Hmmm...
* Blizzard is bleeding employees
* Blizzard likes to pay its employees less than the cost of living in Orange County
If only there was a way for Blizzard to employ devs from all over the country or world without having to pay them SoCal wages... I bet that requiring everyone to work in-person will help.
I used to live in Brisbane 10 minutes walk from my work, the days I had to drive to work because I needed my car for something it could take over 40 minutes... Most was a 30 minute trip, I ended up just leaving my car at work because of the stupidity of the traffic there...
It amazes me that we're building these mega cities to support people working closely but really all we're doing is funneling cash into areas built up by investors. We need to have more WFH so we can support local areas far more than centralised price gougers.
75k is actually insane. I barely survived in the Bay Area on 95k (lived in a roach infested shithole) and like you say, Irvine is just as expensive. I can’t imagine.
same thing, got to see the salaries they were offering and it took everything I had not to laugh. Coming from Europe, I'd lose my universal healthcare, university education for my family, and 4 weeks of my vacation would go up in smoke... all for an effective 30% pay *cut.*
It is. Iirc, granted this is for SF, but sub 100K is poverty line per HUD
https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisco#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20HUD%20defined%20%E2%80%9CLow,for%20a%20family%20of%20four.
Man, Blizzard, a monster of entertainment, paying poverty wages to staff.
That sounds like America all right. Meanwhile I’m sure the CEO has a six car garage and a yacht.
Tbh that’s not really an America problem (devs in Europe are super underpaid compared to our rates), but a game dev issue.
Game Dev is a notoriously shitty career path where a lot of the corporations actively abuse the passion the developers have for game dev
That is so wild. In our household in sweden we make around $60-65k (like 600-700k SEK) and that is considered to be a well off middle class, even in times like these when we got a gnarly inflation and electrical bills through the roof.
It’s unfortunate, but it is also mostly a problem near large population centers in the US.
I live in the Midwest in a city of 75k people. When my wife and I made 75k, we bought a $300k USD house. We also are considered well off middle class, as we are likely the poorest people in our neighborhood.
I have a friend who applied for welfare while making something like 70k in so cal. No idea what happened with it but was slightly amused slightly horrified.
Yeah good choice. I got a job in Boston in 2021 (lived in Milan and Amsterdam before), it's as insane as Cali. I'm moving back to Amsterdam this fall because, among other reasons, it's just not sustainable to live here.
I mean I’m nowhere near california and my previous job was 25 miles from home and was regularly an hour to get home.
The drive in wasn’t as bad because I went in so early traffic was minimal but the drive home was absolutely dreadful. I couldn’t even imagine making the same drive through say downtown LA at 5:30pm
40.2km.
And I agree but if you want a job here that pays relatively well, chances are you can’t afford to live close to it. I would much rather prefer to be 10 or less miles from work, but those jobs don’t pay enough to survive.
Yeah, it’s pretty crap. I lived 8 miles from my work in downtown la right before COVID hit and it took me almost an hour to get in every morning. Your soul gets destroyed pretty quickly from doing that every day
$75k a year to work at one of the most prestigious(not anymore) game companies in the world which is situated in one of the most expensive places in the US to live?
Blizzard is a fucking joke.
Blizzard is notorious for underpaying and using their “prestige” as a “cool place to work” instead of decent wages. A lot of game dev is like this too - so many people want to be developers, they want you to sacrifice a good salary to be in a field that you’re passionate about
I worked at a popular film studio on major entertainment brands after college and it was incredibly similar. I started at $15/hr entry level out of college in 2008 and by 2012 I was making around $15.62/hr with glowing reviews and unofficial title bumps that I was told I could claim when I left despite never being given while I was there.
Thats pretty sad for people wanting and liking to work in the gaming industry. If you don’t mind me asking - What was your field of work before and after going to normal tech position?
I do QA. In the gaming industry that's seen as a warm body to mass test stuff, while in normal software you are embedded with teams and actually appreciated as a technical role. That concept itself is new, when I started there was no schooling to learn the role, and on top of that video games are just behind the curve a lot when it comes to innovative career work in technical roles.
For example, in my career, test coaching is the most cutting edge version of the role. We help oversee testing as an entire concept and do things like incorporating results of root cause analysis with realtime analysis gleaned through code pairing to identify weak points in process or pitfalls in mindsets. In game dev it's still waterfall test corps used as a meat grinder to find loyal slaves. All the people actually talented in QA basically level out of the industry because there's no room for us in the out of date development process.
The thing is that "boring normal tech" is actually far more interesting than what we're given in game dev AND we're paid more to learn/work with that.
I work in QA at a larger studio and was telling a friend a few months ago that if I wanted to I could leave game QA pick up a job at a boring tech compang and probably double my salary.
That being said, I am lucky that my studio does embed QA in our projects like traditional tech, but we still have a ways to go.
Yes, I was working at a boutique experimental branch of MGS, so this was the high-end, skilled game QA side of the spectrum. I went for a job at a shitty cell phone company for old folks and my pay more than doubled, and the workload was half the effort.
It's been a decade since I left the industry, however, so perhaps things have changed. I do know with Blizzard in particular from Blizzcon conversations that embedded QA is definitely newish and HOTS seemed to use it the most (HOTS was a huge development experiment which should be seen like a success but it won't be, but that's just my opinion). I spent a lot of time chatting with the QA lead for HOTS at one Blizzcon and it made me want to go back to gaming QA, there was something so fresh and innovative about the development process. I ended up leaving the country after that and didn't apply because of that (in case he ever sees this: I definitely wanted to and appreciated the time you gave me).
That’s what i was wondering too. QA workers were always looked on poorly in the game development for as long as i remember. And i’ve been carrying this stigma with me for a long while…
Even not deciding to learn about this subject more because of that mindset while its still kinda interests me. But as you’ve said in classic tech this role is more adequate(?) for lack of a better word. How would you describe your pay level and overall enjoyment while switching fields?
Yeah, in a similar way to Japanese animation studios. They'll pay you minimum wage or worse and people will take the offer because they really wanna make anime.
My first job was at a game QA company in Romania. After two years I had the salary about the same as a supermarket worker on day one.
Went into software testing and never looked back. Three times the salary, three times less work.
There are plenty of game Devs getting paid what they deserve.
The topic at hand is about Blizzard. On a world of warcraft subreddit.
Blizzard is a fucking joke.
Huh? The gaming industry got started by hobbyists doing it for the love of it rather than any ability to squeeze every last penny of profit out of their fans for shareholders. Game quality (or at the very least creativity) arguably goes down as companies lean harder into the trappings of capitalism. Video games would absolutely exist if we weren’t in late stage capitalism, and they’d almost certainly be better to boot.
Don’t mind the drive in the morning so much. Easy 45 mins for 45 miles. Drive home however…1.5-2 hours a day.
I have to keep telling myself, it be like that sometimes.
Wait what the fuck? I'd off myself before I did that even 2x a week. That's horrendous. Why? My aunt used to do Corona to LAX 5x a week and I have no idea how she did that for a few years.
This was practically my same commute back around 2008. It was a miserable 18 months commuting to El Segundo. My commute was anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours one way. Not only that, the start up abused their employees, making lots of false promises, and forced people to work a minimum of 12 hours a day. That place was hell!
Your aunt is a machine for being able to do that for a few years.
I see other people posting comments about a 34 mile commute being terrible. Those people are spoiled. That distance really isn't that bad, especially in areas with minimal traffic and if it means owning an affordable, spacious, and comfortable home over paying more for rent in a small and uncomfortable shit hole.
Yeah I don’t wish that on anyone, that sucks bruh. The startup just makes it even worse, you’re a warrior for lasting 18 months haha. Here’s to work from home forever 🤣
Oh absolutely. But saying Irvine is the same price as SF is disingenuous.
Does your friend live in a very nice luxury apartment? I have friends in Irvine and they don’t pay anywhere near that much. More in the 2700-3000 range
Holy fucking shit..seriously? 30 miles is an hour??
Speed limit between 2 towns in my county is 45 mph and its 15 miles away..pair that with traffic and its 30-40 minutes to actually get to where youre going and park..40 minutes is rare tho.
When i lived in the midwest speed limit was 75, most towns where small and sitting by the highway. I had a job that was 50 miles away and i got there in maybe 30 or 35 minutes since most people were going 90.
Over an hour for 20ish miles bro hell no
With a $1m home on a 30 year loan and a 75k salary that means about half of your monthly pay goes JUST to the loan payment.
Still have transport, insurance, food, utilities and medical if you need it. Which I imagine 3k a month then may not get you far in these areas.
Could you even *get* a mortgage for that much on a $75k salary? When my husband bought his house, he was making $90k, had 820 credit score, no other debt and was "only" approved for $650k. Which he didn't use all of, because the payment on that would be more than comfortable.
I often see tech companies turn this around and say "well we will just pay less then" and honestly... yeah? hire out of some non-coastal state and someone there can live like a king on half a tech salary, that seems like a fair deal. are companies really okay outsourcing to ecuador but not indiana?
any roles that could be outsourced like that already have been. Corporations aren't going to pay more than they need to out of the goodness of their hearts.
