Activision Blizzard To Convert All US-based QA Workers To Full-time Positions (polygon.com) 48
Activision Blizzard will convert all its U.S.-based temporary and contingent quality assurance (QA) positions to full-time jobs, the company announced Thursday. Nearly 1,100 workers will become full-time Activision Blizzard employees, upping pay to at least $20 an hour and allowing QA workers access to bonuses and full benefits. From a report: Activision Publishing chief operating officer and Blizzard Entertainment head Mike Ybarra shared the news with staff Thursday. "Across Activision Blizzard, we are bringing more content to players across our franchises than ever before," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said in an statement emailed to Polygon. "As a result, we are refining how our teams work together to develop our games and deliver the best possible experiences for our players. We have ambitious plans for the future and our Quality Assurance (QA) team members are a critical part of our development efforts." The conversion of all U.S.-based QA staff to full-time employment increases Activision Publishing's total full-time workforce by 25%.
At least $20 an hour? (Score:3)
It's for a game company (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:At least $20 an hour? (Score:4, Informative)
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$20 in 1998 dollars is over $34 today.
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Wage stagnation *is* underpaying. The fact that it's industrywide isn't going to make me think differently.
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No, what they should be singled out for is all the time they spent underpaying those employees, below the industry average. Now they should give them not only raises but bonuses for sticking with them through the years of shit pay.
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Building an automated test suite for a game would be an interesting challenge. QA is really an underrated job, companies don't want to invest into it because they only see it as a cost sink, and there is still the largely spread notion in IT that "users will QA the product".
Thus QA became an entry-level job and people have no incentive to do actual QA development, even if there are lots of opportunties having fun testing stuff, and it can be really intellectually rewarding to do so.
QA is also barely taught
$20/hr with OT or $20/hr base for salary pay (Score:2)
$20/hr with OT or $20/hr based 40 hours an week for salary pay but with lot's of OT that we do not pay OT for as you are on salary
Going to be a fun ride for the next 5 years. (Score:1)
All this "muh workers" focus isn't going to come for free. The reason shit got cheaper and cheaper until now is that employers figured out how to do things efficiently, with contractors and avoiding union nonsense. Now even Starbucks, who treats their employees well, is being hammered by union nonsense.
Inflation is heavily dependent on monetary policy, of course, but this whole "$15 isn't enough, now we need $20 minimum wage!" is going to add more force to the hammers already driving inflation. It's going t
Re: Going to be a fun ride for the next 5 years. (Score:3)
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Things got cheaper because employers ditched expensive nonsense like 'training' and 'investment', because neither of these look good on shareholder reports!
Which company did you work for that explained that to you so I know not to work there?
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In the 1990s computers and women entered the workplace in large numbers. Training became necessary so ordinary workers could operate the new-fangled contraptions and because women getting killed on the job wasn't well-tolerated. Government then institutionalized training prompting corporations to declare "We're not paying for that". Hence, all the GOVERNMENT-FUNDED certificates now available. I remember in 2009, when forklift training demanded 100 hours of practice, I thought "no-one's paying for that"
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You like your 5-day ~40-hour work week, employee benefits like healthcare, retirement, etc.? You can thank unions.
I agree that in the 1960's - 1980's many labor unions became overly demanding in their contracts and overly protective of slackers on their workforce, hence their demise over the next 30+ years.
Now the pendulum is switching the other way. Much of it due to COVID and globalization. Those were risks that MBAs were willing to take over the past 30 years.. and now they are on the losing end of th
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I'm not sure why people who don't work for a company or who don't own stock in it complain about some employees of said company wanting to or actually forming a union. It's like the people who complain about what CEOs get paid when they neither wo
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Look at productivity vs real wages and you'll realize that the "union nonsense" has been a long time coming. The top 1% have reaped almost all the gains for FAR too long and now that the baby boomers are retiring there's a labor squeeze and the working class realizes that there's a once in several generation chance to seize back some of the gains for themselves. I'm sure that will lead to some further automation, but that was going to happen anyways as the technology developed (ie I've never seen a manageme
Re: Going to be a fun ride for the next 5 years. (Score:2)
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The hard truth of the matter is small business really can't compete with larger ones in a market system, especially the capitalist one today. That's just a natural consequence of scale. In lot's of cases even working for small businesses isn't great, there are so may nightmare employee stories that involve small business owners and managers.
We value small businesses as a moral issue in America and therefore we carve out a lot of special programs and exceptions for them. There's logically no function sma
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Meanwhile the CEO of Starbucks received a 39% pay increase last year. https://www.nrn.com/quick-serv... [nrn.com]
Re:Going to be a fun ride for the next 5 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
All this "muh workers" focus isn't going to come for free.
