Activision Blizzard Is Ending Hybrid Work For Its QA Employees Meeting Pushback From ABK Union | MMO

System · December 2023

Activision Blizzard Is Ending Hybrid Work For Its QA Employees Meeting Pushback From ABK Union | MMORPG.com

Activision Blizzard is ending its hybrid work policy for its quality assurance teams, requiring in-office work for QA employees in El Segundo, Austin and Minneapolis. The ABK Workers Alliance has pushed back against this mandate, calling the move a "soft layoff."

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Slapshot1188 · December 2023

Microsoft is playing the long game while the Union was playing the short game

Tiller · December 2023

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

Slapshot1188 · December 2023

Tiller said:

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

I think its a matter of how unique or valuable your "skill" is. Lets face it, QA testers are at the bottom of the totem pole. I can also see it as being a more collaborative position.

At the end of the day though, it's likely a soft layoff where Activision will simply mandate they return to office, know that X percent will not. And not fill those positions. It was as predictable as anything in life.

That's actually a fairly generous severance offer. If these folks think they have the skills that are in demand for working from home they should take the severance and get a work from home job and double dip.

Tiller · December 2023

Slapshot1188 said:

Tiller said:

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

I think its a matter of how unique or valuable your "skill" is. Lets face it, QA testers are at the bottom of the totem pole. I can also see it as being a more collaborative position.

At the end of the day though, it's likely a soft layoff where Activision will simply mandate they return to office, know that X percent will not. And not fill those positions. It was as predictable as anything in life.

That's actually a fairly generous severance offer. If these folks think they have the skills that are in demand for working from home they should take the severance and get a work from home job and double dip.

Yeah I was just ranting in general, mostly in regards to specialized skills. QA jobs will most likely go way of AI or something.

Cogohi · December 2023

> Lets face it, QA testers are at the bottom of the totem pole. I can also see it as being a more collaborative position.

A solid QA department is worth its weight in gold and then some. At the very least they will save their employer from some embarrassing mistakes. (Do they even play their own game?) In the industry I work in they're also responsible for verifying regulatory compliance.

Treating them like they way you've portrayed is going to reap some very painful dividends.

Kyleran · December 2023

Cogohi said:

> Lets face it, QA testers are at the bottom of the totem pole. I can also see it as being a more collaborative position.

A solid QA department is worth its weight in gold and then some. At the very least they will save their employer from some embarrassing mistakes. (Do they even play their own game?) In the industry I work in they're also responsible for verifying regulatory compliance.

Treating them like they way you've portrayed is going to reap some very painful dividends.

The firm I work for largely eliminated Tech QA about 5 years ago.

Function shifted left to more automated, developer led functional testing, though E2E external systems testing is still handled by a business led UAT group.

In the long run defect discovery was not negatively impacted and other process improvements has lowered issues

caalem · December 2023

Encouraging remote work seems like a really good way to outsource your job and find yourself unemployed.

Sovrath · December 2023

caalem said:

Encouraging remote work seems like a really good way to outsource your job and find yourself unemployed.

I guess I’m old fashioned.

If I’m hired to do a job then I do the job where they want me. If I don’t like where they want me I either don’t take the job or find a different job.

I have a new job and most of the questions in the three interviews pertained to me being willing to work onsite. I do have Fridays working from home but I told them I also have no problems being 5 days onsite.

I’d rather have the job than not have the job.

Quizzical · December 2023

caalem said:

Encouraging remote work seems like a really good way to outsource your job and find yourself unemployed.

Companies who have a lot of employees who do all of their work from home and never come to the office are likely to start asking why they need to pay so much to hire Americans to do that work, when people in plenty of other places in the world are willing to work much more cheaply. If those Americans have special skills that people in countries where labor is cheaper don't, then that could be a good reason to hire them. But I'd be skeptical that more than a handful of QA testers have special skills that couldn't readily be learned by someone in, for example, India.

A job requiring someone to be on site is usually the main protection against jobs being outsourced. If your job doesn't have that at least part of the time, then you'd better have skills that some peasant in a far-flung part of the world can't readily acquire if you want to keep it.

Ginaz · December 2023

You better have some truly specialized and in demand job skills to be asking for full or part time WFH. Otherwise, these companies have every incentive to ship your job overseas to someone who's willing to work for like a buck fitty an hour...in an office.