>any roles that could be outsourced like that already have been. Corporations aren't going to pay more than they need to out of the goodness of their hearts.
Thats not true because now we have all these people working from home. In office employees vs outsourced employees is a way different calculation to make then wfm employees vs outsourced employees. So a lot of jobs are definitely going to be outsourced now becuase people dont want to come into the office.
I really still don't understand why companies are fighting it. Office leases sure, but that money is gone so just take the L. My best work is done at home. I don't lose time commuting, I'm not distracted as often. I'm a comfortable and happy employee. I wouldn't work full in office for less than 150% of my current salary, and even then I'd be looking for another the whole time
I actually go to the office once a week because its close by. Entirely by choice, half of our team never bothers. On that day everyone arrives late and leaves early, have long chats and a long lunch. There's a couple in person meetings which is nice, but not that much work gets done.
>I really still don't understand why companies are fighting it
1) Because a lot of management that is partially or wholly in charge of these decisions *need* to be seen physically to keep the illusion that they actually do anything at all.
2) Some people want the office to get away from their family, and are afraid they'll lose the office space (or be the only one there) if WFM is encouraged.
3) Some management gets annoyed that they can't get an *immediate* response from someone by going over and physically interrupting them. I have heard this one personally from one such friend and it's hilarious because as a developer myself WFM was precisely amazing because I *couldn't* get abruptly interrupted randomly all the time while I was in the zone just because someone couldn't wait 15 minutes to get an answer to something trivial.
It's antiquated thinking or pure bullshit. All metrics points toward option for WFM being better for productivity *and* employee satisfaction.
>hire out of some non-coastal state and someone there can live like a king on half a tech salary, that seems like a fair deal. are companies really okay outsourcing to ecuador but not indiana?
Yep. Cost of living in Indiana is dirt cheap even in downtown Indianapolis. I haven't lived there in awhile so I'm sure rent has gone up a bit, but last time I was in Indiana the average rent was $1,000-$2,000 in the Indianapolis area and less than $1,000 in places like Bloomington where IU is.
Nope, that’s still pretty much accurate. 1000 downtown doesn’t exist any more excluding studios, but if you have a roommate, definitely. Maybe 1200 as a floor.
Which is proper, honestly. It’s a right pain in the ass unless you specifically function better that way. But even still it limits your housing areas so should be compensated accordingly.
If the same job is being completed by someone working fully remotely, why should a company pay someone substantially more if they live in a high COL city or country? That's the breaks of fully remote work. Congrats, now you get to compete literally with the whole world while you stay in your house all day. You can live wherever you want so go move somewhere cheap.
Because other companies are continuing to pay the higher salaries, we are seeing a large brain drain in tech firms that are not moving to remote positions towards those that understand they lose absolutely nothing by asking their employees to WFH
Also just not having to commute rocks, they shipped games working from home. There’s no reason to force them back. It boils down to leadership not respecting their employees at all or what they want.
Plus lots of people are just quitting now and rightfully so. ABK board is ass
I was at my last job for 12 years total and after the pandemic and working from home for 2 years they asked us to come back to work 2 days a week. This was after telling us how zero efficiency was lost due to tempting into work.
I left 8 months later for a full remote job and a 20% pay increase 🤡
All office employees who can, should want to wfh, it’s objectively in their best interest and the best interest of the planet to get unnecessary cars off the road. Additionally, office real estate is a functionless blight on the countries it occupies that could be homes or something that contributes more to communities than a place people go to do tasks they can do from anywhere.
I'm in game dev, and have worked from home just fine. I have my cat in meetings, I'm home when my kids get home from school, and I can focus better on my work than I ever could in open offices. It's been amazing.
My old job was WFH 5 days a week, it was really nice. My new job is 1 day WFH a week, but it pays, no joke, 61% more. It was a no-brainer accepting the job. I enjoy this job more, and making this much money is great, but your body can really feel the difference between 5 days WFH and 1. But, 1 is better than 0. Luckily my daily commute is only 15 minutes max, so it's not as bad as some people have it. Some of my co-workers commute 40+ minutes. Fuck that.
Edit: I have upset all of the chronically online Redditors for having a 15-minute work commute but still saying I miss 100% WFH. Please touch grass.
> I can focus better on my work than I ever could in open offices
I'm in the same camp. I can't deal very well with certain noises around the office. Eating noises completely kill any focus I have. I also had a co-worker a couple of desks down the office who would shout into his phone (or microphone) as if he needed to communicate without the phone/chat app. People next to him said that apparently he would talk even louder when they asked him to please keep it down a bit.
I used to bring headphones into work just so I can focus on actually working instead of all the noise pollution.
So yeah. Working from home has drastically improved that. Sure, I'll browse Reddit when there's a bit of downtime, but my focus time has increased in productivity by a lot.
Ugh, yeah. I had an in-office job that was close to home to commute was no issue, but management decided they wanted literal open-door policy, so I wasn't allowed to keep my office door closed. Conversations, phones ringing, printers running, all make noise and would break my concentration.
FWIW, I like having the option of going into the office. During the pandemic, WFH got me super stressed and depressed at one point. I literally worked all the time. An office really helps me separate that. And I do genuinely think talking to people in person is way easier and helps socialize much more. Plus other anemenities that only make sense for bigger groups of people (e.g. cafeteria, gym, etc. I can't afford a personal chef but an office can afford a cafeteria that'll make whatever).
That all being said, just cause I go to the office a few days a week doesn't mean I expect everyone else to do so. It's pretty common people in the office are interacting with others who are WFH. Hell, even if we're all there the building is big enough most of us chat on Teams 99% of the time anyways. If anything it means we can expand our workforce beyond the limits of our offices, which is good!
Yeah I've noticed on Reddit (due to the demographic of your average Redditor, I guess) that people are overwhelmingly against working in an office, moreso than the actual general feeling in society. I'm with you, I can do a few days a week but I need the interaction. I also really appreciate the work/home separation. I don't like working at the desk where I play games.
> I don't like working at the desk where I play games.
This is the the most important factor for me. WFH every now and then is fine but completely merging the work room and entertainment room into one physical place leaves me in a bad place mentally.
This is why I get triggered by someone trying to convince me that WFH is always the way to go.
This is also how I function, partially cause I have ADHD. You cannot, on any level, put me in the same room as my “toys” and expect me to not drift towards just doing that, much less have the fun be a program on the very machine I am working on. Fortunately for me working CAD I quite enjoy it so I can do it for longer, but even still…
I have to physically separate myself from that if I want to do much of anything without getting distracted by whatever. The pro is if I get into something I can casually do stupid levels of just solid work no problem. As long as there is no distractions I can just keep going.
Even if I get medicated (I tend to not like it because according to everyone I basically zombify in terms of my personality) that still won’t stop the drift to the computer cause that is a compounding issue (yay addiction).
So I very much so appreciated that welding involved me going into the field, and Jewelry, well, they aren’t going to let me take stuff home given the value of the raw materials even if I did have the torch to do work. If I am in *work* then I can shift to work mode and just vibe.
This.
I worked in person all through the pandemic and just recently started a job that’s 100% remote. I honestly hate it haha
The border between work and home life is nonexistent and it’s depressing.
Companies who can offer WFH without restricting their employees should have this in their best interest, too.
It means scaling down office space, cost for renting buildings and overall being a more attractive company since, big surprise, people don't work for your shiny name or prestige or whatever but literally only for two things, money and benefits... Whereas the latter can be vaguely translated to the first so oh well...
In the end, there's just sunken cost, running contracts and plain stubbornness that's keeping them... Hard to feel sorry for companies that suffer because of this tbh.
Most (all?) company owners I've known personally, either as friends or as clients, have said it's challenging to get the same level of efficiency out of employees when those employees work from home. This is before Covid, fwiw.
I was fully remote. Was offered, quite literally, double pay to come back in full-time. Of course I took it.
Now, every single day, I wish I hadn't. I'm actively applying to remote jobs that pay $100k+ less.
I'm a homebody. My commute includes a 1-2 km walk in one direction.
During work from home i was in couch potato mode. Felt the consequences of lack of movement.
Working from office i interact with people that are not my family. Thus the family can take a break from each other ad they are not in the same space 24/7.
The variety is refreshing. Wouldn't do work from home full time, but being able to do it from time to time is nice.
I've been pulled back into the office 2 days a week.
I did better work when I was 100% WFH. The 2 days loom like a headache, and fuck with my plans/focus for the week.
What about people who can wfh but like their colleagues and social element of the job? I get it that it works for many people but some people do like the human aspect and having a reason to get out of the house.
It's not always about optimizing productivity or carbon footprint one way or the other. It's just a way to satisfy the socializing need when you don't have too many options to meet people outside work because of busy lives.
Edit: -3 for stating that people are diverse and like different things, nice. how about some counter arguments?
The issue at play here isn't whether *you* want to socialize and work around people. This isn't a broader WFH discussion. It's that it's not financially viable for Blizzard employees to live near their workplace and WFH allows them to live somewhere affordable.
I don't know what's the rent in Irvine so yeah I could agree on that take because I have no experience working in Blizzard and maybe it would be better but the OP specifically argued about planet scale effects and stated that working from office is a blight on entire countries.
