troll squaring off with a human.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/pJ0entX_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape
| =thumb&...
| learc83 wrote:
| The game manuals always were pretty gritty compared to
| the in-game art.
| tremon wrote:
| _shows a troll squaring off with a human_
|
| An elf, rather (elven archer).
| pvg wrote:
| I think initial development/prototyping was done as an
| offshoot of the WC3 engine so in a sense you were
| stepping into Warcraft. That's not to take anything away
| from the great design and art direction consistency
| between these titles - just that it also had a practical
| technical component.
| ggregoire wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Have you played the last 2 World of Warcraft extensions? Or
| Warcraft 3: Reforged, the only "new game" they released
| since 2016, which is also commonly known as Warcraft 3:
| Refunded? [1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.warcraft3refunded.com
|
| [2] https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-
| iii-re... (published 7 hours ago)
| adamkittelson wrote:
| The fact that Diablo 3 needed to be "fixed" supports the
| narrative. Also the fact that executives didn't realize it
| had been fixed and cancelled the 2nd Diablo 3 expansion.
| The Warcraft III remaster was a disaster. Three out of the
| last four World of Warcraft expansions have been poorly
| received. There does seem to be a pattern of decline.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Which 3 of the last 4? Legion, BfA, and now SL have all
| been received quite well I think.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| of the last 4, (ie WoD, Legion, BfA, and SL), Legion was
| the only one that you could call well received. WoD, BfA,
| and SL are all utter shit.
|
| WoD deserves a special place in game design hell for
| choosing to implement garrisons over another tier of raid
| content.
| brailsafe wrote:
| This is a common sentiment I hear from people who bailed
| during WoD and have just been looking at public
| commentary about the rest. Everyone I spoke to in-game
| were at least meh about BfA, loved Legion, and were still
| stoked on SL until the new patch just took a bit too
| long. There are legit criticisms of all of them, but to
| say they're shit is just silly. Those same people also
| tended to love MoP fwiw.
|
| My only real criticism is related to the majority of all
| game content being kind of irrelevant, because there
| isn't a long road to max level and no scarcity of exp.
| However, I did level through BfA content, and it was
| really well done.
| Accacin wrote:
| I'm odd in that I actually loved WoD, aside from
| Garrisons. Legion had it's moment of greatness, around
| the fourth patch it was great.
|
| BfA and Shadowlands are incredibly bad, for casual
| players there's really nothing interesting to do, and
| raiders and stuck behind meaningless time gates. It's
| quite sad to see my friends list now, no one is playing -
| and a new patch has just been released.
|
| I'm a huge fan, but I've also stopped playing. Blizzard
| feel like they've been ahead for so long they forget what
| made their games great. Saying that though, it only takes
| on incredible expansion for everyone to jump back.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I've gone back to level through WoD, and I was very
| impressed with Draenor and HFC. I have no personal qualms
| with that expansion other than what I hear about.
|
| I think I agree with your commentary about SL, but I just
| said the same thing in a different way. BfA had a bit
| more interesting content though in that respect. They
| were not 'incredibly bad' by my estimation, just have
| their various flaws.
|
| With regard to friends list, I stopped playing shortly
| before new patch drop, but mostly because it's summer and
| WoW in general just makes it way too easy to spend time
| indoors. I was following the world first race though, and
| would love to raid SoD and do BGs. But, before letting my
| sub expire I went and farmed out all the Mechagon mounts
| and most interesting rare drop mounts, had my fill of
| Nathria, and a bit of Mythic+ as miserable as that is.
| Could have been more fun with a proper gaming setup and
| guild, but I knew summer was coming up and I'd want to
| dial my playtime back to zero.
|
| This is all after a decade long hiatus.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > It's like they think it's 1995 and MeToo never happened.
|
| They've also seemed to have forgotten that they're located in
| California. This is the type of thing you might say if you were
| in Texas and wanted to politicize the issue in the hopes of
| getting Greg Abbott to take your side. But here, it's just
| digging a deeper hole. I'm dumbfounded that any PR department
| would sign off on this.
| projectazorian wrote:
| They may intend to take this all the way to the Supreme
| Court, and with the court's current composition, there's an
| excellent chance they win and even get the underlying statute
| neutered or struck down.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| PR has changed in them last 3 years dramatically.
|
| Now the standard is just a flat out lie.
|
| Used to be either no comment or getting the shit out yourself
| with apologies appeal to emotion and move on.
|
| There are so many Trump-style statements I read in news every
| day. An article from ProPublica today on China's extra judicial
| kidnappings abroad had quotes from CCP that could have been
| Trump but flipped.
|
| It's scary that the truth doesn't matter anymore to a
| significant %, and another significant % are just so flustered
| and overwhelmed they move on.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > 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.
|
| It's about ethics in game journalism! Er, ethics in government?
|
| The sad part is that I suspect many of the individuals involved
| actually believe that sentiment.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| To me it seems that of late a lot of members of the
| management caste are suffering from a sort of collective
| delusion.
| arkitaip wrote:
| They are in utter panic and are acting out like a bunch of
| toddlers.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > It's like they think it's 1995 and MeToo never happened.
|
| I see it more as them either waking up to the relative
| supremacy of and latent unaccountability afforded to the modern
| Big Corporation, or finally being bold enough to drop the
| pretense of being an "equal" member of society. There is no
| need to be polite when your company's position is secure and
| permanent.
|
| That is, the government and society being mad at them does not
| matter, for their profits are still guaranteed. The only
| question is whether the stock will go up right after losing the
| lawsuit, or a few days later.
| albatross13 wrote:
| I've been saying this, jokingly, for awhile now: Blizzard is a
| law firm that just happens to make video games. I'm sure they
| went this route because they think they can win (I mean
| clearly, right? Who goes to court thinking they'll lose).
| Anyways, not super insightful either way but they do litigate a
| lot.
| mediaman wrote:
| It's an interesting point. On the other hand, many of these
| state prosecutors are very afraid of losing: many of them
| have gone the "golden career route" of name-brand schools and
| law firms, and shy away from any possible failure.
|
| That's mostly bad, because they won't bring cases that are
| worthy but risky to their career.
|
| When they do ultimately bring a case, though, it means it's
| strong.
| albatross13 wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree with you, honestly- my comment was
| more just me musing aloud about Blizzard's hubris in the
| face of the law. They've also lawyered up and ruined a lot
| of good vanilla WoW private servers, which I think adds to
| their hubris- fighting a state in court is going to be a
| lot more involved than telling a few nerds online to stop
| running a WoW server.
|
| Anyways, I think you're correct and I personally look
| forward to Blizzard losing.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Another day, another situation where the best way forward was
| "we don't comment on ongoing litigation".
|
| Less glib, this past year has taught me that a lot of companies
| are led by genuinely unintelligent people. The number of short
| sighted, self destructive, and downright childish behavior
| coming from the C suite of even some big companies has been
| nearly endless. The idea that Blizzard is led by someone so
| impulsive that he basically goaded the state into suing him is
| unsurprising.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many people in upper management have
| very fragile egos, regardless of the company. Childish
| behavior is very common in the industry. I can't even begin
| to count the number of times I've had to call senior members
| out and the only reason I could do that (unfortunately) was
| that I am a dude. I really sympathize with anyone who has to
| deal with these people.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| And yet the leadership is compensated as if they're the only
| ones fit to lead.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I'm flabbergasted by some PR releases lately. It's like
| some rando VP or someone decided to slip their personal
| ideology in there.
|
| How many hands did that pass through and nobody was brave
| enough to strike that line? It adds nothing positive.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > How many hands did that pass through and nobody was brave
| enough to strike that line? It adds nothing positive.
|
| Perhaps I'm a cynic but I assumed that was the "compromise"
| version of the language and the original draft was worse.
| tomilola39 wrote:
| Have you seen this one from Google from earlier this year
| (https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-
| supporti...)?
|
| Yikes.
| rhacker wrote:
| Wow, yikes indeed. This kind of thing reminds me of ebay
| from last year:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/six-former-ebay-
| employees...
| fumar wrote:
| What about this is bad? Attacking Microsoft?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Bobby Kotick settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against him,
| personally, in 2010. Kotick fired a woman who was not
| interested in being the "arm candy" for his private pilot.
