New Leadership at Blizzard
Good for them.  Though, I wonder how this ever was allowed to get this bad in the first place[0].  Perhaps it&#x27;s how I was raised, my employment history, or I&#x27;ve just &quot;gotten lucky&quot; with (larger) employers[1], but it blows my mind that <i>any</i> large employer allowed an employee to come <i>within a 100 yards</i> of harassing behavior.<p>I worked in various lead&#x2F;senior roles in IT Infrastructure, security, support and development at a 5,000-20,000 (depending on the time) employee telecom.  I know of one incident in the 17 years I was there that was <i>serious</i> related to sexual harassment.  In that case, the &quot;victimized employee&quot; remained with the company, the harasser handled by suspension during a (hours long) investigation where they were fired with cause (also the only case in the US that I&#x27;m aware of).  I was asked to collect his computer; yeah, firing him was a good call.<p>Women and minorities in IT -- both technical and management (VP was and currently still is the same woman) were represented well above the average[2] and promoted at no different rate.  On our team and among our larger team -- 17 years -- <i>all</i> of the staff acted like <i>adults</i> (some had quirks, but nothing more).  I don&#x27;t <i>ever</i> recall a frat-boy like attitude and I know <i>none</i> of my co-workers would tolerate it.  I don&#x27;t even recall an incident of inappropriate humor.  The only thing that came close was one colleague who dropped an F-Bomb casually about every 3 words (usually a &quot;F<i>ckin&#x27;&quot; or &quot;F</i>cked Up&quot; -- despite the word, I don&#x27;t recall him using the word <i>sexually</i>).  He lasted a year or so and didn&#x27;t get fired for the F-Bombs -- everyone talked about it but nobody really cared[3].<p>[0] In fairness, I&#x27;ve not followed this story closely, so that may be my perception.<p>[1] The tempting explanation of &quot;I didn&#x27;t experience it, myself, therefore I was blind to it&quot; isn&#x27;t something I can <i>prove</i> I wasn&#x27;t affected by, but my unusual set of jobs&#x2F;position in the company allowed for few places to hide this kind of behavior from me at times.<p>[2] I&#x27;m always uncomfortable mentioning this -- we had higher than average because we actively <i>recruited</i> from places that would increase the number of minority candidates.  We <i>did not</i> in <i>any way</i> apply hiring practices that favored under-represented races&#x2F;genders -- and ended up having a very diverse team.<p>[3] I&#x27;m not suggesting harassing&#x2F;racist behavior be ignored, however, another part of being an adult is tolerating things that we feel are &quot;moral faults&quot; in others without being uptight about it.  &quot;It takes a lot of people to make a world&quot;  ... My casually-swearing colleague never swore <i>at</i> people or <i>about</i> people -- he swore about <i>things</i> sometimes, and swore casually, even though he chose a word that many in the US feel to be among the most offensive profanities, co-workers used to just comment about &quot;how strange it is to hear so much profanity out of one guy when nobody else is swearing at all&quot;.