Angrakhan · December 2023

Eh times have changed since COVID. Every tech company retooled for remote work so if your company tries to strongarm you into the office it's very easy to find remote work elsewhere. I don't know why Blizzard employees bend over backwards to stay there. I also don't know why people get so upset when they're mistreated as if they lose their Blizzard job they are going to have to move into a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. If you're skilled enough to work at Blizzard you're skilled enough to work anywhere in the gaming industry and anywhere in the business software industry. The amount of available remote jobs is mindboggling. If you want a job and you're halfway decent at it, you can have a job. If Blizzard is treating you like shit: leave. It really is that simple.

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

The really ironic thing is that more often than not they'll backfill any key people they lose with remote workers. Yep, seen that too. Ask a remote guy to come back and work in office. Guy now lives too far for it to make sense (hour+ commute one way). Guy quits. Replaces with remote worker out of state.

Scot · December 2023

People work better in a collaborative physical environment, the only good thing such remote technologies can do is meetings when you have people all over the city/country. We are having a hard time getting our civil servants back to work here and the next party that may be in power is talking about work from home becoming a legal right. You have to put efficiency as your top priority, that is the bottom line here.

Slapshot1188 · December 2023

At the end of the day, these guys unionized. In their negotiations, they did not win the right to work from home forever.

If they really feel that they have some in demand skill they should all immediately take the severance offer and find remote work while collecting double checks.

ZenJelly · December 2023

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

Did you read the article, because they are offering that if you choose not to keep your job anyway.

"According to an email viewed by IGN, the severance would include "12 weeks of pay, 2023 bonus, 12 months of healthcare, and unused vacation time."

I used to think that working from home was a great idea, until I talked to more and more people who have come back to the office. One woman talked about how she was able to take her kids to school, go to Starbucks and come back home. About 45 minutes round trip according to her and all paid for by the company. Did she tell her boss she was going, no. Did she put in PTO? No. Her excuse, "Well, I still got my work done." Bad apples will always be the common denominator, because working from a position of everyone has integrity is simply stupid.

No matter what studies or documents or whatever that are produced saying work from home is better, bad actors will force companies hands in this. The cop doesn't care WHY you were speeding, you're still getting a ticket.

Angrakhan · December 2023

ZenJelly said:

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

Did you read the article, because they are offering that if you choose not to keep your job anyway.

"According to an email viewed by IGN, the severance would include "12 weeks of pay, 2023 bonus, 12 months of healthcare, and unused vacation time."

I used to think that working from home was a great idea, until I talked to more and more people who have come back to the office. One woman talked about how she was able to take her kids to school, go to Starbucks and come back home. About 45 minutes round trip according to her and all paid for by the company. Did she tell her boss she was going, no. Did she put in PTO? No. Her excuse, "Well, I still got my work done." Bad apples will always be the common denominator, because working from a position of everyone has integrity is simply stupid.

No matter what studies or documents or whatever that are produced saying work from home is better, bad actors will force companies hands in this. The cop doesn't care WHY you were speeding, you're still getting a ticket.

Work for a company that grades you based on results not hours your butt warms a seat. My company doesn't care if I take a break to run an errand. Heck my boss who is the director of development will take my one on one status calls from his son's baseball game. As long as the sprint goals are met and the code passes QA they seriously don't care.

Sounds like you both support and enjoy micromanagement. Some people are like that. They need someone of authority looking over their shoulder every 5 minutes or they're goofing off. I'm not one of those people. Don't project your professional deficiencies on others. There really are self motivated people that will make sure the job gets done even if you don't monitor them every second. People like me that if they go take their kids to school and go get a Starbucks, and then find they are behind on work will work late to get caught back up if it's necessary without being asked because they take pride in their work, and genuinely want to see the business succeed because they are thankful for their job.

If you're rolling your eyes right now understand I have gotten nothing but raises and promotions every year for the last decade. If I were some lazy goof off that needed micromanaging that would not be the case. I am the team lead of all the team leads. I have 30 developers under me.

People who can't handle the temptation of remote work stick out like a sore thumb in a remote work environment. They get 3-5 points done per sprint while other are turning in 20-30. When asked what's blocking them it's a litany of excuses. They get weeded out very quickly. I know there's jobs that don't lend themselves to sprint work such as taking tech support calls. However if you look at the numbers of the people that get the job done vs the goof offs it will be very obvious who is and isn't working out. Get rid of the bad apples and keep your good employees happy. This idea that since one or two people can't handle it you have to revoke the privilege from the whole company is absurd. Goof offs will be goof offs. You ever heard of a cell phone? Guess what they'll be doing while warming that seat at the office. Forcing people into an office is nothing but a false sense of control for senior managers with ego issues.

