Chris Sayers reveals why he left Blizzard; fake promotions, lies, and gaslighting
Chris Sayers reveals why he left Blizzard; fake promotions, lies, and gaslighting
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. 💪
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!
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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.
Agreed! It's not common knowledge, and it really should be (that said, I'm hardly an expert myself - just a layperson who reads a lot). If it was up to me, a person's legal rights (consumer rights, employment rights, etc) would be taught at school, so people would already have a basic idea of what's legal and what's not when they reach adulthood and enter the workplace. Even accounting for the law changing over time, if people know they have rights, it gives them a place to start, even if it's 20 years later that their employer tries to screw them over.
I would love to see companies penalised for creating unenforceable contract terms, too. If they had to pay damages every time they got caught doing it, they'd stop doing it pretty quickly!
Check my other comment. Once you know non-competes are unenforceable, you can simply gloss over them and say "uh-huh, whatever" while signing the contract. On NDAs, just check the expiration date; if you don't like it, don't sign it.
where non-competes are upheld are for very specific instances (very high-level employees handling sensitive client data or very new innovations, patents, etc,
Those would be NDAs... except patents are public (aka: disclosed) by definition.
or alternatively going to work for the direct competitor right across the street)
That's what is not enforceable.
Obviously I can't speak for other countries, but in the UK non-compete clauses have been found to be enforceable when they are very specific and narrow in scope, such that the person isn't prevented from earning a living within their profession - too long a duration or too broad a geographic area will make it unenforceable, because it's unreasonable to expect someone to move to a different country in order to earn a living. But a limited duration in a narrow geographic area can be upheld as enforceable. There is also specific case law that establishes that a non-compete clause that is unreasonable at the point of signing is unenforceable, even if the circumstances change (such as the employee being promoted and having a more senior role) that would otherwise make a non-compete enforceable - this stems from the fact that non-competes for inexperienced, junior employees are less enforceable than non-competes for highly experienced, senior employees.
The government recently ran a consultation on the matter, due to the fact that more regulation is needed for when non-competes are and are not enforceable. The conclusion reached by the consultation was that non-compete clauses would be limited by law to a maximum of 3 months.
IANAL, this is not legal advice, for legal advice consult with a lawyer authorized in your applicable jurisdiction
know the law in your country at a level well above that of a layperson
Not really. From my experience the thing is actually very simple:
- Non-competes: simply ignore them.
- NDAs: only apply to information made available to you before your employer discloses it publicly.
It's a good idea to keep a copy of every document you sign, particularly of every NDA... but a very simple rule of thumb is: when you leave a job, erase all "work data" from that job. No need to worry about disclosing data you don't have. Also, don't talk to anyone about whatever you worked on until the last NDA expires, and you won't need to worry about what they did cover or not.
This is an online forum where I have no idea whether you are an expert in law or not. I also don't know whether the law you're referencing would be the same for where I live (same state? same country?). Furthermore, there are entire legal firms which exist to help defend and prosecute in this space, indicating that it is not as clear cut as you make it. It took very little time to find lists online which explain whether non-competes are enforceable, by state, and some broad guidelines on when and where it can be enforced.
There are many reasons why it is not 'actually very simple' and claiming that it is online while ignoring these realities might cause others real harm. It feels casually dismissive to folks who don't have the legal background to assess this information and it took very little time to find holes in what you claimed. Please do not go on the internet and offer advice in areas you're not an expert in and don't minimize the severity of fields in which incorrect information can cause serious harm to individuals.
Sure, IANAL. Do we need to preface every discussion of legality with that?
I speak from personal experience with non-competes and NDAs, as a Spanish resident having worked some 20 years both as contracted and as freelance, for people from all over the world, as well as having seen the effects of breaking non-competes both for me as for others (as in: worst case scenario, they get thrown out in court; best case scenario, they get laughed out at the preliminary hearing), and some people breaking NDAs (spoiler: don't). Other clauses, vary a lot depending on jurisdiction.
As for the list you linked... not sure if you realize that it's from a company selling non-compete redacting services; their marketing information might be "a bit" biased.
I don't think it's a necessity, but I'm a scientist and I tend to be a bit nitpicky about word choice. In the sciences we're taught to use the right language for the right situation. If something isn't an absolute, we soften language. There's a big difference between "simply ignore them" and "you can generally ignore these" or "in most cases these are unenforceable" and that distinction is important. Simplifying knowledge is wonderful, but when and where we simplify is important and when stakes are high, it's better to side with caution.
Yes, I'm aware. If people are able to create business around this, it's clearly an area where litigation can happen and happens enough that, well, someone can sustain a business. Whether something is legal or not does not mean that every judge and every lawyer will agree and that people can't bully others around with their finances. Large companies typically have a lot more finances and leeway to do this kind of bullying to individuals and that's where this kind of nuance is important (and frankly out of scope of my own expertise).
Coming from CS with a focus on formal logic, I'm familiar with RFC2119 and understand the importance of precision... but also try not to put too much of it in "informal" conversations. I don't really think it's needed for the comment I made, but I've added a disclaimer and a clarification to it anyway.
If people are able to create business around this, it's clearly [...]
That's a high assumption; people create bullshit businesses all the time. Litigating a non-compete can be a bullying tactic on part of an employer, but redacting a contract full of BS clauses, then litigating an unenforceable contract afterwards, is at its core a way for lawyer firms to milk employers for extra "services". Judges have less leeway than people often assume, for the most common decisions they're bound by precedent or encoded law (depending on the legal system), and the main cause for different rulings on the same case, is either a lawyer who doesn't present the case correctly, or someone deciding to represent themselves.
(PS: as a scientist, if you ever do work for the private sector, you should get familiar with the basics of non-competes and NDAs, even before consulting a lawyer... and if you ever get into litigation, you'll want to ask for counsel, but also to oversee your lawyer)