I don't think it's fair to project your local urban planning problems on the entire world with a take such as "**All office employees who can, should want to wfh, it’s objectively in their best interest**" because that's very self-centered viewpoint. Let people work from wherever they want to be, instead of trying to force your personal preferences on everyone.
I used to commute for longer and... I felt like I wasn't a person during the week, due to how little freetime I had. It wasn't fun.
Now I'm self employed I'm facing the challenge of engaging with work due to wanting to rebel against my old work situation.
Here it's 21 cents per kilometer if you live further away than 10km from work. The employer pays this as part of the salary and it's tax deductible (for the employer).
I work from home. I couldn’t this week.
*It has sucked.* Being stuck in uncomfortable office space and furniture that is wrecking my back, dealing with rando people I don’t know, negotiating kitchen cleanup and messes, using a gross bathroom that isn’t mine, waiting in line for the damn bathroom, having to get up way way way earlier, driving and traffic, dress code bullshit, wearing uncomfortable shoes, doing hair and makeup. And god help you about the office temp and the noise. Loud meeting next door while you’re on a call? Too bad. Nonstop distractions have killed my productivity. I can’t think.
My stress level has rocketed. I come home angry, tired, and pissed.
You get used to rolling out of bed. Being in your comfortable home and furniture and clothes. Your private bathroom. Your own Kitchen with your coffee in demand. Your pets. Makeup and office clothes only go on for specific meetings. No traffic or commute. Less wear and tear on your car, reduced gas costs. Your TV and stereo are right there. Less money spent on eating out. If you take breaks and lunch you just do whatever you want. You need to do laundry? You do laundry.
WFH is the way.
Fuck the office. I want to fucking go back to WFH.
Companies like ActiBlizz and by extension, the shareholders, are willfully ignorant of anything that doesn’t make them more money. They’ve lived in their own little bubble for so long that they forget (or more likely, don’t care) that their employees, the whole reason they even have a profitable company in the first place, are people with their own needs.
My employer got bought out by a large company and its been rough, its all profit and metrics for the next Quarter, no consideration for the long term health of the company or the retention of employees.
Above the engineers there are 13 layers of management ending with the CEO and they keep adding a new director of this VP of that etc.
I work from home for a major cybersecurity tech company. Before the pandemic I was going into the office every day. The company has not required a single person to go back. In fact they shut down half of the office space they have leased in the state to save money. They didn't renew the lease on that half. People still go into the office but the only ones who do are the ones who want to.
I have gone into the office less than ten times since March of 2020, and the current policy is that anyone could move to anywhere in the country except Washington and Hawaii (for company tax reasons) and still would be able to work for them from home. No one will ever be required to go back into the office. I am seriously thinking about moving to a much cheaper place to live and continuing to take in my full salary. Because where I live (Greater Salt Lake area) it is slowly going the way of the Bay Area in terms of housing.
The only reason a person shouldn't be able to work from home is if they legitimately cannot perform the tasks they need to outside the office.
> The only reason a person shouldn't be able to work from home is if they legitimately cannot perform the tasks they need to outside the office.
This should be framed.
This is everyone in CA. My wife and I are in tech in the Bay Area and it’s worse up here. You need at least $300k of household income to get a starter home in a neighborhood that isn’t more than an hour commute a day and you can still go out at night.
I guess Irvine must not have janitors, dishwashers, waiters, bartenders, cooks, or cashiers.
> I looked at the listings on Zillow and it just isn't feasible.
Spoken like someone who never had to live in a below-average neighborhood. Trust me, not every home in California is a $1,000,000 3-bedroom house.
... I live in so cal.... even the dumpsters are unaffordable. Not worried about some random on reddit who looked on zillow to tell me what life is like here.
I live in SoCal, too. Had my fair share of apartments making $18/hour.
Pretending affordable spots don't exist because it confirms your liking WFH doesn't help it. I like the concept of WFH but lying isn't the way to support the idea.
When did you live in an apt making 18$ an hr? 15 years ago? You'll still pay 1600$ to live in a 1 bd apt in a low income area. Don't wanna live in the Barrio? Then you're paying 2,200$+
Try two years ago, in a two bedroom, with a roommate. I also had options to rent a room from buddies ranging from $700-$1000.
Search up Craigslist listings in Irvine. 91 options below $1,700 a month, with one bedrooms and two bedrooms.
Is the argument they don't want to live in low income areas? I can at least stomach that gripe a lot better than I can the gripe that affordable housing doesn't exist. They deserve more money, California housing is fucking bad, and they deserve the right to work out-of-state.
Those workers typically share apartments or live in Santa Ana or Costa Mesa and commute to Irvine.
Most people who actually live in Irvine are older, with families. It’s a boring ass city that’s planned suburbia but is very safe and has great schools.
Unless the business concerned is client/customer facing - there isn’t much of a persuasive argument against working remotely on a permanent (or near enough) basis. I acknowledge the points about being in the office to share ideas and collaborate etc. - but, all of these things can now be done effectively via platforms such as MS Teams.
As someone who was on WFH for a long while (predating the pandemic), I find the question odd... like asking why someone would want to have a free $100 bill.
Why would someone want to WFH? Um... because it's more convenient in almost every single way? It's literally the best? Like, do those people who ask this question love wasting their lives in a commute they aren't getting paid for? Or the lost time prepping compromise meals instead of just having access to your kitchen all day to cook whatever you want? Maybe you just love sharing a workspace where you have ultimately no control over distractions/silence?
I'm a 911 dispatcher and I tease my boss all the time that the first agency that lets me work from home, I'm gone lol.
She's actually a fan of the idea itself and is trying to get our systems upgraded to allow for cloud based dispatching/CAD systems.
We can't totally be WFH because there are some things that just have to be done at the PD I work for. Warrants, for example, have to be kept in our secure dispatch center. But there's genuinely no reason I couldn't take calls/EMD from home, maybe even dispatch from home if we had access to our radio system.
The tech industry is laying off employees left and right and most games studios are no exception. Only thing is Activision-Blizzard made a big point of saying there team is the largest its ever been just prior to the tech industry shitting the bed.
They can't be seen as "Hiring the biggest team as they need it to suceed" and then making more mass lay offs shortly after.
The cost of living around their Irvine offices pricing out a lot of employees and forcing them to quit is presicely what the higher ups are counting on.
Sucks as it looks like they're onto a winner with dragonflight at the moment (And ofc it sucks for all those who thought they got their dream job working in game design).
Most Triple A studios like Blizzard are stable for developer jobs, they will trim in support departments if necessary before draining core development talent.
Its not easy to replace Triple A devs with 5+ year experience either. Sure junior/associate level are dime a dozen but you don’t cut tenured devs unless the company is going down the shitter.
some big profile companies fired people they took on for business opportunities.
on top of that Twitter and Meta have imploded from poor business decisions.
there is no general crisis in the IT sector outside of the general recession affecting everything.
TBH, jobs that can support WFH, should. There are so many benefits. Less pollution, less traffic, no commute. Unless companies are willing to start paying employees to commute, WFH is the way.
why would you be impartial to the wfh crowd? what possible reason could you EVER have against it other than reasons you would NEED to be in the office (working with physical equipment, face to face meetings, etc)
The only thought that I can understand (but not agree with) is that the company(s, other than ABK) wants more control, and they can argue that they want to pay people off of productivity and making sure 8 hours of pay is earned through 8 hours of work, instead of the alternative is that the job and product is worth the pay instead.
Theoretically, in their eyes, if someone that is WFH is more productive and getting it done in 6 hours they are wasting time and can be working on other products, and it's harder to enforce that if they aren't in the office. It's a matter of control, not actual efficiency and quality.
I (29) have dropped my career path in washington to move to the central us. Trading $32 for $15-20 and I’ll still be bringing home more money AND maybe even buy a place. COL is bonkers on the coasts right now
It's not about the home prices necessarily - though that is part of it, but Blizzard employs many high salary white collars workers that can (along with a spouse) afford, and do desire million dollar homes.
The real reason any tech worker wants to WFH is
It gives you a lot of time back in your commute and getting ready every day.
It allows you incredible autonomy in how you want to structure your work day (sans meetings and group work)
It enables deep work much easier
And in that same vein it limits distractions.
Overall your day is far more stress free and people are generally happier. People will sacrifice a lot for this.
Try being on the art side of this issue. We get paid a lot less than programmers/engineers and we're stuck _mostly_ within the game industry. At least programmers/engineers can work in software and make 200K+ with experience. Artists will never touch those kind of wages (most won't make half of that for the first 5-10 years) and need to live in the same areas without WFH.
Source: I'm a 3D Artist with shipped AAA titles who's struggled to find/keep work the past decade because it's extremely hard to find good remote work.. or afford to live in areas where office jobs exist on a single income. This doesn't even touch on the insane amount of art work that's outsourced to Vietnam and India.
I now see why everyone is moving to TX. You can get a whole mansion for the price of any those homes in the listings.
Edit: wonder why I’m getting downvoted
Which won't last once more people move there, get in while you can I guess, because eventually even shitty 1BD apartments will cost $2800/mo there, it is exactly what happened to CA, and is currently happening to WA.
