I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.

Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing
relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
nope, they're in the news again.

This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news
associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
Activision manages to do anything but that.

You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
those people are earning.

I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth
reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.

----------------------
url:
https://www.bluesnews.com/s/246588/activision-blizzard-drops-vaccine-requirement

On 4/2/2022 7:34 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
> stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.
>
> Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
> for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing
> relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
> its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
> all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
> with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
> nope, they're in the news again.
>
> This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
> employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
> that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
> for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
> a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
> to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
> and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
> it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
> dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
> reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news
> associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
> stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
> Activision manages to do anything but that.
>
> You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
> the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
> those people are earning.
>
I know you aren't expecting a real answer to that but I'm going to give
you a bit of information anyways. There is a school of thought in
business that the larger the number of companies an executive has ridden
down in flames, the MORE they are worth.

Because it is assumed they've learned from their mistakes.

> I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
> the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
> the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
> incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
> amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth
> reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
> comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
> face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.
>

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 03/04/2022 03:34, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
> stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.
>
> Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
> for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing
> relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
> its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
> all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
> with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
> nope, they're in the news again.
>
> This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
> employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
> that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
> for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
> a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
> to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
> and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
> it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
> dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
> reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news
> associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
> stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
> Activision manages to do anything but that.
>
> You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
> the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
> those people are earning.
>
> I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
> the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
> the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
> incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
> amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth
> reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
> comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
> face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.
>

Just had a quick read-up of the story and yeh that's pretty daft. The
real problems I see are that their announcement doesn't seem to contain
the reasoning as to why the change, so at time X this is what we are
doing, at time Y we are no longer doing that. There must be a reason
behind that surely. The second, and I'll take this with a slight pinch
of salt, it was the employees who wanted it in place in the first place.

As for how people like this stay in their roles, in my experience
(obviously at a lower level) climbing up the greasy pole has very little
do to do with you achieve but instead do you fit in and is your priority
your own career. It also helps if you're quite prepared to throw someone
under the bus if you think it will make you look good.

One of the classics I saw was a project manager being promoted to a
position that even he knew he really wasn't capable of and when it all
went tits up who got all the blame. Will him of course and certain;y not
the person who put him into a role he was suitable for.