Blizzard Entertainment Reviews

Pros

- Pay (including benefits and bonuses) is above Irish, UK, German and French averages, though life isn't as expensive in Cork as it would be in Paris or Irvine
- Atmosphere is good, if you perform in a correct or average way
- Most people are nice, open-minded, easy to relate to and friendly
- Although perfectable, the tools offered are working great and are effective
- The various events create a good overall "company spirit"
- Work is quite different from a classic Customer Service job, it still involves dealing with incompetent people, but also involves deeper investigations and requires some more skill (game log searches, bug investigation, ...), which makes it less dull.

Cons

- Career opportunities are non-existent, and can (not always) require knowing the "good persons", regardless of skills
- Non-geeky people will often be confused as to what is happening
- Employees are often warned of something new after it was announced and their opinion/view does not matter at all
- Management is very uneven ; you can have a great competent manager or someone who clearly has nothing to do here at all
- The work has become harder with time, which is ok, but the performance required to climb the ladder always became higher no matter what
- "Core Values" are often disregarded

Advice to Senior Management

Highest management operatives should, once in a while, try to have a discussion with their frontline employees. Not permanently since it would be impossible, but just a few hours every year, to have an idea on what is happening and what could (should) be modified.

Pros

company benefits
environment
Peer atmosphere
Company events
Free swag like all blizzard games free
Profit sharing

Cons

Low pay
 Overworked employees
 Politics takes over work professionalism
Weekend work for some positions
Very poor management decisions in some departments
Poor career growth opportunities

Pros

If you are any kind of gamer, you will probably be ok at blizzard. The people that work there for the most part are awesome, the customers are typically easy to deal with and we have awesome Christmas parties. Health benefits are awesome and make up for the lower rate of pay for this kind of job.

Cons

Advancement is tedious. Want to get into management? Good luck with that, very few openings and a ton of hoops to jump through. Pay is a bit below the average for a call center job.

Pros

- Fun atmosphere
- great perks
- merchandise discounts and gifts
- very nice facility
- casual environment, no dress codes
- excellent benefits
- fair wages

Cons

- Poor management
- Poor communication within departments
- atrocious communication across departments
- Method of tracking metrics/performance is a failure
- necessary to cheat and cut corners to advance, no penalty for those who do
- inadequate training

Advice to Senior Management

Management can't fix the problems at Blizzard.

Pros

This job will have you working with other individuals who are mostly gamers and intellectuals (read: geeks), and the competition is extremely high for promotions. If you are able to multi-task, and can handle multiple chat-based conversations at once, and can organize an insane influx of new information, while navigating the web and emails quickly to provide accurate information with an over-friendly tone, this job is for you. The benefits are very good, and there are yearly Christmas bonuses, and profit sharing. The office environment is very geek friendly, with lots of Blizzard decorations, toys, etc... one of the core values is "embrace your inner geek," and you are encouraged to be someone who can relate with World of Warcraft customers. The environment is a place for gamers, and it's recommended that you have a strong passion for Blizzard products (which really isn't that hard.) ;)

Cons

The availability of training and the fairness of management evaluating eligibility for promotion has increased greatly over the years... however, if you are not maintaining your rank in the top 25% and constantly actively seeking to better yourself, you may not have job security, as seen recently with a large percentage of layoffs due to apparent sales /subscription shortages. This job requires a high level of self-motivation and self-management to stay focused and on-task to maintain your productivity and positive attitude when faced with customers who often have un-educated and unrealistic expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

There is often a disparity between "Customer Service" and "Game Integrity", where the developmental side of the company will make policies that don't always relate to customer expectation, and the result is that customers get confused and percieve unfairness, and GM's are not always given rhetoric behind the developer's theory. Policy Example: "Deny all requests for in-game reimbursement, regardless of circumstances or customer history." My advice would be for the developmental side to work more closely with Customer Service managers, to have customers in mind with every game idea that gets developed.... or to educate Game Masters more about Game Theory, and the reason why there are nets and sidelines in tennis. "No, you cannot buy a shorter net, or bribe the judge"