| https://kotaku.com/activision-boss-loses-legal-battle-over-s...
|
| Perhaps that makes him the "right guy as CEO". You know,
| culture fit.
|
| (It's not all Bobby's fault though: pre-Activision Blizzard
| folks are named too.)
| nostromo wrote:
| You can support MeToo and also agree California does have a
| problem with unaccountable state bureaucrats run amok.
| duxup wrote:
| You can but mixing both thoughts at once is kinda weird.
|
| In this case they're kinda pulling in different directions
| and ... I dunno probably best to just stick to one topic as
| far as a press release goes.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| The point of defensive press releases is often to confuse
| the public about the matter. People don't remember what
| they don't understand.
| Qw3r7 wrote:
| Bobby is your guy if you want great your company's stock to
| gain value.
|
| I personally would never want him as a leader, yet alone a CEO.
| Ethically, I wouldn't be okay.
| Decabytes wrote:
| 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.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| If you've got a dev that codes absolutely brilliant bug-
| free code at a lightning pace - you give them an honorary
| title bump and a pay bump appropriate to their performance
| while keeping them in about the same role. Organizations
| with role based salary caps that are more generous to
| management than individual contributors are acting in a
| self-destructive manner.
| duxup wrote:
| 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.)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can say that on the phone in California, since it requires
| "two-party consent" for recording phone calls.
| tyre wrote:
| There is an exception for perjury. Although it's unlikely
| that the company does not settle first, you could then try to
| have the recruiter deny saying so in a sworn statement. The
| two-party consent laws do not apply when used as proof that
| someone perjured themselves
| [deleted]
| cycomanic wrote:
| Except he was on speaker phone and there were at least two
| people on the other line, which provides a witness to the
| statement and it is not just a he said/she said anymore.
| MisterTea wrote:
| That is blatant age discrimination and should have been
| reported to the proper authorities.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That is blatant age discrimination
|
| Which is perfectly legal, as long as the target isn't over
| 40.
| mimikatz wrote:
| That does sound right
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| It is https://www.plbsh.com/how-the-law-protects-you-
| from-age-disc....
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| I thought about it but 1. I wasn't the person being
| discriminated against and 2. The friend wasn't going to
| report it for the reason I noted. I understood / respected
| that choice.
|
| It still burns me up a little but at that point I 100%
| understood his call and honestly not sure I would want to go
| all the way down the road fighting it too...
| bsder wrote:
| Lots of things are blatant. However, it takes a lot of money
| to run something through the legal system, and, if you win,
| you may still not be in a better position.
|
| This is what allows so much harassment (both general and
| sexual) to go unchecked. It's better to shut up, bag some
| amount of experience and move on to a better job than it is
| to actively fight against it.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| my recruiter from Twilio said they were were ready to make an
| offer to me but was hesitant to give it to me because I was
| white. They wanted to wait until they interviewed more diverse
| applicants
| mediaman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > Age discrimination is only illegal if the person is over
| 40.
|
| Sarcasm?
| meowster wrote:
| No, the law has a lower bound, and it's 40.
| throwkeep wrote:
| What age are we talking about? And what is the concern? What
| are they worried about exactly?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > "Everyone here is young and they were worried you're too
| old."
|
| This is a really weird complaint to me. Maybe I was just always
| an old curmudgeon, but when I was a naive young computer boy I
| got along great with the old guys I worked with. Plus they have
| accumulated wisdom. Maybe disrespect for accumulated wisdom is
| one of the reasons software sucks so bad these days. Damned
| kids...
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _Maybe disrespect for accumulated wisdom is one of the
| reason software sucks so bad these days._
|
| What do you mean "maybe"?! It has always been the case.
|
| I am not even that old -- 41y/o currently -- and I work
| professionally as a programmer ever since ~22 and I always
| noticed how 99% of all programmers I ever worked with, when
| faced with advice from seasoned veterans, were like "meh,
| this doesn't apply to us, we'll figure out our own solution"
| which, sadly, goes exactly like you think it would, at least
| 90% of the time.
| taurath wrote:
| 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]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "'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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This stuff always seem strange to me. We had a bar at the
| office. We used to drink at the bar. That's the point of a bar.
|
| And because we were engineers we'd sometimes work past six on a
| Friday when others are at the bar. Sometimes I'd go have a beer
| with them and then go back to write some code because something
| struck me.
|
| Sure I drank 'on the job'. That's part of why software
| engineering is fun. I get to do my job with these things
| included.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| If you have a great company culture, and it involves an
| occasional beer on Friday afternoon, I don't think it's a
| problem, but if you're having a problem preventing
| inappropriate jokes, groping, etc. then alcohol is certainly
| not going to help. I don't think it's the biggest issue listed,
| but it does (to me) suggest that upper management was not
| taking the situation seriously.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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.
| metalforever wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| will4274 wrote:
| I feel very ambivalent about your comment. Parents
| comment is sexist and you are absolutely correct in
| saying that men can and are fired at some workplaces for
| making similar comments that generalize women.
|
| On the other hand, parents comment is also true.
|
| I'm a man btw.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Yep, likely wasn't intentional, but that person's
| statement does have the air of, "they are INSERT_CLASS,
| so it's in their nature"...
| Supermancho wrote:
| > As a woman in tech, the problem is that men start
| hitting on you when they've had a few beers.
|
| > 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.
|
| You've broadened the original statement to say more than
| was commented. The original did not say "all men" or even
| "only men". Quite the disingenuous interpretation turned
| around to try to make up a controversy.
| Karunamon wrote:
| >the problem is that men...
|
| >the problem is that women...
|
| Not one sentence beginning this way in this context will
| ever be anything other than a sexist generalization. That
| was the point being made, and I stand by it.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Not one sentence beginning this way in this context
| will ever be anything other than a sexist generalization.
|
| > That was the point being made
|
| It was not, as you accidentally recognize: "I'm sorry you
| had to work with unprofessional assholes that won't take
| 'no' for an answer"
|
| which recognizes that the sentiment/point does not apply
| to all men.
|
| You are making a subjective interpretation, so I stand by
| the fact that you are being disingenuous and your
| interpretation is wrong on that basis, until specifically
| addressed.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I think it's plain at this point that you are not
| approaching this in good faith. The original statement
| was an 'all' statement, as are statements like 'women
| do..' or 'men do..' or 'black people do..' and 'white
| people do..'.
|
| The comment about 'unprofessional assholes that won't
| take no for an answer' was a discussion of specific bad
| conduct, i.e. the _behavior_ the original comment
| _actually_ had a problem with, as opposed to the entire
| identity they originally called out.
|
| If you don't believe me, fine, but I think I explained
| what my actual point was very well.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > I think it's plain at this point that you are not
| approaching this in good faith
|
| I'm not being critical of the point by picking a narrow
| interpretation (they meant to be critical of all men),
| despite acknowledging the limits of the point in the same
| post. Therefore, I'll disagree with the quoted assertion,
| as well. Good luck with whatever.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The problem is the English language has lost the specific
| vocabulary used to call out problematic men.
| taurath wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotAllMen
|
| Please educate yourself on how this shuts down debate
| over intolerant behavior. The tolerance of other men is
| required for activity like this - and /obviously/ there
| are many men who find this behavior awful but also
| clearly /not enough/ to stop it from happening.
|
| Yes, of course, not all men do this shit. But it's enough
| to have a considerable impact on people. Usually there's
| a small number of abusers and then a large group of
| people tolerating or egging on the abuse. This is why
| they're describing a "frat bro" culture in the legal
| suit.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Here, sure. We're describing concrete allegations against
| _specific people_. However, mentioning a class of people
| without qualification colloquially means 'all', and
| would not be tolerated or seen as anything other than an
| ignorant, discriminatory, prejudicial comment in any
| other context.
|
| Tarring an entire sex as having any problem in particular
| is disgusting. The article you linked even includes the
| following quote:
|
| _If we genuinely oppose prejudice on the grounds of
| identity, rather than seek to elevate certain identities
| and disparage others, there is no shame and much worth in
| pointing out when negative stereotypes are applied to
| men._
|
| The original comment could have been made without the
| generalization and would have carried just as much
| weight. The fact that your last paragraph begins with "of
| course.." is proof that you recognize that this is an
| inaccurate generalization.