IceAge · December 2023

Tiller said:

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

..but a lot are slackers. I know some friends of mine who we play games a lot when they "work" from home. And they ..guess what? Know other workers from their workplace who does also just that. Imagine at a bigger scale ...how this goes..

Home working is not the solution for most companies. Reason is yes..usually people gets lazy if not..supervised, believe it or not. Is the human nature.

Sure, there are some who works very well from home, I give you that, but .. that's a small percent.

Angrakhan said:

ZenJelly said:

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

Did you read the article, because they are offering that if you choose not to keep your job anyway.

"According to an email viewed by IGN, the severance would include "12 weeks of pay, 2023 bonus, 12 months of healthcare, and unused vacation time."

I used to think that working from home was a great idea, until I talked to more and more people who have come back to the office. One woman talked about how she was able to take her kids to school, go to Starbucks and come back home. About 45 minutes round trip according to her and all paid for by the company. Did she tell her boss she was going, no. Did she put in PTO? No. Her excuse, "Well, I still got my work done." Bad apples will always be the common denominator, because working from a position of everyone has integrity is simply stupid.

No matter what studies or documents or whatever that are produced saying work from home is better, bad actors will force companies hands in this. The cop doesn't care WHY you were speeding, you're still getting a ticket.

Forcing people into an office is nothing but a false sense of control for senior managers with ego issues.

Facepalm.

Forcing ?! Dude, you work for them. If you don't like the rules, go find other job.

Tiller · December 2023

IceAge said:

Tiller said:

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

..but a lot are slackers. I know some friends of mine who we play games a lot when they "work" from home. And they ..guess what? Know other workers from their workplace who does also just that. Imagine at a bigger scale ...how this goes..

Home working is not the solution for most companies. Reason is yes..usually people gets lazy if not..supervised, believe it or not. Is the human nature.

Sure, there are some who works very well from home, I give you that, but .. that's a small percent.

Angrakhan said:

ZenJelly said:

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

Did you read the article, because they are offering that if you choose not to keep your job anyway.

"According to an email viewed by IGN, the severance would include "12 weeks of pay, 2023 bonus, 12 months of healthcare, and unused vacation time."

I used to think that working from home was a great idea, until I talked to more and more people who have come back to the office. One woman talked about how she was able to take her kids to school, go to Starbucks and come back home. About 45 minutes round trip according to her and all paid for by the company. Did she tell her boss she was going, no. Did she put in PTO? No. Her excuse, "Well, I still got my work done." Bad apples will always be the common denominator, because working from a position of everyone has integrity is simply stupid.

No matter what studies or documents or whatever that are produced saying work from home is better, bad actors will force companies hands in this. The cop doesn't care WHY you were speeding, you're still getting a ticket.

Forcing people into an office is nothing but a false sense of control for senior managers with ego issues.

Facepalm.

Forcing ?! Dude, you work for them. If you don't like the rules, go find other job.

If they are immature in low level job yes maybe. If you're say a senior lead product manager making 200+k a year then obviously you haven't gotten there being a slacker. Most of those jobs aren't hourly, they are traditionally salary so you aren't being judged on how many widgets per hour you are pumping out. A lot of times you may find yourself working weekends nights and having to be comped time because you work more than 40 hours a week.

Like I said, lots of companies that are hybrid or remote, easy to move around. Loyalty to one company is mostly gone anyways, corporations companies are starting to pull back on pensions due to the influx of baby boomer retirements so no reason to stick around more than a few years at one place based what I've seen.

cameltosis · December 2023

I remember when I got my first job as a software engineer back in 2006, all the other programmers at the company told me I was an idiot and that the majority of programming jobs would be lost to automation in the next few years.

Still hasn't happened.

I've also worked in a bunch of companies that decided to outsource their QA work to India, precisely because it was cheaper than hiring locally. Every single one of them regretted it, suffered a few years of terrible service before bringing QA back in house.

So, im not really worried about QA workers losing their jobs overseas either. Building / hiring locally is always going to be the better long term option.

IceAge · December 2023

Tiller said:

IceAge said:

Tiller said:

It's hilarious, remote workers who aren't slackers get more done with no commute time or being constantly interrupted by the narcissistic office wandering bullshitter. Most of these jobs can be done remotely and with little overhead for the company, which is why smaller companies are doing it more. Some larger companies must be at risk of losing some tax breaks from the cities and towns they reside in if they don't fill up unused spaces with people who don't want to be there and only come in to coffee badge.

Big corp tech jobs fill a lot of seats with folks in India who are pretty much working remotely, yet in the US they would rather lose good talent to a smaller competitor than have more diverse location options.

