so, enough time has passed now for me to talk about why i decided to leave Blizzard. a mixed year with great teammates, but a management that mistreated, lied to me, gaslit me, gave me a fake promotion, and HR that refused to help.
buckle up friendos. 💪
i wanna start by saying that all of the people I got to work with on Team 4 (Overwatch 2) were incredible. they were warm, welcoming, fun, friendly and just so goddamn talented. there were so many great people on my team championing for me and i am so grateful for their support
unfortunately however, i spent most of a year stressed out of my mind, working 4 peoples jobs at once, and having management make promises they had no intention of fulfilling and i ultimately felt like i had no choice but to leave for my own mental health.
in July of 2023, i was invited to a meeting by Art Leadership and production, to let me know they were interested in promoting me to Lead VFX Artist of the cosmetics team. (skins, emotes, POTGs, etc.), i had only been there 6 months and I told them basically “if youre sure?? lol”
but before accepting i was adamant, that we were all on the same page about the full role, what it meant, what i would be doing, and also, what the “promotion” would come with. (pay increase, title change) and confirmed all of those details before going further
these conversations included other Lead VFX, Art Directors, Associate Art Directors, Production Directions and also HR. and as we were all happy, i started the job effective immediately, with the details to come at the end of the week, in writing.
the new role was - all of my existing responsibilities and workload as a senior - becoming a line manager of 3 people immediately - managing our entire outsourced vfx pipeline in china - plus additional Lead things (planning, much more meetings lol)
friday of that week comes, nothing, but, the Production Dir does announce my promotion to Lead to the whole team on the thursday! its official! its happening! the whole team knows! i even tweet about it, because im so excited. we’re all gucci!
on my first week as lead. my new manager, tells me that we are going to have to fire one of my new reports cus he wont RTO
me: “he is waiting for a medical accommodation because he is a carer for his parents”
them: “yeah [laughing] we’re not gonna do that for a junior”
another lead on the team offers to deliver the news for me, because it is my first week as lead. and the person we are supposed to fire is one of my closest friends on the team. he is given until the end of the month to either relocate, or leave. we’re all distraught.
im now doing my senior role, my lead role and now all the work that this great vfx artist was doing. they then refuse to hire an intern, another one of my reports, who is incredibly talented and we all love. so i add all the work they were going to do, to my plate.
a month goes by, and i have now sent an email or slack message, every other day to find out what is happening with the pay increase and title change.
im told i have to wait until August, because thats when all the promotions happen but “dont worry. its all happening”
i then discover that as I am earning less than 50% of every other Lead VFX Artist at blizzard, so much so, that as a Lead, my salary is lower than every person I am managing. i send more emails. im told its cus im in the UK, and my salary is based on market value, not my value.
i ask HR if they think that it is ethically okay to pay me less than 50% of every person for doing the same job?
they tell me “why would we pay you more than we have to? that doesnt make any business sense”
i realise i am talking to a person who doesnt give a shit about people
another month passes and i get to august and turns out, “no no, its actually september now” for some reason. but “dont worry, its coming. its definitely a promotion, and theres definitely a pay increase.”
i continue to be overworked, and exhausted, but hopeful. (fool)
another few weeks pass, and its getting to 3 months being a lead. so i send an email out to everyone, directors, VPs, HR, leads, you name it, telling them that if there is no written information by Sep 1st, i will stop doing the role immediately.
SUDDENLY, people have something to say!
this entire time, HR have not responded once and they finally reply inviting me for a quick call. it is in this call that HR ask me “what promotion? i have no idea what you are talking about?”
at this point i raised a formal complaint.
i had months of messages, emails that i sent to HR to explain what i was talking about and they finally reply with
“you seem to be confused” … “there is no promotion” … “leadership is a lateral move” … “its just a change of responsibilities” … “there is no pay increase”
i was livid, naturally, and asked what any normal fucking rational human would “why would anybody want that promotion then?” which obviously they then did the old “i can see you’re frustrated, i can see how you misinterpreted this”.
the investigation from the formal complaint comes back after a few weeks and after some careful deliberation, decides that HR did nothing wrong, and followed all processes correctly. SO, i hand in my resignation about an hour later. but it doesnt end there!!!
because no!!!