|
| Let's have less of that. That's what I'm asking for.
| [deleted]
| taurath wrote:
| > Tarring an entire sex as having any problem in
| particular is disgusting.
|
| Yes, and it misses the point.
|
| "I have a problem with men coming up to me at work and
| slapping my ass"
|
| Should not be responded to with
|
| "No men I know have done that, this is clearly sexist!"
|
| It's a semantic argument that doesn't address the actual
| problem.
| Karunamon wrote:
| >Yes
|
| All that needed to be said. The point is that the
| statement is a sexist generalization and did not need to
| be. Nothing more, nothing less.
|
| I find double standards on prejudicial statements to be
| infuriating, doubly so when they're targeted at me, extra
| points for when they're accusing me of things that, not
| only would I _never do_ , that I _have_ called out people
| for doing in real life.
|
| Minimizing it as a 'semantic argument' ignores the harm
| that stereotyping causes.
| taurath wrote:
| It's whataboutism. It's changing the subject. It's not
| grappling with the actual problem being presented. It's
| presuming a bad faith attack on you via the group of
| words chosen. It's about you having a desperate fear of
| being accused of something you didn't do - it should be
| obvious that someone saying "men" is not literally
| talking about ALL MEN but you pretend as if it isn't, and
| hijack the conversation.
|
| Your argument in a vacuum I have no problem with - the
| frequency it comes up in order to distract from the
| context in which it comes up is troubling to say the
| least, and is something often done by bad faith actors.
| I'm not accusing you of bad faith - however, I'd invite
| you to look at the directionality of where the
| conversation has gone. Namely, very far away from the
| person being harmed and squarely into your feelings of
| being excluded.
|
| For posterity I repost your original comment.
|
| OP
|
| > As a woman in tech, the problem is that men start
| hitting on you when they've had a few beers.
|
| YOU
|
| > 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.
|
| Your argument is as if the OP was saying that half of men
| on the planet come and hit on her specifically and
| inappropriately. For fucks sake.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder if the sector influences that. I've
| never seen men hit on women coworkers at happy hours. I
| Actually had a woman coworker start talking about going to
| a strip club after one and taking a bunch of other men and
| women there and inviting me too. I have to say, that wasn't
| something I was expecting (I was only there a year at that
| point). I'm in finance IT. I haven't noticed it in the
| office either. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it
| happens on a small scale. I've had 2 women say...
| "stuff"... to me in the office before.
| kache_ wrote:
| Do people actually drink at work events? I just keep on
| adding ice to my drink and pretend so I don't look out of
| place
|
| Work events are work :P just a different kind of work
| munk-a wrote:
| Yea, ditto. I need to be in the office with these folks
| tomorrow so I tend to be very conservative with
| consumption at work events.
|
| I don't want to burn the accumulated good will from the
| workplace by being an asshat one evening.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Depends on company culture. In some places, people really
| let their guard down and get loose with their co-workers.
| MisterTea wrote:
| 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.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| As far as I know, _the_ big selling point is that you get to
| work on video games instead of CRUD apps or adtech or "Uber
| for X". I've seen several anecdotal reports of people
| tolerating a seriously sketchy work environment because as far
| as they know, the alternative is not working on video games.
|
| I'm reminded of allegations of the K-pop industry basically
| being a soulless meat grinder because it has no trouble finding
| kids who will do anything to be a K-pop idol.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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?
| simion314 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Paycheck transparency, paycheck+stock option transparency, or
| transparency of _all_ benefits? Didn 't Steve Jobs have a
| salary of $1?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Privacy would be one downside. I'm not sure I want my friends,
| acquaintances, home contractors, ect knowing how much I make.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Pay transparency doesn't necessarily mean you're personally
| identifiable. That aside, what are the downsides?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| yeah, it really all comes down to implementation. How
| much information is available an to whom.
|
| Being able to look up anyone by name in a public registry
| and see their exact salary would probably be a worst case
| This is the current state for public employees.
|
| Anonymized data for companies larger than a certain size
| with job class (like levels.fyi[1]) would probably be a
| best case. However, if you want to get meaningful
| information about sex, race, age, & gender, this
| information quickly becomes identifiable for even
| moderate companies.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Microsoft
| &tr...
| ipnon wrote:
| 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.
| 0xEFF wrote:
| It's already mandated if you're a government employee, which
| millions of people are.
| adamrezich wrote:
| this is why we are a Republic of States, and we're supposed
| to care more about state and local elections than the Federal
| ones, but it seems like nobody learns this from high school
| civics class anymore (myself included).
| ipnon wrote:
| A California state mandate on pay disparity would probably
| be generally well-received, for example.
| adamrezich wrote:
| exactly! this is why our Republican (not the party)
| system of government is so great, different states can
| try different things and other states can learn from each
| other, both in what to do, what not to do, and even
| "well, that worked for _that_ state, but I don 't think
| it'll work well for us." it's a neat system, and one that
| I feel is increasingly underappreciated, as everyone
| wants all legislation to be done at the federal level.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't understand the privacy rebuttals. Pay transparency
| doesn't mean your personal salary is identifiable.
| ipnon wrote:
| In the interest of debate, I don't quite understand them
| either. But America is a country I have never fully
| understood!
| stagger87 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Specified what? Pay transparency has never meant
| personally identifiable salaries.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Usually these things (at least with the government)
| don't list experience, or educational attainment."
|
| Seems pretty useless without that. Those are huge
| factors.
|
| "The question is mainly whether you want to be ignorant,
| or not."
|
| That's not the only question. The other question mostly
| being discussed here is if you want anyone to be able to
| know your salary by working backwards from the published
| list, specifically in small companies.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Seems pretty useless without that. Those are huge
| factors.
|
| The point is to allow for more transparency, not
| _perfect_ transparency.
|
| > That's not the only question. The other question mostly
| being discussed here is if you want anyone to be able to
| know your salary by working backwards from the published
| list, specifically in small companies.
|
| In practice this doesn't matter, but even if this were an
| issue you could exempt employers with fewer than 100
| employees.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "In practice this doesn't matter"
|
| How so? Even at 100 employees you might only have 5 tech
| leads. So the population of the subgroups matter.
|
| "The point is to allow for more transparency, not perfect
| transparency."
|
| What can we actually do with that transparency if it
| doesn't have the attributes necessary for meaningful
| comparison?
| endisneigh wrote:
| The point is to create a range in which both current and
| prospective employees can refer to. Obviously it's not
| perfect as that would require all information which would
| be a privacy concern.
|
| Are you arguing knowing nothing is better than knowing
| something?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Are you arguing knowing nothing is better than knowing
| something?"
|
| No one is saying that. That is a gross misinterpretation
| of my statements.
|
| "The point is to create a range in which both current and
| prospective employees can refer to."
|
| A range based on what? The point being discussed here is
| equal pay. Ranges dont help if you have all the women at
| the low end and the men at the high end, hypothetically.
| If you just want to post salary ranges by position you
| can do that without publishing individual salaries.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| The downside is that it's a tyrannical intrusion into private
| business.
| taurath wrote:
| Private business operates under the umbrella of government
| regulations and if they didn't you and I would have a much
| worse life.
| jedberg wrote:
| 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.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This sounds like grasping at straws, I mean your arguments
| against pay transparency is that there would be some more
| meetings and that somehow this would enable big companies to
| easier poach employees of small business? I don't know where
| you work, but discussions about salary are such a small blib
| in the overall number of meetings, that even if (and that's a
| big if) pay transparency would increase the number of those
| meetings by a factor 10, it would hardly register for the
| vast number of employees amongst the flood of other stupid
| meetings.
|
| And it would make poaching of employees from small businesses
| easier because they suddenly know about the salaries that
| they didn't have a clue about before? I don't know what you
| think the recruiters at of the big players do all day, I
| would bet they have very good ideas what all the other
| players pay. If anything it would help small businesses who
| don't have the money to pay top recruiters.