..but a lot are slackers. I know some friends of mine who we play games a lot when they "work" from home. And they ..guess what? Know other workers from their workplace who does also just that. Imagine at a bigger scale ...how this goes..

Home working is not the solution for most companies. Reason is yes..usually people gets lazy if not..supervised, believe it or not. Is the human nature.

Sure, there are some who works very well from home, I give you that, but .. that's a small percent.

Angrakhan said:

ZenJelly said:

I agree that this is a sort of a layoff. The strategy is to making working conditions uncomfortable enough that a chunk of employees quit. I've seen it several times before in corporate software development. Rather than laying people off which requires costly things like severance, cobra insurance, and unemployment benefits, you piss people off enough to quit so they voluntarily give up all those things.

Did you read the article, because they are offering that if you choose not to keep your job anyway.

"According to an email viewed by IGN, the severance would include "12 weeks of pay, 2023 bonus, 12 months of healthcare, and unused vacation time."

I used to think that working from home was a great idea, until I talked to more and more people who have come back to the office. One woman talked about how she was able to take her kids to school, go to Starbucks and come back home. About 45 minutes round trip according to her and all paid for by the company. Did she tell her boss she was going, no. Did she put in PTO? No. Her excuse, "Well, I still got my work done." Bad apples will always be the common denominator, because working from a position of everyone has integrity is simply stupid.

No matter what studies or documents or whatever that are produced saying work from home is better, bad actors will force companies hands in this. The cop doesn't care WHY you were speeding, you're still getting a ticket.

Forcing people into an office is nothing but a false sense of control for senior managers with ego issues.

Facepalm.

Forcing ?! Dude, you work for them. If you don't like the rules, go find other job.

If they are immature in low level job yes maybe. If you're say a senior lead product manager making 200+k a year then obviously you haven't gotten there being a slacker. Most of those jobs aren't hourly, they are traditionally salary so you aren't being judged on how many widgets per hour you are pumping out. A lot of times you may find yourself working weekends nights and having to be comped time because you work more than 40 hours a week.

Like I said, lots of companies that are hybrid or remote, easy to move around. Loyalty to one company is mostly gone anyways, corporations companies are starting to pull back on pensions due to the influx of baby boomer retirements so no reason to stick around more than a few years at one place based what I've seen.

Yea well ...you are talking about "a few seniors" here and there.

..and I am talking about the majority which are not going 200k+ a year. Not even close. And that, like it or not, its the majority in the "working from home" industry. Aka software, customer support, etc.

I keep my stance : Working from home should not be the norm.

And that comes from someone ( me ) who is working from home since .. "forever".

ValdemarJ · December 2023

I love the clueless stories from office monkeys who think sitting at a desk means productivity.

We've been hybrid since 2015 and fully remote since 2017. We have a really cool office with a big screen TV, a couple video game cabinets, ping pong, and our servers. We go in if we want to, which is almost never, but sometimes one of us gets a wild hair to head into town and work onsite, or we have to do some hardware type of maintenance.

We just hired someone and didn't have to compromise by picking for a local pool of people who will sit at a desk on command. We chose someone who can do the job well instead.

Quizzical · December 2023

Work from home when you're paid hourly invites cheating. Work from home when you're paid based on objectively measurable results and your employer doesn't even care about your hours makes a lot more sense. But most jobs make it impractical to simultaneously work from home and also have objectively measurable results.

Computer programming is often amenable to working from home, for example. But the results of "I got this task done" aren't as objectively measurable as they might seem at first glance. There's a big difference between "I wrote code that seems like sometimes it works" and "I have robust testing to verify that it reliably works right". Many jobs have tasks that can be done well or badly.

Quizzical · December 2023

Whether working from home for a given job makes sense depends tremendously on the details of that particular job. We are all far removed from the precise details of what the particular QA employees at Blizzard do, at least unless someone here actually works for Blizzard and hasn't said so. Blizzard management is not far removed from those details, and has a lot to lose if they make a bad decision.

Arglebargle · December 2023

The whole Commercial Real Estate industry has been shitting bricks about WFH. Thus the top down need for 'workers on site'. Not to mention mid level managers suddenly worried that their particular place in the hierarchy may get examined for its utility.

Granted that all the ancillary businesses predicated on workers rushing out from their cube farms to eat/drink/buy are also affected.

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Activision Blizzard Is Ending Hybrid Work For Its QA Employees Meeting Pushback From ABK Union | MMO

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Activision Blizzard Is Ending Hybrid Work For Its QA Employees Meeting Pushback From ABK Union | MMO

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