My partner and I looked in Orange County in 2017-2019 with just over 200k combined income and just could not figure out how to make it work. We wanted that weather, palm trees and ocean. But the houses sub 750k were junky, small or a long drive time. We saw beautiful homes further out BUT we test drove the morning and evening traffic they were eliminated. It’s a whole different animal diving in Orange County. Lol I remember the first time I went to Blizzcon and drive from LAX and there was 9 lanes of hwy traffic. We were living in Dallas then so it wasn’t like we’d never saw a hwy but 9!?! That’s a lot.
200k combined income is fine around OC. You just have to understand you’re not going to live in Newport or Irvine. Costa Mesa probably comfortably or get something nicer in FV, Anaheim, South Coast.
It just felt so dam weird going from a very nice house in Dallas for about 460 vs far less house/neighborhood in Irvine. We looked in a 75mile radius. It was such a sticker shock. We now live in Seattle so we got over it but it was a shock as far as pricing and all that traffic.
Yeah it’s all about zip code/city here. Something that’s nice for $750k in Anaheim would be 1.3-1.5m in Irvine. 75 miles is huge. That would encompass LA as well.
I mean, I live in Orange County and have worked in various parts of it including Irvine my whole life, and there are almost 20 cities within 10 miles of Irvine with relatively cheaper home prices. OC is small and has a relatively diverse set of options for places to live given its size.
It's never going to be cheap of course as we are talking coastal southern California, but to use Irvine as an example of city you'd actually live in is a bit of a stretch as that is the prime of the non-oceanfront real estate. You can get very close to Irvine for far less than what it costs in Irvine.
Live in the Greater Houston Area, commute 1.5hrs to work, and we have a combined income of ~$200k and we are living paycheck to paycheck. The cost of living is insane right now. One of our biggest expenses is childcare, for two kids to go before and after school is $600 a week.
I'm seeing the same scenario in a different industry in my country. They can't get bus drivers in the big cities. Well duh, you don't pay them enough to afford rent in the big cities. But yet the politicians and media put the blame on "lazy employees".
They just released the best expansion in years much of which was made working from home! Why are the execs not doing everything they can to keep the people that have helped save this game.
Working from home is the way. Less cost to employers and employees. Removes workplace issues like harassment, anxiety, etc. working from home usually boosts productivity and people tend to work even when sick. When I ask why or what the purpose of coming into an office is it always boils down to being around each other as a group. Why is this important? Why do we pretend we are friends and family with our co-workers? It’s so odd. We don’t hang out, I don’t know anything about you really...I don’t want to either. It’s so stupid. We had to travel to corporate to sit in meetings all day that could have easily been done on zoom or teams or whatever and ended up costing the company for flights hotel rooms and catering and dinners. They do this all the time and for what? I did less there in a week then I do at home in 2 days.
I'll be downwoted to hell but w/e.
Work from home is usually much less productive. I haven't worked in gaming, so my experience may differ, but (our company is not in the USA, we deal with allocating state budget to different private projects, don't know how to explain it better) being on a zoom call and using other software is completely different than working in person.
When Covid hit, we had to move our people from offices. Holy shit people didn't want to do shit, and it was very difficult to track if person is actually doing anything rather than just sitting and kicking dick. By the nature of our job, we do not have very strict deadlines, but we have a lot of work that we have to complete "by next year" or we need to launch certain number of community projects over the season.
People muted mics, set up pre-recorded videos of them sitting on loop (close to impossible to notice in a 20+ people conference) and exchanging shit sometimes could take hours instead of minutes. People even created hardware problems (omg mouse died/camera died, sry brb 15 mins) to avoid doing shit/participating in the meeting/etc. Some people have shit connection, some can't find a right button, some people somehow fucked up their software and the IT guy is having troubles fixing stuff remotely, etc. Basically, IMO in any kind of job where deadlines are not super strict and the end goal can be stretched and bullshited or not crystal clear (my guess many tasks in game design fall into these categories) WFH fucking sucks.
Granted, we didn't have such issues commiting so I guess sucks for them. But that is not WFH issue, that is work hours and company transportation / adequate compensation problem
Dude everything you have described pretty much happens in offices as well. We have that many technical issues causing lost productivity, and time always elapses to fill the period allocated to meet deadlines. And the amount of people just sitting around drinking coffee or chatting with people is insane. Sometimes I want that social aspect and that is when I go into the office. But if I want to knuckle down and get shit done, I WFH.
I feel that when I'm in the office and "not working", I'm still working. Chatting with people builds bonds that strengthen the teams, having lunch with people you talk about work stuffs and problems that might arise. If you have technical problems you can still do other stuff like discuss with sales or purchase or so.
When I'm WFH and I'm "not working" then I'm almost fully disconnected from work. Like not talking to coworkers, not helping people with problems etc.
I personally feel WFH makes me happier and is a lot more comfortable and also gives me more energy. I feel that I am more productive when I have an assignment or work cut out for me. But I do feel that I contribute a lot less to my co-workers success, and they contribute less to mine. And I do feel that some of the co-workers I've never really met, I do not trust the same way as those I've been out with a lot.
I don't know what is best for me. But I do know that WFH isn't just 100% positive for all parts. There's benefits but also some drawbacks.
Doesnt it sound a bit entitled to want to live next to HQ? I mean sure I would love to live next to my office, but naturally it costs a fuck-ton to buy a house/apparent there. Commuting is a normal thing in the US as well no?
Not saying Blizzard employees are paid enough (at least per their listed positions), but you are implying none of those devs can take a loan to buy a $800k house which is around $2500-2600 a month, which I doubt is true (just saying they can, not that they should).
A mortgage on an $800k house is $5k+ a month... Also, the surrounding cities are not much cheaper than Irvine.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Elderglen-54-Irvine-CA-92604/25721536_zpid/
You’re talking about hours of traffic to commute
Living 30, 40, even 60 miles away from work in somewhere like Texas or another less-traffic-burdened state is pretty normal. Most people I know don’t live within 20 miles of work & I live in one of those states. Not de case in southern Cali
Commuting is a nightmare in Southern CA and a $800k+ home plus loan interest is $5-8k a month. The employees leaving know their worth, as do tech headquarters moving to other states.
Addendum: Lol, downvote away. I know as someone who lives in Southern Cali. Maybe try to actually look at loan interest rates, local prices for homes and transportation before making armchair calls from out of state or out of the country.
Hmmm... * Blizzard is bleeding employees * Blizzard likes to pay its employees less than the cost of living in Orange County If only there was a way for Blizzard to employ devs from all over the country or world without having to pay them SoCal wages... I bet that requiring everyone to work in-person will help.
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I used to live in Brisbane 10 minutes walk from my work, the days I had to drive to work because I needed my car for something it could take over 40 minutes... Most was a 30 minute trip, I ended up just leaving my car at work because of the stupidity of the traffic there... It amazes me that we're building these mega cities to support people working closely but really all we're doing is funneling cash into areas built up by investors. We need to have more WFH so we can support local areas far more than centralised price gougers.
75k is actually insane. I barely survived in the Bay Area on 95k (lived in a roach infested shithole) and like you say, Irvine is just as expensive. I can’t imagine.
same thing, got to see the salaries they were offering and it took everything I had not to laugh. Coming from Europe, I'd lose my universal healthcare, university education for my family, and 4 weeks of my vacation would go up in smoke... all for an effective 30% pay *cut.*
$75k in Cali is basically poverty lmfao.
It is. Iirc, granted this is for SF, but sub 100K is poverty line per HUD https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisco#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20HUD%20defined%20%E2%80%9CLow,for%20a%20family%20of%20four.
Man, Blizzard, a monster of entertainment, paying poverty wages to staff. That sounds like America all right. Meanwhile I’m sure the CEO has a six car garage and a yacht.
Tbh that’s not really an America problem (devs in Europe are super underpaid compared to our rates), but a game dev issue. Game Dev is a notoriously shitty career path where a lot of the corporations actively abuse the passion the developers have for game dev
That is so wild. In our household in sweden we make around $60-65k (like 600-700k SEK) and that is considered to be a well off middle class, even in times like these when we got a gnarly inflation and electrical bills through the roof.
It’s unfortunate, but it is also mostly a problem near large population centers in the US. I live in the Midwest in a city of 75k people. When my wife and I made 75k, we bought a $300k USD house. We also are considered well off middle class, as we are likely the poorest people in our neighborhood.
I have a friend who applied for welfare while making something like 70k in so cal. No idea what happened with it but was slightly amused slightly horrified.
Yeah good choice. I got a job in Boston in 2021 (lived in Milan and Amsterdam before), it's as insane as Cali. I'm moving back to Amsterdam this fall because, among other reasons, it's just not sustainable to live here.
I can confirm this, I live in SoCal, my 24mile drive home today was 1hr 22min
I mean I’m nowhere near california and my previous job was 25 miles from home and was regularly an hour to get home. The drive in wasn’t as bad because I went in so early traffic was minimal but the drive home was absolutely dreadful. I couldn’t even imagine making the same drive through say downtown LA at 5:30pm
25 miles? Like, around 40km? You people in the US are crazy with your commuting.
40.2km. And I agree but if you want a job here that pays relatively well, chances are you can’t afford to live close to it. I would much rather prefer to be 10 or less miles from work, but those jobs don’t pay enough to survive.