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree with everything you said. Like I said, I think it's
| a good policy, but there _are_ downsides, just not to the
| employee.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Absolutely. It would be great for the employees, just not
| the businesses.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Ah, I misunderstood - I thought you were arguing that was
| a downside for an employee. Apologies.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| > 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?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The employee would benefit from more transparency, but that
| doesn't mean it is exploitation.
|
| Not
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree, the small business has to bring something else to
| the table, such as greater scope of responsibility or
| quicker execution.
|
| Transparent pay is great for the employees, but it's still
| a downside to the company.
| gameman144 wrote:
| This is a double-edged sword, though.
|
| For employees, working at a large company that has already
| achieved economies of scale is probably a better paycheck
| -- they have the budget to be able to pay you better.
|
| For society, though, we definitely don't want those small
| businesses (which _don 't_ have the same efficiencies or
| economies of scale) to be boxed out by large corporations
| across the board.
|
| Not that this means that we _shouldn 't_ have pay
| transparency (people can and should be able to make their
| own decisions), but the inability of small businesses to
| match the salaries of huge corporations is pretty
| unavoidable.
| baskire wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Then don't look at them.
| alfl wrote:
| How much money do you make?
| duxup wrote:
| Would what someone claims online make any difference to you?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The point is to drive home how they might feel about
| publicity announcing and verifying their income for the
| world to see.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Pay transparency does not necessarily mean a specific
| individual is tied with a specific amount of money.
| sib wrote:
| Yes, but in many cases it does (not-huge companies with
| enough data on role, experience, location to
| disambiguate)...
| ThePadawan wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is such a stupid retort. I'm totally fine with my salary
| being public iff everyone's salary is public.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Start from yourself.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Of course it doesn't exist, because if it did any CEO could
| say "let's hire women instead of men and save 25%"
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| If people were rational, bigotry wouldn't exist in the
| first place.
| iagovar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No black engineers or accountants in 1950? Whats the pay
| gap between you and a knowledgeable employee?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not that there were zero, just that they were rare due to
| entry barriers. If you have evidence to the contrary I
| would love to see it rather than listen to your pathetic
| attempt at a clever put down.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| You're the one who said there were none.
|
| Now you admit there were, my original question remains.
| Why didn't any CEO hire them at a white firm at half pay
| and make a bundle?
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I presume you are from Spain, which indeed is one of the top
| countries in the Global Gender Gap Index [1] but its
| unadjusted gender pay gap still sits at 11.9% (2019
| provisional) [2]. Yes it's called "unadjusted" for a reason
| (gender pay gap is a broad phenomenon and can't be described
| with a single statistics and that's why we have the Index)
| but it is far from "non-existant".
|
| [1] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf (14th
| place in 2021)
|
| [2] https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=
| sdg...
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Trade Unions have access to companies microdata now. If
| there such pay gap, there's no excuse now.
|
| I don't really want to get into a large discussion, but I
| know the data sources of these studies as I used them
| pretty often, and you'll have to be pretty creative, either
| with data or with definitions.
|
| This issue for me is very linked with my distrust of
| academia, is not just this issue.
|
| I went to uni (sociology) in my mid 20s and I wasn't
| impressed with the ethical standards of the field, let's
| say that.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Gender pay gap is not just about the wage equality in the
| same companies (AFAIK this is what the 2021 law
| concerns). It can for example also arise from the
| selective employment, which effectively segregates the
| labor force by gender. If my reading of the Global Gender
| Gap Index is correct, the disparity of estimated earned
| income in Spain is 34.9% (score 0.651), which suggests
| this scenario.
|
| > I went to uni (sociology) in my mid 20s and I wasn't
| impressed with the ethical standards of the field, let's
| say that.
|
| This honestly sounds like conspiracy believers. If you
| feel a particular statistics is flawed (perfectly
| possible by the way) you ought to give a counter
| evidence, not your anecdote.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| > selective employment
|
| That's mostly an effect of what women study, and
| motherhood.
|
| There's a discussion about nature/nurture, the gender
| paradox and all that behind those figures.
|
| > This honestly sounds like conspiracy believers. If you
| feel a particular statistics is flawed (perfectly
| possible by the way) you ought to give a counter
| evidence, not your anecdote.
|
| I don't really want to vent out publicly here, I already
| did too much, but someone influential in this field was
| my professor. This professor admitted, maybe without
| being aware of so, that the results of the research being
| conducted in that moment were being massaged to fit the
| hypothesis.
|
| Look, IDK, my nick can already be linked to my real
| persona, so understand I don't want to get into details
| here. In fact I'm not sure if I should be posting this,
| as it could affect future job prospects.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > That's mostly an effect of what women study, and
| motherhood.
|
| I secretly wanted to see the actual arguments based on
| numbers since I'm very aware that the global survey like
| this can fail to account for domestic contexts, but yeah,
| typical canned arguments.
|
| I personally don't care who you are (except for your
| country in question), but if you feel unsafe about the
| discussion after all you'd rather not talk about it at
| all. In the other words, expect the criticism if you keep
| posting those typical canned arguments.
| taurath wrote:
| > That's mostly an effect of what women study, and
| motherhood.
|
| Have you seen data from companies showing total comp of
| each individual? Every study I've seen shows
| discrimination after accounting for differences in
| education. I've known many women in different workplaces
| that were not being paid equally.
| disposablex wrote:
| 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?
| google234123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yes it was misread.
| chasing wrote:
| This is, uh, not the way to reply to such accusations.
| blibble wrote:
| the company never, ever, ever, ever, EVER admits fault or any
| sort of mistake (even trivial ones)
| totony wrote:
| What would be a good way? I've never seen a positive response
| to a reply to such accusations before.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| "We're willing to fully cooperate with the state
| government. Sexual harassment and discrimination isn't
| tolerated at this company and we will root out any sources
| of it and remove them expeditiously"
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| This is 100x worse if you think the state has no case.
| You're pretty much tactfully acknowledging a degree of
| guilt.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| I would be incredibly shocked if Blizzard wasn't guilty
| to any degree. There are far too many accusations
| totony wrote:
| I think for such a huge company it's both hard
|
| - Not to have many accusations
|
| - Not to be guilty to _some_ degree
|
| But I think admitting guilt might not be a good move
| either way. My question was a bad one anyway since it'd
| be hard to know if any response would be well perceived.
| [deleted]
| ksec wrote:
| Most of the links or posting doesn't even describe what was the
| causes, problem and the case is all about. As soon as I saw
| "suicide" I thought this was very serious. So I had to dig one
| up myself.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-female-...
| metalforever wrote:
| This issue is endemic and has been a constant problem throughout
| my career. They're just big enough that they got caught.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| 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.
| tpoacher wrote:
| 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.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| you have a deeply distorted idea of these sort of lawsuits if
| you think they would magically go bankrupt from it
| adamrezich wrote:
| Activision Blizzard isn't going anywhere anytime soon lol
| thekashifmalik wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| This is a strange take - why _wouldn 't_ you want to be paid
| the same as equally qualified members with the same title on
| the same team?
| danaris wrote:
| Because a very high percentage of programmer types (of
| whatever sort of title) genuinely believe that they are well
| above average, and thus that performance-based pay would
| advantage them over others.
|
| This is, of course, statistically impossible to be true for
| everyone who believes it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Even if it were true, there's no contradiction. More
| granular roles could be created or more scrutiny could be
| had in promotions.
|
| Unless you're overwhelming overpaid irrespective of your
| actual ability, no employee would suffer any downsides from
| pay transparency. If you (not you specifically, but any
| reader) disagree feel free to present a scenario.
| [deleted]
| throwaway871 wrote:
| Disagree, I want to make as much as I can negotiate
| regardless of my skill level. Why would you want to make
| less?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Simply put, I'd like to make the most my negotiation position
| makes possible. Different people with the same qualifications
| and title would not have the same circumstances. If
| negotiation played no role, the practical outcome is that
| wages would stagnate as employers would engage in some
| version of a cartel, which would be worse for the people at
| the bottom of the bell curve as well.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > If negotiation played no role, the practical outcome is
| that wages would stagnate as employers would engage in some
| version of a cartel, which would be worse for the people at
| the bottom of the bell curve as well.