Pros

Blizzard has the ability to hire top industry talent, which means nearly everyone hired is intelligent and skilled
Excited and eager workforce
Casual attire
Top notch health care package
Great perks
Free Blizzard swag
Company pride

Cons

For starters, there's no work-life balance for management-level employees in Austin, and in certain positions, depending on the department supervisor, you are made to feel guilty for requesting time off and are told there's never a good time to take vacation. If you did take vacation, you paid dearly for it upon returning to work, unless you had strong coworkers who could pick up the slack in your absence.
In Customer Service, the employees knew how to stronghold the management team to get rules and policies changed that they didn't like, which makes the management team look like a group of wimpy clowns who can't hold their ground.
Blizzard has a difficult time removing people from positions in which they are failing, this is especially true for supervisory roles outside of customer service. Due to an early-on homegrown approach to filling management positions, certain people ended up in visible, powerful roles that they clearly are not qualified and capable of doing. These individuals are not provided training to level up their people management skills because the company is too concerned with saving money where it can. Decisions like this cost the company good talent. Talented people, or groups of people, end up leaving for competitors. It is a testament to how vital it is to put the right people in the right roles, especially if those individuals are supposed to manage educated, experienced professionals.
Blizzard hires too many ambitious, talented people but can't provide a career path for them. It makes the company feel like a churn-n-burn place to work. Use them up while they're happy, then spit them out.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't tip toe around failing people managers. Should the wrong people stay in the wrong roles, it will continue to cost the company talented workforce and tarnish Blizzard's reputation as a top employer. Learn from past mistakes.

Pros

+ Blizzard's brand and famous games means that some geeks will swoon when you say you work at Blizzard
+ Discounts on Blizzard games and geek clothing
+ Blizzard's gym in Irvine, while small and crowded, is free!
+ Blizzard genuinely cares about shipping high-quality games

Cons

- Irvine is boring and lacks culture. It feels like a culture desert.

- Career development is seriously problematic at Blizzard. GOOD people can go 5+ years without promotions. Some teams have a silly rule requiring that you first ship a game before you can be promoted. Given the way Blizzard works, you could spend 6 years or 7 years before your game finally ships.

- Blizzard's home-grown management lacks the skill and strategic vision to manage an enterprise consisting of 4500 employees in offices around the world. There's a serious lack of capability at the senior technology, senior production, senior operations, senior HR, and executive leadership levels. The one exception may be in creative development.

- Blizzard's profit comes almost entirely from one product (WoW) and that product is now 7 years old and is in decline. Career growth opportunities are rare in shrinking companies and unhealthy politics tend to dominate when everyone's fighting for a slice of a shrinking pie.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire the people you know you need to fire. Create room for your star performers to move up. Make the transition from "family" style business to a true meritocracy. Be careful about hiring and promoting your own family members and love interests.

Pros

Supports their employees.
Strong community
Great potential

Cons

Nepotistic.
Values seniority over anything.
Growing pains.
Dedicated to the product over all else (not really bad, but interferes with operations at times).

Advice to Senior Management

Step outside of the "Blizzard Experience" mentality and make sure to always look for the best fit for the company

Pros

Good benefits, decent pay, lots of game perks, fun people, good environment, free soda's, good food vendors, Strong sense of individualism

Cons

disorganized career ladder, long wait for benefits to kick in,

Advice to Senior Management

get thing organized and up the base line pay a bit

Pros

- You will get geeky Blizz stuff
- Attractive employer( if you are not working in Customer Service )
- Easy job

Cons

- Poor Management decisions
--- poor CS management in general
- Serious issues in internal communication ( getting Information on popular gaming websites first before having them communicated internally )
- low salary, when compared to the average salary for bilingual support
- management is cheating on the core values on a daily basis when it comes to fairness and honesty
- suggestions on processes and policies are unwanted and are having a negative influence on an employee's behaviour rating
- Decisions from the management are made with a "It's sink or swim"-attitude
- "be your manager's best friend to get a promotion"

Advice to Senior Management

The Upper management in California does not have the slightest clue what is going in the customer service department. Mike, get into personal talks with CS employees as you promised 2 years ago and you will find out what's wrong with the company.