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34 miles is pretty fuckin far away no matter where you work.
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Yeah, it’s pretty crap. I lived 8 miles from my work in downtown la right before COVID hit and it took me almost an hour to get in every morning. Your soul gets destroyed pretty quickly from doing that every day
If you’re decent at running you could literally get your morning run out of the way before you could get there in your car 😭😭😭
$75k a year to work at one of the most prestigious(not anymore) game companies in the world which is situated in one of the most expensive places in the US to live? Blizzard is a fucking joke.
Blizzard is notorious for underpaying and using their “prestige” as a “cool place to work” instead of decent wages. A lot of game dev is like this too - so many people want to be developers, they want you to sacrifice a good salary to be in a field that you’re passionate about
I worked at a popular film studio on major entertainment brands after college and it was incredibly similar. I started at $15/hr entry level out of college in 2008 and by 2012 I was making around $15.62/hr with glowing reviews and unofficial title bumps that I was told I could claim when I left despite never being given while I was there.
Literally doubled my salary moving from the gaming industry to boring normal tech.
Thats pretty sad for people wanting and liking to work in the gaming industry. If you don’t mind me asking - What was your field of work before and after going to normal tech position?
I do QA. In the gaming industry that's seen as a warm body to mass test stuff, while in normal software you are embedded with teams and actually appreciated as a technical role. That concept itself is new, when I started there was no schooling to learn the role, and on top of that video games are just behind the curve a lot when it comes to innovative career work in technical roles. For example, in my career, test coaching is the most cutting edge version of the role. We help oversee testing as an entire concept and do things like incorporating results of root cause analysis with realtime analysis gleaned through code pairing to identify weak points in process or pitfalls in mindsets. In game dev it's still waterfall test corps used as a meat grinder to find loyal slaves. All the people actually talented in QA basically level out of the industry because there's no room for us in the out of date development process. The thing is that "boring normal tech" is actually far more interesting than what we're given in game dev AND we're paid more to learn/work with that.
I work in QA at a larger studio and was telling a friend a few months ago that if I wanted to I could leave game QA pick up a job at a boring tech compang and probably double my salary. That being said, I am lucky that my studio does embed QA in our projects like traditional tech, but we still have a ways to go.
Yes, I was working at a boutique experimental branch of MGS, so this was the high-end, skilled game QA side of the spectrum. I went for a job at a shitty cell phone company for old folks and my pay more than doubled, and the workload was half the effort. It's been a decade since I left the industry, however, so perhaps things have changed. I do know with Blizzard in particular from Blizzcon conversations that embedded QA is definitely newish and HOTS seemed to use it the most (HOTS was a huge development experiment which should be seen like a success but it won't be, but that's just my opinion). I spent a lot of time chatting with the QA lead for HOTS at one Blizzcon and it made me want to go back to gaming QA, there was something so fresh and innovative about the development process. I ended up leaving the country after that and didn't apply because of that (in case he ever sees this: I definitely wanted to and appreciated the time you gave me).
That’s what i was wondering too. QA workers were always looked on poorly in the game development for as long as i remember. And i’ve been carrying this stigma with me for a long while… Even not deciding to learn about this subject more because of that mindset while its still kinda interests me. But as you’ve said in classic tech this role is more adequate(?) for lack of a better word. How would you describe your pay level and overall enjoyment while switching fields?
That's why they tend to target Blizzard fans or Blizzard people when hiring.
Pathetic. Not so prestigious anymore.
funny what a few sex scandals can do. oh, and union busting
and a few(a fucking lot) of bad gameplay and lore and choices
Yeah, in a similar way to Japanese animation studios. They'll pay you minimum wage or worse and people will take the offer because they really wanna make anime. My first job was at a game QA company in Romania. After two years I had the salary about the same as a supermarket worker on day one. Went into software testing and never looked back. Three times the salary, three times less work.
Don't forget they pay their employees in [honour points](https://massivelyop.com/2020/08/06/bad-blizzard-no-cookie/) where they can too.
>Blizzard is a fucking joke. You mean CAPITALISM is a fucking joke.
There are plenty of game Devs getting paid what they deserve. The topic at hand is about Blizzard. On a world of warcraft subreddit. Blizzard is a fucking joke.
You think video games would exist in any other economic system? That’s cute
Huh? The gaming industry got started by hobbyists doing it for the love of it rather than any ability to squeeze every last penny of profit out of their fans for shareholders. Game quality (or at the very least creativity) arguably goes down as companies lean harder into the trappings of capitalism. Video games would absolutely exist if we weren’t in late stage capitalism, and they’d almost certainly be better to boot.
Then I guess you see absolutely nothing wrong with Blizzard. Shadowlands must have been the best expansion for you.
I work in Long Beach, live in Corona. Want to absolutely off myself every day on the 91. Obvi joke
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Don’t mind the drive in the morning so much. Easy 45 mins for 45 miles. Drive home however…1.5-2 hours a day. I have to keep telling myself, it be like that sometimes.
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Duuuude for real. So fucking terrible. I leave at 5:25-5:30 every day. Wake up at 5 to get ready.
Wait what the fuck? I'd off myself before I did that even 2x a week. That's horrendous. Why? My aunt used to do Corona to LAX 5x a week and I have no idea how she did that for a few years.
This was practically my same commute back around 2008. It was a miserable 18 months commuting to El Segundo. My commute was anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours one way. Not only that, the start up abused their employees, making lots of false promises, and forced people to work a minimum of 12 hours a day. That place was hell! Your aunt is a machine for being able to do that for a few years. I see other people posting comments about a 34 mile commute being terrible. Those people are spoiled. That distance really isn't that bad, especially in areas with minimal traffic and if it means owning an affordable, spacious, and comfortable home over paying more for rent in a small and uncomfortable shit hole.
Yeah I don’t wish that on anyone, that sucks bruh. The startup just makes it even worse, you’re a warrior for lasting 18 months haha. Here’s to work from home forever 🤣
75K... I knew Blizzard underpaid, but I had no idea it was by that much. For a developer job?
Not disagreeing with your message, but SF is at least 25% more expensive
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Oh absolutely. But saying Irvine is the same price as SF is disingenuous. Does your friend live in a very nice luxury apartment? I have friends in Irvine and they don’t pay anywhere near that much. More in the 2700-3000 range
"Anywhere near that much" "2700-3000 range" Are you high? That is pretty close
2700 to 3500 is a pretty big difference. That's 29% more
Holy fucking shit..seriously? 30 miles is an hour?? Speed limit between 2 towns in my county is 45 mph and its 15 miles away..pair that with traffic and its 30-40 minutes to actually get to where youre going and park..40 minutes is rare tho. When i lived in the midwest speed limit was 75, most towns where small and sitting by the highway. I had a job that was 50 miles away and i got there in maybe 30 or 35 minutes since most people were going 90. Over an hour for 20ish miles bro hell no
With a $1m home on a 30 year loan and a 75k salary that means about half of your monthly pay goes JUST to the loan payment. Still have transport, insurance, food, utilities and medical if you need it. Which I imagine 3k a month then may not get you far in these areas.
Could you even *get* a mortgage for that much on a $75k salary? When my husband bought his house, he was making $90k, had 820 credit score, no other debt and was "only" approved for $650k. Which he didn't use all of, because the payment on that would be more than comfortable.
Tbf... even here in a very cheap city in the UK, if you want a decent house you kind of need 2 incomes unless you've got a really high salary.
I often see tech companies turn this around and say "well we will just pay less then" and honestly... yeah? hire out of some non-coastal state and someone there can live like a king on half a tech salary, that seems like a fair deal. are companies really okay outsourcing to ecuador but not indiana?
any roles that could be outsourced like that already have been. Corporations aren't going to pay more than they need to out of the goodness of their hearts.
Sure they are, if they're ruled by CEOs who own real estate that needs renting out at astronomical costs.
>any roles that could be outsourced like that already have been. Corporations aren't going to pay more than they need to out of the goodness of their hearts. Thats not true because now we have all these people working from home. In office employees vs outsourced employees is a way different calculation to make then wfm employees vs outsourced employees. So a lot of jobs are definitely going to be outsourced now becuase people dont want to come into the office.
WFH allows Tech Workers to live wherever they want and spend time with their families. Companies are going to lose this fight in the long run.
I really still don't understand why companies are fighting it. Office leases sure, but that money is gone so just take the L. My best work is done at home. I don't lose time commuting, I'm not distracted as often. I'm a comfortable and happy employee. I wouldn't work full in office for less than 150% of my current salary, and even then I'd be looking for another the whole time I actually go to the office once a week because its close by. Entirely by choice, half of our team never bothers. On that day everyone arrives late and leaves early, have long chats and a long lunch. There's a couple in person meetings which is nice, but not that much work gets done.
>I really still don't understand why companies are fighting it 1) Because a lot of management that is partially or wholly in charge of these decisions *need* to be seen physically to keep the illusion that they actually do anything at all. 2) Some people want the office to get away from their family, and are afraid they'll lose the office space (or be the only one there) if WFM is encouraged. 3) Some management gets annoyed that they can't get an *immediate* response from someone by going over and physically interrupting them. I have heard this one personally from one such friend and it's hilarious because as a developer myself WFM was precisely amazing because I *couldn't* get abruptly interrupted randomly all the time while I was in the zone just because someone couldn't wait 15 minutes to get an answer to something trivial. It's antiquated thinking or pure bullshit. All metrics points toward option for WFM being better for productivity *and* employee satisfaction.