|
| You mean, the thing that repeatedly happens under the
| existing system, despite negotiation?
|
| For example, https://www.cnet.com/news/google-adobe-apple-
| intel-settle-wa...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Because I want to be paid the same as equally _performant_
| people. I want the company to _hire_ equally qualified people
| and _pay_ according to equal performance.
|
| Considering we all know hiring is an imperfect measure of
| skill, I would expect that pay diverges over tenure
| conditioned on identical qualification at hire.
|
| What I do not want is for equally performant people to be
| paid differently on non-job-characteristics: so if, for
| instance, two people are roughly in the same bucket of
| performance, paying the woman less/more is unacceptable.
| Obviously individuals will see individual variation, but if
| across a number of employees, n, you see x% lower/higher pay
| for women than for men something is strange for sufficiently
| large x and n.
|
| That is, either your hiring practices for women and men are
| not congruent, or they are and for some reason you're seeing
| poorer/better performances from women/men, then you have to
| identify the cause. The null hypothesis is that gender does
| not affect ability.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Because I want to be paid the same as equally performant
| people. I want the company to hire equally qualified people
| and pay according to equal performance.
|
| Without pay transparency you wouldn't know regardless so
| I'm not sure what your point is.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I'll try again. We seem to have suffered some context-
| loss. I'll keep the question and answer close to each
| other to avoid that.
|
| Your question was:
|
| > _why wouldn 't you want to be paid the same as equally
| qualified members with the same title on the same team?_
|
| My answer is "because performance is more important than
| qualifications and once you're in I could give a flying
| fuck about your qualifications". That's the point.
|
| Pay transparency is a different discussion. I am fully
| capable of transmitting and receiving pay information
| without forced pay transparency.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You're missing the point. For two people who just
| started, without transparency they could've been paid
| differently irrespective of their qualifications or
| nonexistence performance at their role.
|
| Furthermore even if there are discrepancies in pay and
| performance without transparency you wouldn't know
| anyway. My question was in the context of the other post
| - in the context of _your_ post it 's the same question
| except with respect to performance.
|
| So, are you against pay transparency, or not? You say
| you're capable of receiving and transmitting, but
| ultimately you aren't receiving the truth, only what is
| told to you - which may or may not be the same.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _So, are you against pay transparency, or not?_
|
| Against. Not because of the ideal but because sufficient
| numbers of capable engineers I'd like to work with are
| simultaneously poor evaluators of whether others are
| capable. i.e. lack of pay transparency permits us both to
| turn the situation into a low stakes situation if we do
| not highly estimate each others' ability to evaluate
| others.
|
| > _You say you 're capable of receiving and transmitting,
| but ultimately you aren't receiving the truth, only what
| is told to you - which may or may not be the same._
|
| I am capable of having trusted relationships where I do
| not need third-party enforcement of truth. Just like I'd
| believe a friend who says she's going to the store
| without having to check her location on Google Maps, I am
| capable of believing my trusted co-workers when they
| express things like this as truth. I do not lie to them
| and I am capable of forming relationships where I believe
| they do not lie to me.
| [deleted]
| ketzo wrote:
| What? Why wouldn't you expect that?
|
| This is so incredibly defeatist. What is your reasoning behind
| equal pay for equal skill _not_ being better for everyone?
| Cookingboy wrote:
| Because at the end of the day "equal skills" doesn't exist.
| You can't just measure a developer's overall skill with a
| single power level number like in some anime. Different
| people are good/bad at different things and two engineers at
| the same level/experience can contribute to the team in
| completely different ways.
|
| That's why compensation exists in _bands_ , which is aimed to
| reflect that skill levels exist in bands (not all L4s are
| equal, etc).
| lazide wrote:
| Equal purely engineering skill no? There is more to bring an
| effective engineer than a coding metric
| ketzo wrote:
| The parent specifically said "I'm not (and don't ever
| expect to be) paid the same as other _equally qualified
| engineers_ on my team. "
|
| I understand your point, even if I think it's a little
| narrow, but the original comment seemed to apply that there
| was no point in even trying to achieve equal pay. That just
| totally baffles me.
| totony wrote:
| Equal pay forces metric-based assessments which imo is
| detrimental. I think(?) that's what op what refering to.
| It's incredibly hard to evaluate how to pay 2 different
| people, allowing negotiation allows the free market to
| determine the price, which is the best way we have found
| as a society to allocate assets.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| There main point following some of there other comment is
|
| equally qualified != equally performant
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 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?
| kansface wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Negotiating comes in a few flavors. One is in the form of a
| competing offer, which you could just as easily ask the same
| question: "What does a competing offer contribute to an
| engineering team that it should affect compensation to the
| same extent as skill". Of course, the answer is that
| competing offers don't contribute to engineering teams at
| all! But, if a company ignores all competing offers, it will
| not hire anyone who manages to get one. I'd guess competing
| offers correlate highly with being a successful engineer, so
| that sounds like a terrible strategy to me. They also serve
| as another form of vetting (like VCs piling on after but only
| after the first bite).
|
| I think this question fundamentally misunderstands labor
| markets. They are, in fact, markets! Employees are not paid
| by the amount of value they generate (potentially over a
| million per person at FAANG), but according to supply and
| demand for the position.
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| addison-lee wrote:
| You're right, being a bad negotiator does not always
| correlate to being a bad communicator. But being a good
| negotiator almost always correlates to being a good
| communicator.
| orwin wrote:
| I don't agree with this. I had a great salary
| negotiation, over the phone. It was all prepared, i had
| answers ready for me for the negotiation, prepared by my
| stepsister (who recently had a mission at a recruitment
| firm), she listened to the interviewer/manager, pointed
| me to the correct idea for negotiating, and i landed +60%
| of my old salary (loosing two vacation weeks, i only have
| 8 left, but still). Nothing to do with being a good
| communicator.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Nothing. But the reality is that it's in the company's
| interest to secure labor as cheaply as possible. If Charlie
| had competing offers and negotiates better pay than Daniel
| who did not, this isn't discrimination. At least not
| discrimination on the basis of protected class, it's
| discrimination on the basis of competing job offers. Swap out
| Daniel for Danielle and it's no different.
| ska wrote:
| > I really struggle to understand this equal pay business;
|
| I suspect you are not being truthful here. This:
|
| "Each engineer's pay is the product of their skill level, how
| they negotiated as well as competing offers they had."
|
| Is an assertion. Or at least, it's an assertion if you make the
| implicit "and nothing else", explicit.
|
| Regardless on where you or I personally come down on the truth
| value of that statement, it isn't hard to understand why it is
| controversial.
|
| In this case some would add gender to your list, and it's not
| immediately obvious or empirically proven that they are wrong
| (or right).
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I really struggle to understand how in 2021 someone could
| think that "pay is the product of their skill level". Perhaps
| they are very young and naive.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I believe this is the case for much of the software industry.
| There's even places where women/minorities make more due to
| diversity efforts. And then there's the few bad apples like AB
| where there probably was blatant pay discrimination.
|
| The fact of the matter is: you have to have some negotiation
| skills if you want to get paid the best you possibly can,
| regardless of your gender.
| munk-a wrote:
| > The fact of the matter is: you have to have some
| negotiation skills if you want to get paid the best you
| possibly can, regardless of your gender.
|
| I think that is still a pretty big issue on it's own. This
| feels pretty shitty when we bring neurodiversity into view.
| Coworkers with Autism will have a very hard time negotiating
| for that pay raise to the same efficiency of others.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Yes, and random pay discrimination (or discrimination on job-
| irrelevant traits like "salary negotiation ability") are, on
| their own, legal.
|
| However, if that is systematic _by sex /gender_ its illegal
| discrimination, including if it is an indirect result of
| facially-sex/gender-neutral discrimination that has an unequal
| impact by sex and insufficient tie to legitimate business
| necessity (that's "disparate impact" discrimination.)
| Aunche wrote:
| > However, if that is systematic by sex/gender its illegal
| discrimination
|
| This doesn't seem to apply to internship programs that
| transparently favor underrepresented minorities.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The best kind of whataboutism is vague whataboutism.