Nothing is "free" but part of the issue over the last 40-50 years is there has been an explosion in the size of the american economy in terms of dollars but the real purchasing power for the average worker has barely budged, sometimes not even keeping pace with inflation. That money is real and is out there it's just been getting more and more concetrated in smaller segments of the population.
Companies spent the latter half of the 20th century working to eliminate the strength of labor unions, if they had made good on all the promises they said it would bring they wouldn't be dealing with what looks to be an insurgent labor movement now. It seems a little contradictory to start pointing at workers who are trying to get wages more fitting to the size and output of the economy and tell them that it will end up costing them. If these union busting companies and right to work states had provided real substantial wage growth as they promised over those decades things would be a lot better already, but they lied for the short term gains.
Companies made their bed with ruthless layoff policies whenver the slightest economic downturn, ruthless capital investment firms buying and gutting companies, souless consulting groups like McKinsey driving firms to outsource ever more and more jobs out of the country, a financial sector that contribues less and less real economic value and exists purely as a moneymaking operation for the existing wealthy and that 1-5% on the top of the hill taking more and more of the pie. Nevermind the fact that out bonkers inefficent healthcare system propped up by these ghouls is actually a gigantic yoke dragging everyone down.
The fact that a slight wage bump in the past couple years has thrown the economy haywire shows how fragile it has been made by decades of ruthless profit seeking at the expense of solid financial bedrocks. American workers are exceedingly productive and we work more hours for less pay than most other nations. Things in fact are going to get ugly but I sure am not pointing the finger at the 90% of workers who are just trying to get by.
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Not necessarily a deep analysis but a correct one. If people make more, they can spend more (and they will instead of saving it). More people competing for a limited supply of products and services means prices go up. Basic economics that some people can’t seem to grasp.
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It's a basic idea but as usual there is some more to it than just "more money = more inflation". The velocity of money is a strong determining factor. If the Fed prints up a few billion and it just sits on reserve sheets or in accounts and doesn't get spent into the markets, will it cause inflation? If prices go up due to limited supply of products and not an increase in the monetary supply, is that "inflation" and if it is then it's not a result of more dollars. Theres also a lot of sectoral effects as
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The counter to that is that de-flation is a thing and it also can carry a lot of negative outcomes, in that people are more incentivized to sit on money and slow growth. The prevailing ideal has been to have inflation but keep it to a manageable rate, i want to say like 2-3% per year.
Now whats supposed to happen is wages should rise to keep pace with that rise and try to keep balance. Since businesses aren't forced to something like a minimum wage that rises frequentyly to match can guide things along. I
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All this "muh workers" focus isn't going to come for free. The reason shit got cheaper and cheaper until now is that employers figured out how to do things efficiently, with contractors and avoiding union nonsense. Now even Starbucks, who treats their employees well, is being hammered by union nonsense.
Spoken like a true fascist shill.
You look at the year after year record corporate profits the last decade, and the year after year in income inequality as the CEOs get paid ever higher salaries, while the minimum wage hasn't changed much since the 1980s, yet prices have fucking sky rocketed leaving the majority of the working class living paycheck to paycheck and your take away is that "fucking working class pieces of shit need to work for less, not more!!!! Paying a livable wafge will destroy the economy!!
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Company focus... (Score:1)
You can understand a lot about a company on how much emphasis they put on testing/QA efforts and their approach.
Are they testing to make sure it works? - That's the job of the developer before it even leaves their desk.
Or, are they testing to see if they can make it not work?
Testing/QA is a lot like security PenTesting - you're not thinking like a developer... more like an overly caffeinated 14-yo at 2AM on a Saturday that is trying anything and everything under the sun just to see what will happen.
Testing/
If they're be this cheap, at least let them WFH (Score:2)
QA isn't a job that has a lot of onsite requirements. I'd say 99% of the work can be done from home. From installing the test app to putting notes in Jira. For a $20 @ hr employee they're going to be pissing away $5@hr on HR, HVAC, Power, etc. The employee is going to to be wasting money on commute costs, lunches etc.
I've been saying this for a while now, but if any Federal Administration really wanted to kickstart telework, they'd cut corporate taxes for companies that allow telework (From within the U
Sure (Score:2)
No one's caught the loophole? "U.S.-based..." (Score:1)
Wait ... QA were temps making minimum wage?!?! (Score:2)
Explains a lot.
They're not converting *all* QA workers (Score:2)
They're converting everybody except the recently unionized Raven workers. That's not entirely Activision Blizzard's fault, as they're not allowed to change the employment status of the unionized employees without engaging in collective bargaining. What remains to be seen is if the unionized employees will come out ahead of the rest or not.
Sounds very familiar. (Score:2)
All this sounds like a precursor to "Activision Blizzard is reducing QA positions by 25% amid business strategy shift"