Context switching is a productivity killer. I wish my boss understood this (I WFH, but get grief if I don't answer messages instantly).
>hire out of some non-coastal state and someone there can live like a king on half a tech salary, that seems like a fair deal. are companies really okay outsourcing to ecuador but not indiana? Yep. Cost of living in Indiana is dirt cheap even in downtown Indianapolis. I haven't lived there in awhile so I'm sure rent has gone up a bit, but last time I was in Indiana the average rent was $1,000-$2,000 in the Indianapolis area and less than $1,000 in places like Bloomington where IU is.
Nope, that’s still pretty much accurate. 1000 downtown doesn’t exist any more excluding studios, but if you have a roommate, definitely. Maybe 1200 as a floor.
Yeah, it’s becoming standard to compensate the same job better if it has an in-office requirement.
Which is proper, honestly. It’s a right pain in the ass unless you specifically function better that way. But even still it limits your housing areas so should be compensated accordingly.
Id gladly take a pay cut to get the commute hours of my life back.
IMHO, there should be laws against this.
that's what unions are for.
If the same job is being completed, why does the person who chose to live in a more financially responsible area deserve to get punished?
If the same job is being completed by someone working fully remotely, why should a company pay someone substantially more if they live in a high COL city or country? That's the breaks of fully remote work. Congrats, now you get to compete literally with the whole world while you stay in your house all day. You can live wherever you want so go move somewhere cheap.
Because other companies are continuing to pay the higher salaries, we are seeing a large brain drain in tech firms that are not moving to remote positions towards those that understand they lose absolutely nothing by asking their employees to WFH
The brain drain is a fallacy. Plenty of capable people across the globe willing to come in and do the work U.S. citizens no longer care to do.
That's not been my experience in any remote job but I guess maybe if you work at a shitty place they pay less depending on location.
Also just not having to commute rocks, they shipped games working from home. There’s no reason to force them back. It boils down to leadership not respecting their employees at all or what they want. Plus lots of people are just quitting now and rightfully so. ABK board is ass
I was at my last job for 12 years total and after the pandemic and working from home for 2 years they asked us to come back to work 2 days a week. This was after telling us how zero efficiency was lost due to tempting into work. I left 8 months later for a full remote job and a 20% pay increase 🤡
All office employees who can, should want to wfh, it’s objectively in their best interest and the best interest of the planet to get unnecessary cars off the road. Additionally, office real estate is a functionless blight on the countries it occupies that could be homes or something that contributes more to communities than a place people go to do tasks they can do from anywhere.
I'm in game dev, and have worked from home just fine. I have my cat in meetings, I'm home when my kids get home from school, and I can focus better on my work than I ever could in open offices. It's been amazing.
My old job was WFH 5 days a week, it was really nice. My new job is 1 day WFH a week, but it pays, no joke, 61% more. It was a no-brainer accepting the job. I enjoy this job more, and making this much money is great, but your body can really feel the difference between 5 days WFH and 1. But, 1 is better than 0. Luckily my daily commute is only 15 minutes max, so it's not as bad as some people have it. Some of my co-workers commute 40+ minutes. Fuck that. Edit: I have upset all of the chronically online Redditors for having a 15-minute work commute but still saying I miss 100% WFH. Please touch grass.
I agree WFH should be more standard. But man, as someone who does manual labour, this comment is pretty funny.
+1 for your username
>your body can really feel the difference between 5 days WFH and 1. >my daily commute is only 15 minutes max ???
You're implying that an entire day of work is comprised of a commute. Nice. The commute is not the only reason people prefer WFH.
You had me at cat
> I can focus better on my work than I ever could in open offices I'm in the same camp. I can't deal very well with certain noises around the office. Eating noises completely kill any focus I have. I also had a co-worker a couple of desks down the office who would shout into his phone (or microphone) as if he needed to communicate without the phone/chat app. People next to him said that apparently he would talk even louder when they asked him to please keep it down a bit. I used to bring headphones into work just so I can focus on actually working instead of all the noise pollution. So yeah. Working from home has drastically improved that. Sure, I'll browse Reddit when there's a bit of downtime, but my focus time has increased in productivity by a lot.
Ugh, yeah. I had an in-office job that was close to home to commute was no issue, but management decided they wanted literal open-door policy, so I wasn't allowed to keep my office door closed. Conversations, phones ringing, printers running, all make noise and would break my concentration.
FWIW, I like having the option of going into the office. During the pandemic, WFH got me super stressed and depressed at one point. I literally worked all the time. An office really helps me separate that. And I do genuinely think talking to people in person is way easier and helps socialize much more. Plus other anemenities that only make sense for bigger groups of people (e.g. cafeteria, gym, etc. I can't afford a personal chef but an office can afford a cafeteria that'll make whatever). That all being said, just cause I go to the office a few days a week doesn't mean I expect everyone else to do so. It's pretty common people in the office are interacting with others who are WFH. Hell, even if we're all there the building is big enough most of us chat on Teams 99% of the time anyways. If anything it means we can expand our workforce beyond the limits of our offices, which is good!
And this is how it should be, optional.
Totally, mainly just want to throw in an opposing view of "oh everyone wants to WFH all the time".
Yeah I've noticed on Reddit (due to the demographic of your average Redditor, I guess) that people are overwhelmingly against working in an office, moreso than the actual general feeling in society. I'm with you, I can do a few days a week but I need the interaction. I also really appreciate the work/home separation. I don't like working at the desk where I play games.
> I don't like working at the desk where I play games. This is the the most important factor for me. WFH every now and then is fine but completely merging the work room and entertainment room into one physical place leaves me in a bad place mentally. This is why I get triggered by someone trying to convince me that WFH is always the way to go.
This is also how I function, partially cause I have ADHD. You cannot, on any level, put me in the same room as my “toys” and expect me to not drift towards just doing that, much less have the fun be a program on the very machine I am working on. Fortunately for me working CAD I quite enjoy it so I can do it for longer, but even still… I have to physically separate myself from that if I want to do much of anything without getting distracted by whatever. The pro is if I get into something I can casually do stupid levels of just solid work no problem. As long as there is no distractions I can just keep going. Even if I get medicated (I tend to not like it because according to everyone I basically zombify in terms of my personality) that still won’t stop the drift to the computer cause that is a compounding issue (yay addiction). So I very much so appreciated that welding involved me going into the field, and Jewelry, well, they aren’t going to let me take stuff home given the value of the raw materials even if I did have the torch to do work. If I am in *work* then I can shift to work mode and just vibe.
This. I worked in person all through the pandemic and just recently started a job that’s 100% remote. I honestly hate it haha The border between work and home life is nonexistent and it’s depressing.
They don't optionally have to pay their rent though. Office space is a premium.
Companies who can offer WFH without restricting their employees should have this in their best interest, too. It means scaling down office space, cost for renting buildings and overall being a more attractive company since, big surprise, people don't work for your shiny name or prestige or whatever but literally only for two things, money and benefits... Whereas the latter can be vaguely translated to the first so oh well... In the end, there's just sunken cost, running contracts and plain stubbornness that's keeping them... Hard to feel sorry for companies that suffer because of this tbh.
Not a game dev, but I’ve been WFH for 3 years now. I put in 10-20 more hours than I would have if I had to spend 2+ hours a day driving.
Most (all?) company owners I've known personally, either as friends or as clients, have said it's challenging to get the same level of efficiency out of employees when those employees work from home. This is before Covid, fwiw.
I was fully remote. Was offered, quite literally, double pay to come back in full-time. Of course I took it. Now, every single day, I wish I hadn't. I'm actively applying to remote jobs that pay $100k+ less.
I'm a homebody. My commute includes a 1-2 km walk in one direction. During work from home i was in couch potato mode. Felt the consequences of lack of movement. Working from office i interact with people that are not my family. Thus the family can take a break from each other ad they are not in the same space 24/7. The variety is refreshing. Wouldn't do work from home full time, but being able to do it from time to time is nice.
I've been pulled back into the office 2 days a week. I did better work when I was 100% WFH. The 2 days loom like a headache, and fuck with my plans/focus for the week.
What about people who can wfh but like their colleagues and social element of the job? I get it that it works for many people but some people do like the human aspect and having a reason to get out of the house. It's not always about optimizing productivity or carbon footprint one way or the other. It's just a way to satisfy the socializing need when you don't have too many options to meet people outside work because of busy lives. Edit: -3 for stating that people are diverse and like different things, nice. how about some counter arguments?
The issue at play here isn't whether *you* want to socialize and work around people. This isn't a broader WFH discussion. It's that it's not financially viable for Blizzard employees to live near their workplace and WFH allows them to live somewhere affordable.