| Aunche wrote:
| https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/step/
|
| > The internship program has a focus of providing
| development opportunities to students from groups
| historically underrepresented in tech, through technical
| training and professional development.
|
| At least they're openly admitting to it. Blizzard is also
| bragging about how 43% of their new interns are women,
| which way more than the number of women cs grads. This
| isn't whataboutism because you can't complain about pay
| disparity if the groups don't start on a level playing
| field.
|
| https://activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2021/06/press-a-
| for-...
| belorn wrote:
| On a nation scale, pay tend to be adjusted based on hours
| worked while not counting permitted leave, vacation, and sick
| days. This does have an unequal impact by gender.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| Yep, but imagine who you're up against:
|
| People who were given "You're #1" ribbons and awards for
| participating regardless of their performance.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| If you agree agree with the GP that people should be paid
| based on their negotiating skills, then you _also_ support
| paying people regardless of their performance. Those are two
| mutually exclusive criteria.
| totony wrote:
| I don't think that's true because your negotiating power
| comes from how valuable you are, not only on your
| "negotiating skills."
| aeoleonn wrote:
| >that people should be based on their negotiating skills,
| then you also support paying people regardless of their
| performance
|
| Nah, it's finer grained than that. Negotiating skills are
| the cherry on top, but they are dependent on performance.
|
| You can't negotiate if you don't have offer a level of
| performance that justifies the negotiation.
|
| You won't even get the interview (and therefore opportunity
| to negotiate) without the "performance" i.e. actual work
| related skills.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| We're not discussing a binary, though. Negotiating skills
| can't _completely_ untether compensation from
| qualification /performance, but they absolutely loosen
| the two. If I am a junior employee who is skilled at
| negotiating comparing my salary with a senior employee
| who is not, the delta will be far smaller than if our
| qualifications were the same but our negotiating skills
| were reversed.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Negotiating skills is just recognizing your true value to
| the business. You need to actually have value (performance)
| to negotiate that higher salary.
| marcinzm wrote:
| It's not about equal pay, it's about not paying differently
| simply due to gender. You can do so for other reasons even ones
| correlated with gender. It's very hard afaik to prove such a
| case so a company needs to be really blatant about it.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| California law is more strict. There is a whitelist of
| allowable reasons, consisting of: seniority, "a merit
| system", quantity and quality of producrion, and the catch
| all
|
| > (D) A bona fide factor other than sex, such as education,
| training, or experience. This factor shall apply only if the
| employer demonstrates that the factor is not based on or
| derived from a sex-based differential in compensation, is job
| related with respect to the position in question, and is
| consistent with a business necessity. For purposes of this
| subparagraph, "business necessity" means an overriding
| legitimate business purpose such that the factor relied upon
| effectively fulfills the business purpose it is supposed to
| serve. This defense shall not apply if the employee
| demonstrates that an alternative business practice exists
| that would serve the same business purpose without producing
| the wage differential.
|
| In particular, prior salary is explicitly not a valid
| defense.
|
| By this standard, if there is a pay gap in California, the
| burden is on the employer to demonstrate they are not
| discriminating
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio.
| ..
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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.
| concretemarble wrote:
| What if they say "Only a small portion of the females were
| harassed in our company! They are not broadly and uniformly
| harassed! How dare you say we have a constant sexual harassment
| problem!"
|
| I don't think this logic makes sense. For things that shouldn't
| happen in the first place, just a few cases speak a lot.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > For things that shouldn't happen in the first place, just a
| few cases speak a lot.
|
| what does this mean? assuming the allegations are true, then
| yes, these things shouldn't have happened, you won't find
| anyone who disagrees with that. but what does "just a few
| cases speak a lot" mean? are we supposed to infer that
| because these cases are being prosecuted, that there's much
| more misogynistic evil happening beneath the surface at
| Activision Blizzard, enough to spread to their entire
| corporate culture at some deep, primal level? that's quite
| the supposition! "some bad people, especially those with
| power over others, did some bad things" is much easier to
| believe.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Then single out the individuals performing the harassment and
| bring specific charges.
|
| Like the GP says, this suit is not really talking about a
| singular crime, it's trying to paint a 10k+ organization
| spread across the globe as some parody of a frat house gone
| wrong.
|
| Your point is sarcastic but is exactly the point. If only a
| small portions of the females were harassed, then specify the
| nature of the harassment and bring criminal charges against
| the harassers, don't try and paint a massive multinational
| with a very very broad brush and use that as some kind of
| proof.
| ketzo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| arkitaip wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You are incredibly clueless and this is typical of many
| guys in not just gaming but tech in general. It's a
| cluelessness that puts countless women in danger by
| constantly undermining the harassment they face at work.
| adamrezich wrote:
| surely you're not actually calling me (perhaps
| unwittingly(?)) sexist, purely on account of my (still
| presumed) sex and my interpretation of events? surely you
| must see the irony of dismissing someone else's take on a
| given scenario about alleged widespread sexist corporate
| culture, by saying, "oh you're a dude, 'nuff said"? I
| expect a higher baseline level of discourse here
| taurath wrote:
| You're certainly not going to believe someone if they
| ever came to you for help, by the level of which you're
| willing to twist continuous actions as one-offs - "oh I'm
| sure it was just a temporary mistake". The systemic part
| is that complaints were not followed up on, and the
| people being abusive continuously over time not being
| punished or removed.
|
| Saying it's a company of 10,000 and that this is a small
| amount of accusations is really minimizing and that calls
| into question your motives. That there are so many well
| documented cases of abuse, retaliation, and
| discrimination, compared to other organizations of that
| size should tell you there's far more going on.
|
| How many is enough for you, Adamrezich? Is 100 cases, or
| 1% of the company, enough for you? It's probably about
| that right now, but even if it's 10 cases the culture
| created around non punishment of abuse in itself makes it
| a more dangerous environment.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > You're certainly not going to believe someone if they
| ever came to you for help
|
| why would you presume this? nowhere in any post in this
| thread have I ever doubted the truthfulness of the
| individual allegations. nowhere have I stated anything
| that in any way implies that I don't believe accusations
| from anyone, and that I wouldn't believe anyone if they
| accused anyone else of anything. where did you get this
| idea?
|
| > by the level of which you're willing to twist
| continuous actions as one-offs - "oh I'm sure it was just
| a temporary mistake".
|
| when did I say anything remotely like that? you're
| inventing a strawman and arguing against it.
|
| > Saying it's a company of 10,000 and that this is a
| small amount of accusations is really minimizing and that
| calls into question your motives.
|
| what motives am I supposed to have been pretending to
| have, and what motives am I supposed to actually have? I
| said I think the portrayal of an overall culture of
| systemic, deep-seated misogyny in the workplace at
| Activision Blizzard is pretty flimsy given the evidence
| presented thus far, all the while stating that I have no
| reason to disbelieve individual allegations and I hope
| that justice is found in court with regards to them.
|
| the huge joke here is that I actually strongly dislike
| Activision Blizzard as a company, both in general
| principle, and with regards to the games they make, with
| regards to my personal taste. I just think the narrative
| being portrayed here is disingenuous. why are people
| taking such strong issue with this position, creating a
| strawman version of what I said and then putting words
| into his mouth and arguing against it? completely
| baffling
| stale2002 wrote:
| > why are people taking such strong issue with this
| position
|
| Because you don't actually make any arguments at all, and
| provide no evidence to your position.
|
| All you are doing is playing devil's advocate, and saying
| "I don't believe the narrative!", without actually
| providing any evidence of your own as to why it is wrong.
|
| If you worked at blizzard at the past, or know people who
| have, and you know from talking to them, that they have
| different experiences, then that would be a different
| story.
|
| But you don't have that. You aren't actually backing up
| any position at all, and you are just casting doubt, like
| a bad faith actor, without actually defending or
| justifying anything that you are saying, beyond "I don't
| believe the narrative!".
|
| > what motives am I supposed to actually have
|
| The motive would be the same motive that the "well
| acttualllyyy", devil's advocates have. You get to try to
| look smart, by going against the grain, and find
| irrelevant flaws in people's arguments, without actually
| backing anything up yourself, or subjecting your own
| argument to the same type of hyper, useless,
| deconstruction.
