Activision Blizzard accused by California watchdog of fostering 'frat boy' culture, fatally toxic atmosphere California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Thursday sued Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries, alleging the company fostered a "frat boy" culture that led to lower pay for female employees, sex and race discrimination, and sexual harassment. According to the lawsuit, as an example of the effects of this …
In the seminal 1980s hit comedy Revenge of the Nerds, the supposed heroes of the piece join a fraternity and use tactics such as doxing and rape to gain the advantage over the more conventionally attractive and successful college students who have tormented them throughout the movie. One expects the culture is something like that.
To be forgiven, the first step is to recognize you made a mistake. That's a step Activision isn't ready to make.
When I look at Activision's senior management today, I see 9 men an 3 women, with two in the usual role of HR and PR. It looks like a Potemkin Village for gender diversity.
The male supervisor was found by police to have a butt plug and lubricant on his business trip
How nice. Generally supervisors fuck you dry.
Let me get this right, a company whose products involves trolls (the real ones not the Internet variety), ganging up with superior weapons on a majority group that is less able to defend itself as well as orchestrating the killing of as many things as possible fosters an attitude that involves dehumanising a large chunk of the population for their own amusement?
And we wonder why women don't want to work in IT? Why would they?
Medicine is also stressful but at least women who work there are paid well and given the respect they deserve (unless there are massive abuses there that I haven't yet heard about).
When men see behavior such as that alleged in the complaint (and women's public airing of their experiences) and they do nothing, they are complicit.
One of the allegations involved the head of the WoW franchise having to be physically pulled off female subordinates (more than one!!!!!) that he was hitting on at a conference.
"During a company event (an annual convention called Blizz Con) Afrasiabi would hit on female employees, telling them he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them. This was in plain view of other male employees, including supervisors, who had to intervene and pull him off female employees."
This isn't "frat boy behavior," this is sexual assault IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. And nothing happened to the guy, but he eventually left the company.
https://kotaku.com/blizzard-harasser-from-lawsuit-is-still-all-over-world-1847345457
If you see a woman being harassed by her boss or you hear men making disparaging comments about female co-workers and you do nothing then you're part of the problem. Why is this difficult for men to understand?
When men see behavior such as that alleged in the complaint.
When "ANYONE" Not just white toxic Males.. FTFY..
And the most important word of all-in the phrase is "Alleged" ... Until you know the actual facts, the whole facts and nothing but the facts you are not in a position to cast your spell over an entire company and its staff.
That's why I mentioned the Witchhunt.
Let the courts decide. You are just a forum member of El Reg not the Judge and Jury.
And silence is not indicative of anything... It's a strawman argument used by children.
"How do you change the culture? You promote women and other underrepresented groups."
Right there is the problem! Women and "other" do not want to be pandered to! "Oh gee you only got the job as we're low on gender representation, no we didn't really care if you could do the job, just long as you have breasts!". Hmm, that'll really make women feel their hard work has paid off.
If we're male bashing, well it's a minority of men who think think diversity is pointless, most men will tell you they couldn't give a monkey's what gender or race someone us so long as they can make the cut on a what the job requires. Let's start by weeding out the unpleasant people, men or women, who are toxic and start finding competant people who can do the job professionally and also by default work towards diversity without having to be forced to learn it. That starts in society, in the schools, get that crap off the social networks, off the TV channles ( legacy and internet feeds ). From there we have people who care about people, who care about making sure the best people, right for the job are in there irrespective of gender, race or any other "attributes".
Start from that we will automatically "breed" in a more aware and caring society and workforce who will not even consider gender or race to be important, it becomes just an attribute of a person, from there we get more people into jobs they want to do without fear or persecution.
"Start from that we will automatically "breed" in a more aware and caring society and workforce who will not even consider gender or race to be important, it becomes just an attribute of a person, from there we get more people into jobs they want to do without fear or persecution."
I would go as far as stating that the overwhelming majority of people are already like that..
In a company the size of BA a few bad eggs can still be quite a few people, and if it agrees with existing worldviews, they get extrapolated into the whole company's culture. I don't know how a couple of point sources can possibly be reported on with integrity as representative of the whole.
Well, that is often the problem. If you're an asshole and you're at the bottom of the corporate ladder then you will likely get fired, unless you're the star developer in which case they might overlook it. It gets worse though when the management includes assholes who then hire more assholes. Or the worst case is someplace like Uber where it really did seem to start at the top
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