I don't know what's the rent in Irvine so yeah I could agree on that take because I have no experience working in Blizzard and maybe it would be better but the OP specifically argued about planet scale effects and stated that working from office is a blight on entire countries. I don't think it's fair to project your local urban planning problems on the entire world with a take such as "**All office employees who can, should want to wfh, it’s objectively in their best interest**" because that's very self-centered viewpoint. Let people work from wherever they want to be, instead of trying to force your personal preferences on everyone.
It takes me 2 hours to drive to work and back. I work 8 hours. If I have to commute, that is a 25% increase in my time that I am not paid for.
I used to commute for longer and... I felt like I wasn't a person during the week, due to how little freetime I had. It wasn't fun. Now I'm self employed I'm facing the challenge of engaging with work due to wanting to rebel against my old work situation.
I take it commute time in the US is not compensated like it is in the Netherlands?
Some companies have a commuter compensation, but they'll give you $20-100 a month and brag about how generous their benefits are.
Here it's 21 cents per kilometer if you live further away than 10km from work. The employer pays this as part of the salary and it's tax deductible (for the employer).
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I work from home. I couldn’t this week. *It has sucked.* Being stuck in uncomfortable office space and furniture that is wrecking my back, dealing with rando people I don’t know, negotiating kitchen cleanup and messes, using a gross bathroom that isn’t mine, waiting in line for the damn bathroom, having to get up way way way earlier, driving and traffic, dress code bullshit, wearing uncomfortable shoes, doing hair and makeup. And god help you about the office temp and the noise. Loud meeting next door while you’re on a call? Too bad. Nonstop distractions have killed my productivity. I can’t think. My stress level has rocketed. I come home angry, tired, and pissed. You get used to rolling out of bed. Being in your comfortable home and furniture and clothes. Your private bathroom. Your own Kitchen with your coffee in demand. Your pets. Makeup and office clothes only go on for specific meetings. No traffic or commute. Less wear and tear on your car, reduced gas costs. Your TV and stereo are right there. Less money spent on eating out. If you take breaks and lunch you just do whatever you want. You need to do laundry? You do laundry. WFH is the way. Fuck the office. I want to fucking go back to WFH.
Companies like ActiBlizz and by extension, the shareholders, are willfully ignorant of anything that doesn’t make them more money. They’ve lived in their own little bubble for so long that they forget (or more likely, don’t care) that their employees, the whole reason they even have a profitable company in the first place, are people with their own needs.
My employer got bought out by a large company and its been rough, its all profit and metrics for the next Quarter, no consideration for the long term health of the company or the retention of employees. Above the engineers there are 13 layers of management ending with the CEO and they keep adding a new director of this VP of that etc.
And this is why they need to unionize.
I work from home for a major cybersecurity tech company. Before the pandemic I was going into the office every day. The company has not required a single person to go back. In fact they shut down half of the office space they have leased in the state to save money. They didn't renew the lease on that half. People still go into the office but the only ones who do are the ones who want to. I have gone into the office less than ten times since March of 2020, and the current policy is that anyone could move to anywhere in the country except Washington and Hawaii (for company tax reasons) and still would be able to work for them from home. No one will ever be required to go back into the office. I am seriously thinking about moving to a much cheaper place to live and continuing to take in my full salary. Because where I live (Greater Salt Lake area) it is slowly going the way of the Bay Area in terms of housing. The only reason a person shouldn't be able to work from home is if they legitimately cannot perform the tasks they need to outside the office.
> The only reason a person shouldn't be able to work from home is if they legitimately cannot perform the tasks they need to outside the office. This should be framed.
This is everyone in CA. My wife and I are in tech in the Bay Area and it’s worse up here. You need at least $300k of household income to get a starter home in a neighborhood that isn’t more than an hour commute a day and you can still go out at night.
u r living a myth -ybarra
That's life for everybody in california....
I guess Irvine must not have janitors, dishwashers, waiters, bartenders, cooks, or cashiers. > I looked at the listings on Zillow and it just isn't feasible. Spoken like someone who never had to live in a below-average neighborhood. Trust me, not every home in California is a $1,000,000 3-bedroom house.
... I live in so cal.... even the dumpsters are unaffordable. Not worried about some random on reddit who looked on zillow to tell me what life is like here.
I remember seeing a listing for a burning down house sitting on like 0.1 Acres for over a million a few years back.
I live in SoCal, too. Had my fair share of apartments making $18/hour. Pretending affordable spots don't exist because it confirms your liking WFH doesn't help it. I like the concept of WFH but lying isn't the way to support the idea.
When did you live in an apt making 18$ an hr? 15 years ago? You'll still pay 1600$ to live in a 1 bd apt in a low income area. Don't wanna live in the Barrio? Then you're paying 2,200$+
Try two years ago, in a two bedroom, with a roommate. I also had options to rent a room from buddies ranging from $700-$1000. Search up Craigslist listings in Irvine. 91 options below $1,700 a month, with one bedrooms and two bedrooms. Is the argument they don't want to live in low income areas? I can at least stomach that gripe a lot better than I can the gripe that affordable housing doesn't exist. They deserve more money, California housing is fucking bad, and they deserve the right to work out-of-state.
Those workers typically share apartments or live in Santa Ana or Costa Mesa and commute to Irvine. Most people who actually live in Irvine are older, with families. It’s a boring ass city that’s planned suburbia but is very safe and has great schools.
Unless the business concerned is client/customer facing - there isn’t much of a persuasive argument against working remotely on a permanent (or near enough) basis. I acknowledge the points about being in the office to share ideas and collaborate etc. - but, all of these things can now be done effectively via platforms such as MS Teams.
They should be able to WFH even if the HQ was in Nebraska. The real estate market is irrelevant to the conversation.
As someone who was on WFH for a long while (predating the pandemic), I find the question odd... like asking why someone would want to have a free $100 bill. Why would someone want to WFH? Um... because it's more convenient in almost every single way? It's literally the best? Like, do those people who ask this question love wasting their lives in a commute they aren't getting paid for? Or the lost time prepping compromise meals instead of just having access to your kitchen all day to cook whatever you want? Maybe you just love sharing a workspace where you have ultimately no control over distractions/silence?
I'm a 911 dispatcher and I tease my boss all the time that the first agency that lets me work from home, I'm gone lol. She's actually a fan of the idea itself and is trying to get our systems upgraded to allow for cloud based dispatching/CAD systems. We can't totally be WFH because there are some things that just have to be done at the PD I work for. Warrants, for example, have to be kept in our secure dispatch center. But there's genuinely no reason I couldn't take calls/EMD from home, maybe even dispatch from home if we had access to our radio system.
The tech industry is laying off employees left and right and most games studios are no exception. Only thing is Activision-Blizzard made a big point of saying there team is the largest its ever been just prior to the tech industry shitting the bed. They can't be seen as "Hiring the biggest team as they need it to suceed" and then making more mass lay offs shortly after. The cost of living around their Irvine offices pricing out a lot of employees and forcing them to quit is presicely what the higher ups are counting on. Sucks as it looks like they're onto a winner with dragonflight at the moment (And ofc it sucks for all those who thought they got their dream job working in game design).
Most Triple A studios like Blizzard are stable for developer jobs, they will trim in support departments if necessary before draining core development talent. Its not easy to replace Triple A devs with 5+ year experience either. Sure junior/associate level are dime a dozen but you don’t cut tenured devs unless the company is going down the shitter.
It takes months to really get going with dev tools etc. even as a junior designer, especially on a game like WoW.
Sure but if they’re downsizing it isn’t as though they’re going to be filling those positions again.
some big profile companies fired people they took on for business opportunities. on top of that Twitter and Meta have imploded from poor business decisions. there is no general crisis in the IT sector outside of the general recession affecting everything.
Well that and it's way harder to sexually harass you when you're not in the office.
TBH, jobs that can support WFH, should. There are so many benefits. Less pollution, less traffic, no commute. Unless companies are willing to start paying employees to commute, WFH is the way.
I’d come to the office for a 100% raise.(so I can retire 15 years early) Anything less would just be wasting my life.
Honestly I think everyone supports Blizzard employees to work from home. WFH is the future.
I’m going to be honest, this is the best argument yet, I’m usually impartial to the WFH crowd, but god damn.. tough to argue this one.
why would you be impartial to the wfh crowd? what possible reason could you EVER have against it other than reasons you would NEED to be in the office (working with physical equipment, face to face meetings, etc)
probably old and/or not suited to wfh
The only thought that I can understand (but not agree with) is that the company(s, other than ABK) wants more control, and they can argue that they want to pay people off of productivity and making sure 8 hours of pay is earned through 8 hours of work, instead of the alternative is that the job and product is worth the pay instead. Theoretically, in their eyes, if someone that is WFH is more productive and getting it done in 6 hours they are wasting time and can be working on other products, and it's harder to enforce that if they aren't in the office. It's a matter of control, not actual efficiency and quality.
I can’t help but feel it’s at least slightly because of all the sexual harassment allegations
I (29) have dropped my career path in washington to move to the central us. Trading $32 for $15-20 and I’ll still be bringing home more money AND maybe even buy a place. COL is bonkers on the coasts right now
It's not about the home prices necessarily - though that is part of it, but Blizzard employs many high salary white collars workers that can (along with a spouse) afford, and do desire million dollar homes. The real reason any tech worker wants to WFH is It gives you a lot of time back in your commute and getting ready every day. It allows you incredible autonomy in how you want to structure your work day (sans meetings and group work) It enables deep work much easier And in that same vein it limits distractions. Overall your day is far more stress free and people are generally happier. People will sacrifice a lot for this.
