Blizzard developers say return-to-office policy 'cost us some amazing people'

RTO has simply become a structural disadvantage. Companies that cannot manage remote teams simply won&#x27;t be able to attract top talent.<p>Even if 80% of companies RTO the remaining 20% that recruit remote-only jobs will create massive disruption in top performers. HR has their head in the sand because so many companies are either freezing hiring or reducing headcount, but there&#x27;s a real issue here. Talented people just don&#x27;t need to consider onsite work, period.<p>The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don&#x27;t have another job. Maybe you want a big name on your resume. Either way those are jobs that will need to be filled again.<p>In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products. The cost of a failed product release outstrips their lease cost by orders of magnitude. I don&#x27;t get the play here. What&#x27;s the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?

Are the numbers of people in offices actually going up much? The company that runs cloud-based security gate systems said a few months back that the number of people badging in was below 50% of pre-pandemic levels. The commercial real estate market is tanking.[1]<p>We&#x27;ve passed &quot;peak office&quot;. Between work from home and better AI, there&#x27;s just no real need for about half of the US&#x27;s office space. Tearing down suburban office buildings to build housing is now a thing. The office building itself now has negative value.[2]<p>It&#x27;s even worse in retail. Shoppers are not returning to malls.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;business&#x2F;commercial-real-estate-banks-offices&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;business&#x2F;commercial-real-esta...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.loopnet.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;deal-of-the-month-22m-office-teardown-makes-way-for-multifamily&#x2F;2115617288&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.loopnet.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;deal-of-the-month-22m-office-t...</a>

They hinted that this was a way to downsize, and it doesn&#x27;t seem implausible. There&#x27;s no severance pay if you quit.

I don&#x27;t think this is a one-size fits all.<p>I&#x27;ve been WFM for 7 years now. I don&#x27;t think RTO is a bad thing, but its all situational. How silo&#x27;d are projects and how much inter-team coordination do you need? How long is your commute? What kind of person are you (some people just work better in office environments)? Do you need physical access to equipment? The list goes on.<p>Being fully remote has allowed flexibility for team members to relocate without being forced to leave and thats been the biggest advantage. Going from a FTO to WFO or RTO is a big transition that requires re-defining workflows and communication mechanisms. Products like Zoom and Slack have made that far easier, but the bigger the organization, the harder the transition.<p>Personally, I miss having an office. I&#x27;ve lost human connection by being isolated at home that isn&#x27;t replaced with normal social interactions. Maybe thats just older men not making time, but office space traditionally filled that role for me.

Is RTO being driven by the government? There suddenly seems to be huge push this year and not much in 2022. Allegedly commercial real estate is something that many banks have exposure to and will not be solved unless RTO is implemented. This is just my hypothesis and obviously correlation isn&#x27;t causation.

It&#x27;s funny to see this considering that, for WoW at least, it seems that pandemic and WFH helped them create the best expansion since 2016. The last two expansions had worse design and systems than their latest. I personally think the only reason WoW hasn&#x27;t caught on again is that BfA &#x2F; Shadowlands killed enthusiasm for the game.

&gt; The same employee also speculated that Blizzard is &quot;tightening its belt right now and they want people to leave&quot;, which may affect Blizzard&#x27;s plans for Diablo IV&#x27;s post-release updates.<p>If true, talk about incompetent management. If you need to slim down, ideally you&#x27;d want to identify the people and groups that can be laid off with least overall damage and do it all in one shot. &quot;Layoffs by RTO&quot; is a great way to have your best, most-employable staff trickle out over a period of months - constantly reminding anyone left behind that they&#x27;re stuck working under a bunch of ding-a-lings so they might decide to leave next.<p>How is Bobby still getting paid &quot;the big bucks&quot; to run ActivisionBlizzard this way?

As usual, extrovert&#x2F;control freak manager egos triumph over supposedly ideal market forces.

Bad for the companies which are not managing to make WFH to work.<p>It&#x27;s surely not easy, though. It requires a number of skills on communication, organization (time management, adequate environment), and a good amount of discipline, both from managers and &quot;managees&quot;. But I don&#x27;t see companies trying to develop such critical competencies deliberately. They simply send people home and dream with the resulting cuts in costs -- at least that&#x27;s my experience.<p>I&#x27;ve seen WFH working amazingly well in some places; working terribly in others; or even working well at the beginning and deteriorating after some time; and, in the cases where WFH worked well, that happened essentially out of luck.

I’ve worked from home (WFH) since 2013. I’ve been a top performer so many different times I’ve lost count.<p>Each time I left an employer since I started- a basic requirement in my job search was -“remote”<p>Just as important as the job title and salary range.<p>I’ve managed remote teams myself and understand the unique challenges WFH can create - however, it is up to the company leadership to set clear expectations about what WFH looks like (and what it doesn’t).<p>Company’s mandating return to office failed in setting expectations and managing to them accordingly. Don’t blame the entire workforce- learn from what didn’t work for your company and adapt. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind by those who did.

We have the same discussion over and over. Let me summarize the comments: some people like working remote, others prefer hybrid and some love going to the office every day. Companies that force a single work style will necessarily lose workers.<p>The more interesting question, IMHO, is whether companies mandating a given work style will be more efficient than others that give people the choice. And among the ones mandating a style, whether one style in particular is more efficient in general.<p>Which company from the options below is more likely to beat their competitors in the long run due to higher efficiency, quality, time to market etc?<p>1) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from home. 2) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from the office. 3) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers and give them the choice.