|
| Happens all the time on hacker news.
| taurath wrote:
| You literally answer your own bafflement in what you
| typed. You said it's a flimsy case for any systemic
| issues, indicating you believe this to be a collection of
| one-offs rather than systemic ones if you then believe
| the individual cases.
| adamrezich wrote:
| yes, so again:
|
| > what motives am I supposed to have been pretending to
| have, and what motives am I supposed to actually have?
|
| still baffled!
| taurath wrote:
| I'm saying your top level statement quoted below is
| harmful regardless of your motives because it works to
| minimize and excuse the impact and veracity of the
| accusations (which you yourself are not disputing
| individually). What your motives are for doing so is
| besides the point.
|
| Your personal bar of it being "as broadly, uniformly
| terrible for all women in the company specifically" is
| irrelevant to just about anyone's people's definition of
| systemic harm, to the point that it's very hard to take
| your argument as being in good faith.
|
| > 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
| arkitaip wrote:
| Dude, your sexism is stinking up the place. It's the same
| shitty old takes that we keep seeing on HN year after
| year where dudes dismiss serious allegations about sexual
| harassment under the thinnest of pretenses.
| adamrezich wrote:
| please point out where I dismissed any allegations, and
| please keep your personal ad hominem attacks to a minimum
| cycomanic wrote:
| Let me ask you this. What would you rate as sufficient
| evidence of systemic, deep-seated misogyny in a company? Or
| is your argument a company with 10000 employees can not
| display of systemic mysogyny, because there are just too
| many people? Is the argument then that a company of that
| size can not have any systemic behaviour or failures?
|
| If that is not your argument, then I don't sure what you
| are trying to say. You specifically mentioned that the
| number of cases brought forward made you sceptical. So
| would have less cases of harassment been better evidence of
| systemic mysogyny? If not how many cases are needed to be
| sufficient?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > " it's the extrapolation of discrete events into a
| scathing indictment
|
| How much evidence must we have, to make such an indictment?
|
| Your position is basically unfalsifiable. It feels as if no
| matter how many people come forward, no matter how many
| women identify these issues, that you will just hand wave
| it all away.
|
| When person after person after person comes forward,
| eventually that makes a pattern.
|
| > that's for the courts to determine
|
| No. It is also for all of us to determine. Everyone can
| look at the evidence, and decide for themselves if that is
| the kind of company that they want to answer recruiter
| calls from, or work for.
|
| If you have some actual evidence to the contrary, that
| proves anything of value, then feel free to show it.
|
| But don't just be a devils advocate, and ignore literally
| everything, that anyone ever brings up.
|
| Eventually, if you see enough evidence, that proves a
| pattern.
| mandevil wrote:
| A defense that the company can offer is 'we intervened to
| prevent this in the following ways, senior management took this
| seriously and had a zero tolerance policy, as you can see from
| the long list of people fired for doing bad things.' That is
| probably the most common defense for a suit like this. This is
| the main reason that companies provide annual harassment
| training, anonymous complaint lines, etc.- it helps to build
| the case that senior management takes the problem seriously in
| case a lawsuit like this is filed.
|
| The problem that A-B is going to have is that 'I complained to
| the CEO personally about Afrasiabi in 2013, and they didn't
| fire him until 2020' is tough to square with that argument. In
| order to make that stick you have to actually have consequences
| for employees who do this sort of thing. And 'we waited until
| after the investigation into our company had been going on for
| a year, almost a decade after his first documented complaint'
| doesn't really fit the facts the company wants. So, can they
| find enough people who did suffer consequences in 2013, say, to
| convince a jury? That's probably what the legal argument will
| come down to (their current tack is probably not the one they
| will take with a jury, presuming this gets that far).
| JonathanMerklin wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| 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-a...
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
| lyptt wrote:
| 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.
| meibo wrote:
| 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_bliz...
| rasz wrote:
| List of victims instead of perpetrators? What could possibly go
| wrong?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Some of those replies are from men too, commenting on the awful
| behavior they saw. Possibly some are victims as well, but I
| didn't see any tweets like that.
| devwastaken wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| taurath wrote:
| All of those on the list at least as of last night are former
| employees. Obviously nobody who wants to keep their jobs
| would come forward publically (or, apparently, to their
| leadership)
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| Below that list is another list of current employees'
| statements.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I hope this gets handled with the delicacy and nuance it
| deserves, and seeing Reddit involved feels like I'm watching a
| train wreck take place in slow motion.
|
| There's a lot of value in polling the wisdom of crowds. Pending
| discrimination litigation is almost certainly not a good use
| case.
|
| I also hope we're not watching the Next Horrible Thing to come
| from the Internet unfold before our eyes.
| madbitch wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Scrolling down this thread and reading the flagged and greying
| comments makes my blood boil all over again.
|
| To quote one,
|
| > 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 many
| 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.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >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__ wrote:
| 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.
| belorn wrote:
| I agree. The game developers who celebrated on twitter when
| John Peter Bain died to cancer was one of the worst behavior
| I have seen in the gaming industry.
|
| The death threats to john and his family before that was also
| in rather bad taste.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| 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.
| minikites wrote:
| >GamerGate started as an expose on how dishonest and corrupt
| video game journalism
|
| Not one word of this is true. Gamergate started by and has
| always been about harassing women.
| the_doctah wrote:
| That's patently false. Discourse still continues to this day
| on certain subreddits.
|
| We talk about ethics in gaming journalism, and oppose
| censorship and the woke mob.
|
| It's sad that some people decided to be harassers in the name
| of GG, but that is practically ancient history. If you think
| that's still true, you're part of the problem, because you
| believe everything the media and Twitter tells you.
| McGlockenshire wrote:
| > That's patently false.
|
| Gamergate started because a dude spread lies about his ex-
| gf. Not a single one of his accusations regarding her
| behavior or the behavior of employees of gaming websites
| was true.
|
| It was always, _always_ about harassing women. It still is.
| The main places where Gamergate is still discussed are
| chock full of misogynist bullshit.
|
| The gaming publishing industry does have conflict of
| interest issues, but Gamergate approached and approaches
| the problem from an entirely wrong-headed point of view.
| Criticism of the industry should be entirely detached from
| the clusterfuck that is Gamergate.
| y2bd wrote:
| As someone who was on the original five guys /v/ threads
| the idea that GG wasn't born out of harassing Zoe Quinn is
| absolutely ridiculous.
| the_doctah wrote:
| I don't deny that happened. I'm just talking about
| current-day GG.
| taurath wrote:
| The Venn diagram between gamer gate adherents and 4chan
| based alt-right trolls is a circle.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So you essentially confirm that GG was born from
| harassing women, and that lots of people continued
| harassing women even while people said it was always
| about ethics in journalism.
|
| No at some point the leftover people at some point had an
| about face, and said from now on we don't do harassment
| anymore and it's only about ethics in journalism.
|
| Let's consider this is true, but why on earth would this
| new "only about ethics in journalism" movement continue
| to wear the same GG label, and somehow be surprised (and
| annoyed) that people still associate the movement with
| harassment and mysogyny?
| slg wrote:
| This made me curious since I haven't heard much GG
| discourse recently so I went to /r/KotakuInAction since
| they bill themselves as "the main hub for GamerGate on
| Reddit". The third highest upvoted post over the last month
| is a mod that increases the butt size of a female character
| in a video game. Definitely seems to be a community focused
| on ethics with zero hint of sexism and misogyny.
|
| EDIT: So apparently I was wrong that it was specifically
| about the size of the butt. The headline is "There's now a
| mod to fix Miranda's butt in the Mass Effect remaster, for
| anyone that cares" and the screenshot is a big butt. I took
| "fixed Miranda's butt" to mean they fixed the appearance of
| it. The issue was instead that gratuities shots of said
| butt were removed not that the butt itself was changed. I
| don't think that changes the fundamental issue, but I
| apologize for my lack of ethics in games journalism.
| the_doctah wrote:
| You must be referring to the censorship of Miranda's butt
| in the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remaster.
|
| The mod was to remove that censorship.