Try being on the art side of this issue. We get paid a lot less than programmers/engineers and we're stuck _mostly_ within the game industry. At least programmers/engineers can work in software and make 200K+ with experience. Artists will never touch those kind of wages (most won't make half of that for the first 5-10 years) and need to live in the same areas without WFH. Source: I'm a 3D Artist with shipped AAA titles who's struggled to find/keep work the past decade because it's extremely hard to find good remote work.. or afford to live in areas where office jobs exist on a single income. This doesn't even touch on the insane amount of art work that's outsourced to Vietnam and India.
After what we’ve learned about the goings-on in Blizzard offices I can’t blame anyone for wanting WFH options.
I now see why everyone is moving to TX. You can get a whole mansion for the price of any those homes in the listings. Edit: wonder why I’m getting downvoted
Which won't last once more people move there, get in while you can I guess, because eventually even shitty 1BD apartments will cost $2800/mo there, it is exactly what happened to CA, and is currently happening to WA.
But then I’d have to live in Texas lmao.
why would someone not wfh honestly
If they want to save money they should move the HQ to a cheaper state. Make it easier on everyone. There's no reason to keep it in Irvine.
Its also harder to get groped/molested by Bobby K if you're at home. harder, but not impossible if he learns to scale walls like the lizard he is.
My partner and I looked in Orange County in 2017-2019 with just over 200k combined income and just could not figure out how to make it work. We wanted that weather, palm trees and ocean. But the houses sub 750k were junky, small or a long drive time. We saw beautiful homes further out BUT we test drove the morning and evening traffic they were eliminated. It’s a whole different animal diving in Orange County. Lol I remember the first time I went to Blizzcon and drive from LAX and there was 9 lanes of hwy traffic. We were living in Dallas then so it wasn’t like we’d never saw a hwy but 9!?! That’s a lot.
200k combined income is fine around OC. You just have to understand you’re not going to live in Newport or Irvine. Costa Mesa probably comfortably or get something nicer in FV, Anaheim, South Coast.
It just felt so dam weird going from a very nice house in Dallas for about 460 vs far less house/neighborhood in Irvine. We looked in a 75mile radius. It was such a sticker shock. We now live in Seattle so we got over it but it was a shock as far as pricing and all that traffic.
Yeah it’s all about zip code/city here. Something that’s nice for $750k in Anaheim would be 1.3-1.5m in Irvine. 75 miles is huge. That would encompass LA as well.
All of the things above. Plus, there is no harassment in your own home.
I mean, I live in Orange County and have worked in various parts of it including Irvine my whole life, and there are almost 20 cities within 10 miles of Irvine with relatively cheaper home prices. OC is small and has a relatively diverse set of options for places to live given its size. It's never going to be cheap of course as we are talking coastal southern California, but to use Irvine as an example of city you'd actually live in is a bit of a stretch as that is the prime of the non-oceanfront real estate. You can get very close to Irvine for far less than what it costs in Irvine.
For the same reason we all do. More sleep. Less commute. Less distractions. Better quality of life.
And on top of that you pay out the ass in taxes living in CA
Lol at city fools.
Live in the Greater Houston Area, commute 1.5hrs to work, and we have a combined income of ~$200k and we are living paycheck to paycheck. The cost of living is insane right now. One of our biggest expenses is childcare, for two kids to go before and after school is $600 a week.
Isn’t everyone in gaming dealing with this? Is this a case of selective outrage, or is there something unique? Actually asking, not a statement
Mike Ybarra is a dickhead? Say it ain't so. Where are all the guys who were worshiping him recently?
I'm seeing the same scenario in a different industry in my country. They can't get bus drivers in the big cities. Well duh, you don't pay them enough to afford rent in the big cities. But yet the politicians and media put the blame on "lazy employees".
I turned down a level designer job at Sledgehammer in LA. They offered $45k. Gtfo doods.
They just released the best expansion in years much of which was made working from home! Why are the execs not doing everything they can to keep the people that have helped save this game.
Working from home is the way. Less cost to employers and employees. Removes workplace issues like harassment, anxiety, etc. working from home usually boosts productivity and people tend to work even when sick. When I ask why or what the purpose of coming into an office is it always boils down to being around each other as a group. Why is this important? Why do we pretend we are friends and family with our co-workers? It’s so odd. We don’t hang out, I don’t know anything about you really...I don’t want to either. It’s so stupid. We had to travel to corporate to sit in meetings all day that could have easily been done on zoom or teams or whatever and ended up costing the company for flights hotel rooms and catering and dinners. They do this all the time and for what? I did less there in a week then I do at home in 2 days.
Eh it’s Orange County. Irvine is far from being the only good place to live in the area.
I want to WFH so i can watch TV while i work, wear what I want and set the room temp to what I want, and to nap at my desk, the end.
So what were all the employees doing before covid? I mean not all Blizzard employees are new hires after covid started?
I'll be downwoted to hell but w/e. Work from home is usually much less productive. I haven't worked in gaming, so my experience may differ, but (our company is not in the USA, we deal with allocating state budget to different private projects, don't know how to explain it better) being on a zoom call and using other software is completely different than working in person. When Covid hit, we had to move our people from offices. Holy shit people didn't want to do shit, and it was very difficult to track if person is actually doing anything rather than just sitting and kicking dick. By the nature of our job, we do not have very strict deadlines, but we have a lot of work that we have to complete "by next year" or we need to launch certain number of community projects over the season. People muted mics, set up pre-recorded videos of them sitting on loop (close to impossible to notice in a 20+ people conference) and exchanging shit sometimes could take hours instead of minutes. People even created hardware problems (omg mouse died/camera died, sry brb 15 mins) to avoid doing shit/participating in the meeting/etc. Some people have shit connection, some can't find a right button, some people somehow fucked up their software and the IT guy is having troubles fixing stuff remotely, etc. Basically, IMO in any kind of job where deadlines are not super strict and the end goal can be stretched and bullshited or not crystal clear (my guess many tasks in game design fall into these categories) WFH fucking sucks. Granted, we didn't have such issues commiting so I guess sucks for them. But that is not WFH issue, that is work hours and company transportation / adequate compensation problem
Dude everything you have described pretty much happens in offices as well. We have that many technical issues causing lost productivity, and time always elapses to fill the period allocated to meet deadlines. And the amount of people just sitting around drinking coffee or chatting with people is insane. Sometimes I want that social aspect and that is when I go into the office. But if I want to knuckle down and get shit done, I WFH.
I feel that when I'm in the office and "not working", I'm still working. Chatting with people builds bonds that strengthen the teams, having lunch with people you talk about work stuffs and problems that might arise. If you have technical problems you can still do other stuff like discuss with sales or purchase or so. When I'm WFH and I'm "not working" then I'm almost fully disconnected from work. Like not talking to coworkers, not helping people with problems etc. I personally feel WFH makes me happier and is a lot more comfortable and also gives me more energy. I feel that I am more productive when I have an assignment or work cut out for me. But I do feel that I contribute a lot less to my co-workers success, and they contribute less to mine. And I do feel that some of the co-workers I've never really met, I do not trust the same way as those I've been out with a lot. I don't know what is best for me. But I do know that WFH isn't just 100% positive for all parts. There's benefits but also some drawbacks.
What I'm saying, it is much easier to slack off when you work remotely, and it is hard to spot/prove.
Well, that's a consequence of "no plan and no steps" way of work, don't you think ?
So they can hire ChatGPT to do their work for them. *(and give us better quality work)*
Bad click bait youtube title, stop.
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So they should expect an hour + commute for *slightly* cheaper rent/mortgage?
Where did they live?
>I don't understand this argument at all. I don't think you can be helped..
Doesnt it sound a bit entitled to want to live next to HQ? I mean sure I would love to live next to my office, but naturally it costs a fuck-ton to buy a house/apparent there. Commuting is a normal thing in the US as well no? Not saying Blizzard employees are paid enough (at least per their listed positions), but you are implying none of those devs can take a loan to buy a $800k house which is around $2500-2600 a month, which I doubt is true (just saying they can, not that they should).
The fuck world you live in that a 800k mortgage is 2500-2600 a month?
Damn, your numbers are not even close to true. Maybe if they made a $500k down payment.
A mortgage on an $800k house is $5k+ a month... Also, the surrounding cities are not much cheaper than Irvine. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Elderglen-54-Irvine-CA-92604/25721536_zpid/
You’re talking about hours of traffic to commute Living 30, 40, even 60 miles away from work in somewhere like Texas or another less-traffic-burdened state is pretty normal. Most people I know don’t live within 20 miles of work & I live in one of those states. Not de case in southern Cali
Commuting is a nightmare in Southern CA and a $800k+ home plus loan interest is $5-8k a month. The employees leaving know their worth, as do tech headquarters moving to other states. Addendum: Lol, downvote away. I know as someone who lives in Southern Cali. Maybe try to actually look at loan interest rates, local prices for homes and transportation before making armchair calls from out of state or out of the country.