Long term staff retention really seems to pay off in the entertainment industry. Nintendo, Valve, FX, NBC, off the top of my head. Not sure how viable it is for smaller companies.

My company is also forcing people to RTO even when there are multi hundreds of open opposition (and probably a thousand more silent opposition).<p>As the article suggests, top performers can pick jobs anywhere and anytime. Even a depression as bad as 1929 still maintains about 60% employment. RTO will just drive away two kinds of people: top performers who prefer remote work, and people who are OE. Even for the second group, they are still good performers as they can handle two jobs without being noticed.<p>Either way, only those inexperienced and coasting are going to stay. Good luck pushing out projects then.

if you can&#x27;t figure out how to manage remote-only teams, then the problem isn&#x27;t the workers, it&#x27;s you.

My company is losing dozens of irreplaceable people due to forced RTO, and it may catastrophically undermine some of our products. Leadership does not care. It&#x27;s shocking to me.

It now seems a bit obvious that this type of policy will lead to the best performers flying the coup, as they are the ones most likely to be in a position to dictate the terms of their employment.

Any manager asking for return to office should be sacked. Usually thats a sign of incompetence.

At this point MS&#x2F;Actiblizzard falling thru would be a blessing in disguise for MS

I&#x27;d imagine game dev is a more collaborative sort of thing, at least at various stages. Where it&#x27;d help to be in office, at least to some degree.<p>Maybe they can have management require being in office during key parts of projects or for parts of the month. Rather than a mandatory 3 days a week thing across the board.

I&#x27;d love to see someone that C-levels would actually read write about this. None of them are checking PCGamer but this is a real problem, they read about trends and just follow them and I&#x27;d love to see some of them actually see what this is causing instead of just that everyone is doing it.

&gt;It&#x27;s worth noting that the mandatory office attendance doesn&#x27;t apply to ABK&#x27;s executives. Recently hired execs like Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao, and <i>Chief Communications Officer</i> Lulu Cheng Meservey, have full-time remote status.<p>So much for RTO being good for communication.

Just read the Kotaku article it links to, PC gamer isn&#x27;t adding anything that I see.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kotaku.com&#x2F;blizzard-diablo-iv-world-warcraft-remote-work-delays-1850421033" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kotaku.com&#x2F;blizzard-diablo-iv-world-warcraft-remote-...</a>

I can&#x27;t imagine Blizzard execs would be so stupid to think that they wouldn&#x27;t lose great people to other companies. Those people didn&#x27;t have a single issue finding a new position somewhere else that paid better would be my guess.

Not just with this but other changes I am seeing, my strategy is to be in the top 20% talent and broaden my skillset so that I can have options. RTO is one thing but what if employment in tech itself becomes difficult. You already need lots of social networking and groveling as it is.<p>You know what I keep wondering, why don&#x27;t these companies look at the numbers and say &quot;if you want to WFH you will get a 20% paycut&quot; instead? People who are good at their job and like the company might just stick around even then. They get to save on top expensive talent.

Maybe some of those employees don&#x27;t want to return to Blizzard offices _in particular_ considering that&#x27;s where many of them were outright sexually assaulted?

In the US there was a proposal that I saw that would have given tax credits to businesses that allowed WFH as the default if they were willing to allow their corporate real estate get turned into housing (which in addition to selling it would have netted another credit) and for builders to get some additional leverage to take over these estates and turning them homes and service businesses. It was projected in 3-5 years time not only would the labor market generally be more competitive it would alleviate a lot of housing issues (not all, but alot)<p>It was killed before it got to committee, and my second hand understanding is the Biden administration didn’t like it because it risked “possibly killing down towns across America”<p>We could’ve had it better, but we chose not to

Startups that are born remote can disrupt existing businesses<p>That being said, I don&#x27;t think its possible to start a remote manufacturing business&#x2F;factory.

&gt; It&#x27;s worth noting that the mandatory office attendance doesn&#x27;t apply to ABK&#x27;s executives. Recently hired execs like Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao, and Chief Communications Officer Lulu Cheng Meservey, have full-time remote status.<p>Basically, if we want these rights of remote work, we&#x27;re going to have to unionize and fight for them.<p>The elites already have this right.<p>The lines are being drawn. Fight or acquiesce.

I&#x27;d take a pay cut just to work from home.

What is their policy? Full time in-office?

&gt; DE&amp;I also means diversity of thought, especially when it&#x27;s backed by data and financials.<p>No it doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, that would be nice and all, but that isn’t the point of DEI.

Is he seriously tweeting about this? Basically that is insubordination and grounds for termination. If this manager doesn&#x27;t agree with the company policy, and isn&#x27;t willing to pick up the slack of workers who are leaving or who have left and maintain the release date of the product, he&#x27;s going to be shown the door too. Spending time creating a map of who left isn&#x27;t a good move either and is not going to give any excuses as to why work can&#x27;t get done, especially if it wasn&#x27;t asked for by senior leadership.<p>Every one is replaceable, including this manager who is questioning senior leadership. Complaining about it on Twitter isn&#x27;t going to change anyone&#x27;s mind who has made these decisions, it&#x27;s just going to result in your own dismissal. It&#x27;s a lot better to quiet quit and look for a new job if you feel your job has become impossible.