|
| But it is interesting what your initial assumptions about
| it were.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I don't see why you think this rebuts the previous
| comment. "We're mad that the company reduced the female's
| butt size" doesn't really refute "the community cares
| about female butt size [presumably to ogle large
| butts]"... in fact, it kind of reinforces that viewpoint.
|
| For what it's worth, I looked through that subreddit's
| discussion of the article of this HN thread, and the
| dominant strain of opinions tended to be either "woke
| company is a bunch of hypocrites, ha ha ha" or "why are
| you believing what women say." I didn't see the other
| thread in question, but there definitely seems to be a
| very strong anti-woke-ism and misogynistic strain in
| general to the subreddit.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yikes. One of the first articles I see on that subreddit
| is a long, curated list of "race and gender swaps" in
| movies, such as the "blackwashing" of casting Morgan
| Freeman as "Red" in The Shawshank Redemption, with
| several hundred examples, each lovingly attributed in a
| changelog. Ethics in gaming indeed!
| the_doctah wrote:
| First, please stop perpetuating this "butt size" thing.
| The developers of the remaster changed the camera to
| completely remove it.
|
| Now, you might ask, "Who cares about a butt?". Well, the
| same question can be reflected at the people who did the
| censoring. A remaster isn't supposed to do that type of
| shit. The truth is, the current woke devs censored the
| original director's creative vision. It's Neo-puritanical
| "You can't sexualize women in 2021" nonsense. It's
| censorship plain and simple. and it's all part of the
| same slippery slope. And by having such a laissez-faire
| attitude about it, you are encouraging the slippery slope
| to continue.
|
| And if you want to argue about the original creative
| vision, then please do some research about the character
| in question.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| How the heck is ass size of a fictional character
| something something journalistic integrity of video
| games?
| mrRandomGuy wrote:
| It obviously impacts my freedom of uh, being able to look
| at big CGI butts?
| the_doctah wrote:
| Like I said, it's about censorship in this case. GG
| encompasses more than journalistic integrity.
|
| Please learn to read. I already corrected the person who
| misunderstood that it's not a mod about increasing ass
| size.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how people choose to enjoy content
| in the privacy of their home amounts to sexism and
| misogyny? Complaining about men enjoying content that
| caters to the male gaze seems as pointless as complaining
| about how romance novels cater to women's tastes. If
| people want to alter the remastered edition to more
| closely resemble the original 2010 release of Mass Effect
| 2, that doesn't strike me as sexist or misogynist at all.
|
| This comment not only fails to demonstrate any sexism or
| misogyny, but makes me think that the sub has a valid
| point about inconsistent and unjust denigration of
| gaming.
| slg wrote:
| >Can you elaborate on how people choose to enjoy content
| in the privacy of their home amounts to sexism and
| misogyny? Complaining about men enjoying content that
| caters to the male gaze seems as pointless as complaining
| about how romance novels cater to women's tastes.
|
| People can do whatever they want in their own home. I'm
| not complaining about that. I am complaining about how
| their complaints are voiced in public, usually in an
| aggressive and derogatory manner. Have fun, enjoy the
| butt, but I am going to laugh at you if you whine in
| public that "the evil woke mob forced companies to remove
| the butt" and I will get angry if you start harassing
| people over it.
|
| >If people want to alter the remastered edition to more
| closely resemble the original 2010 release of Mass Effect
| 2, that doesn't strike me as sexist or misogynist at all.
|
| The more context you remove the less sexist and
| misogynistic it becomes. No one can argue with making a
| remake more closely resembles the original. It starts to
| get iffy when you add the context that the change is to
| add more gratuitous ass shots. It becomes clearly sexist
| and misogynistic when the addition of those shots is
| celebrated in a community that already has a reputation
| for sexism and misogyny.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| As per one of the most top-voted posts in that thread
| [1], the same author released two mods: one that restores
| the shots of Miranda's behind to the 2010 release, and
| one removed them from the original release. I'm not sure
| how adding more context makes it any more misogynistic.
| This community is enabling people to enjoy the game
| however they want, both with more sexualization _and_
| even less sexualization. If your issue is specifically
| with "how their complaints are voiced in public, usually
| in an aggressive and derogatory manner" you would be much
| better served highlighting this particular kind of
| behavior rather than the community as a whole.
|
| I think your last sentence is really demonstrative of
| what I'm saying: people harbor a highly prejudiced view
| of gaming as, "a community that already has a reputation
| for sexism and misogyny" and are making judgements based
| on this prejudice. I have no doubt that you earnestly
| believe this butt-mod is sexist, but the fact that you
| harbor this belief is precisely what leads me to feel
| that this group's complaints are valid.
|
| 1. https://imgur.com/a/NKZSoEw
| slg wrote:
| The person who wrote the mod does not appear to be the
| one who linked it on KotakuInAction. Therefore that
| community can't take credit for the other mods and claim
| they balance each other out.
|
| >I think your last sentence is really demonstrative of
| what I'm saying: people harbor a highly prejudiced view
| of gaming as, "a community that already has a reputation
| for sexism and misogyny" and are making very skewed
| judgements.
|
| To be clear, I am not saying this about the general
| gaming community. I am saying this about the gamergate
| community. Surely not everyone in that community is
| sexists or misogynist, but I don't think you can
| legitimately argue that there is not some sizable portion
| of that community that is highly sexists and misogynist.
|
| That context and context in general is important because
| it helps to establish the motivation behind their
| actions. It is just like how saying the exact same thing
| to your wife and a random women on the street could be
| loving in the former context and sexist in the latter.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| Please don't just uncritically adopt their framing.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| According to Wikipedia (so YMMV) GamerGate started when a woman
| wrote a text-based game about depression and got rape and death
| threats over it, recorded said death threats and publicized
| them, got even more death threats, and an ex-boyfriend jumped
| in to contribute by straight up lying and claiming journalistic
| corruption... [0]
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#History
| KittenInABox wrote:
| 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=2..
| .
| tclancy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| HN has always been sexist and generally bigoted towards
| minorities. Not much has changed in the years since it was
| founded.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| That may be true, bit we're talking about women, who are
| emphatically _not_ a minority :)
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| bogwog wrote:
| 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
| ecf wrote:
| > due to a sexual relationship that she had been having with
| her make supervisor
|
| Am I wrong or does the statement make no indication that the
| sexual relationship was non-consensual?
| [deleted]
| bpicolo wrote:
| Relationships within a reporting chain are a classic example
| of bad business ethics, because there's obvious opportunity
| for favoritism and bias, and most corporate policies disallow
| it (in favor of moving folk to other teams or similar).
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Not to mention that the favoritism and bias can be used as
| an inventive for engaging in the relationship.
| randyrand wrote:
| Maybe i'm missing something, but how on earth is that related
| to commiting suicide?
|
| Feels like we are making massive assumptions here.
| cryptoz wrote:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2984
|
| > In Cox regression analyses adjusted for a range of
| sociodemographic characteristics, workplace sexual harassment
| was associated with an excess risk of both suicide (hazard
| ratio 2.82, 95% confidence interval 1.49 to 5.34) and suicide
| attempts (1.59, 1.21 to 2.08), and risk estimates remained
| significantly increased after adjustment for baseline health
| and certain work characteristics. ...
|
| > The results support the hypothesis that workplace sexual
| harassment is prospectively associated with suicidal
| behaviour.
|
| What you are missing is the knowledge that harassing people
| can hurt them. It can. And linked is some science to back it
| up in case you wanted a source.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Yes I think you could use some form of life broadening
| education and experience so you aren't missing it.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| > Maybe i'm missing something
|
| Maybe having pics of your vagina passed around the office
| might not make you suicidal, but it might make someone else
| suicidal.
|
| Perhaps one way to find out is to present the facts of the
| case to a judge\jury with expert testimony and let them
| figure it out.
| rasz wrote:
| and yet no criminal charges have been brought, WTF?
| pelasaco wrote:
| Welcome To Texas!
| kyrra wrote:
| Not sure about Activision side, but Blizzard has long had an
| Austin office: 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 wrote:
| You're welcome to them.
| blibble wrote:
| I posted saying yesterday that Blizzard's fall from grace has
| been absolutely spectacular to watch
|
| 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
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(page generated 2021-07-22 23:01 UTC)