HR then told me!!! that because of my role as a Lead!!! i had gained inexplicable knowledge that would put me at a business risk to work anywhere else!!! so they are activating a Non-Compete Clause that restricts me from working ANYWHERE AT ALL for 3 MONTHS!!!😍😍
and, you may be rightfully thinking “oh, so this is a paid 3 months, right? you cant stop someone from working at ALL for 3 months without paying the-…” INCORRECT that is exactly what they did, and unfortunately, completely legal, because get fucked, i guess???
i said I cant survive for 3 months without pay, I have a mortgage and they looked me in the eye and said:
“well, you probably shouldn’t have signed the contract then 🙂”
within a few minutes i was locked out of slack/email, and that was the end of my time at Blizzard. 🎉🎉🎉
if anyone has continued so far, thank you for listening 💚💚💚💚
idk what the point of this is, but, i needed to get it off my chest. blizzard had every opportunity to do the right thing, and they continually failed at that.
i also wanna sincerely thank everyone who purchased a mentorship session or portfolio review with me at the end of last year. it quite literally saved me, and meant that I was able to not go into debt and so i am hugely grateful, and hope you all felt like they were worth it!
Jesus. It kills me because this is honestly just so common in corporate america. HR doesn’t give two shits about employees. Lying about a promotion is pretty egregious I’ll admit, but everything after that - the lying, the ghosting, the gaslighting, that’s happened to me and pretty much everyone I know who has worked in corporate America.
It’s a real hard lesson to learn, but we all go through it. The company doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about your family, your situation, who you are, where you come from, even what you do. You are a line item to them, an expense.
If you go to HR (or the fucking “Department of People” or whatever the fuck other name they have for themselves in your corporate hellscape) for anything they won’t look at you like you’re a human. You’re officially a liability. A troublemaker who isn’t silently working. If you’re a victim it’s “Are they going to sue us?” If you are the one who caused it it’s “are we liable for you?”.
I empathize so much with this. I went to HR for my manger berating me for over an hour and within a month I was unemployed and I learned then that you’re on your own. Hopefully this guy has landed on his feet and moved on.
Remember kids, live your life. Don’t make work your life, as someone who has been through multiple rounds of layoffs and let go after years of “We’re so glad you’re on the team!!!” it doesn’t matter. Your family matters, your friends matter, your colleages and even supervisor may matter. But your company doesn’t.
i am new here and am looking for workplace related themes. I am in the UK. What you say about HR etc. is spot on. I survived systemic workplace bullying DURING bereavement in Pret A Manger. It even involved the top executives, HR was heavily involved. They played games and led me around while I was traumatised. They offered me “hush money” if I sign NDA, but I declined and they neither sue me nor respond as this would open a can of worms for them.
If we can’t afford legal aid or feel powerless, we can always leave reviews on Glassdoor, Indeed etc. and in my circumstances write a blog and work with the press. I write mainly via www.expret.org and some of the press collaborations expret.org/media .
We should never be silent!
Welcome! Sorry that happened to you, and I definitely will think about it next time I stop in for a Pret. Glassdoor unfortunately has gone from anonymous reviews to extreme transparency, adding your real name to posts, and companies can now pay to remove negative reviews.
Thank you. Really? Glassdoor wants real names??? I left a review years ago but they deleted it as Pret must have reported me. I read a lot, and collect some (below link), especially what managers and HQ staff say. I always thought reviews MUST be anonymous. What’s the point in review sites when staff can be harassed by employers for leaving reviews?? Some links to Pret A Manger issues incl. ongoing mislabelling, mouldy food, customer deaths & injuries, lawsuits, systemic workplace bullying, £800,000 fine after staff in freezer, wage theft, hiked prices for lower quality, bad press, £700 million debt, Club Pret coffee subscription changes, board room shake-up etc. etc. https://linktr.ee/expret.org <–
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They were anonymous until a few months ago when they rolled out a silent change. So yeah, now there’s no points to glassdoor
Silent change? I left a review years ago but it was not approved, I will try again and see what they do regarding anonymity. Don’t know if my account still exists or if I remember the password.
Fuck blizzard into the sun. HR only exists to keep the company from getting sued. That’s it. They hate employees.
Get another job, let them sue you and explain to the judge their position
I mean… those non-compete clauses are legally unenforceable in the UK. They’re in contracts all the time, people ignore them all the time and get new jobs elsewhere, and on the rare occasions the previous employer actually tries to sue, the courts chuck it out because banning someone from working in their entire profession, globally, is almost always treated as an automatically unfair contract term that cannot be enforced. The cases where non-competes are upheld are for very specific instances (very high-level employees handling sensitive client data or very new innovations, patents, etc, or alternatively going to work for the direct competitor right across the street), and wouldn’t apply to someone who had simply been a team lead for a couple of months. And since Blizzard wanted to treat him as a UK employee for salary purposes, he’d count as a UK employee for legal purposes too.
The sinister part about these non-competes and NDAs is that it requires you to either know the law in your country at a level well above that of a layperson, or be willing to take a risk that you do get sued into oblivion to be willing to take the risk of violating it. Companies should be held liable for creating unenforceable non-competes as it can cause serious harm to individuals.
