Blizzard Entertainment Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Awesome culture. Profit sharing checks are nice. Great projects to work on.

Cons – A little too much micro management. Too conservative and slow to stay at the top forever.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't be afraid to make a mistake.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – The culture is to die for. You get to bring your dog to work!
The benefits and bonuses are a definite plus
It's like a dysfunctional family, which is cool
They gave me a very nice severance package when they laid me off?

Cons – The middle man really needs to be cut out of this place. What do the producers even do?
The people who have been here for 15+ years get crazy bonuses (they may have changed this after I left, I have no idea) and will basically just never be let go even if they're not the best at their job
It's so obvious this place is suffering from small company syndrome and are still trying to cling onto that mentality, but it just doesn't work
You've got to know someone to get a job that is worthwhile. It's all about who you know, not how great your work is.
They expect Blizzard to be your life. During big projects I had 30 hour workdays and then 2 hours of sleep and back to another 30 hour workday. This happened constantly when there was a deadline to meet.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't micromanage, but don't under manage either. My department was like a swinging pendulum when it came to management so I never knew what to expect.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – It's fun to work on titles that everyone has heard of and knows about. For the first year, it seems like a honeymoon for most people. It used to be a fun, rapidly growing company that gave tons of opportunities to anyone who had the initiative to grab them.

Cons – Blizzard is an old boys' club that favors the people that have been there forever, even if they're horrible at their job. There is a huge compensation difference between the people that were there pre-WoW versus post-WoW... often orders of magnitude difference 3x, 4x, 5x) for the same role. The base salaries don't have a huge difference, but the twice-per-year bonuses vary extremely widely. It's not common for a new hire (Sr. level or above) to have a bonus target of 20% their base salary, whereas a pre-WoW employee at the same level may have that target at 100% or more of their base.

Blizzard now also suffers from a ton of red tape that makes it difficult to innovate and be creative. It seems like everyone who has wanted to build their kingdom has already done so, so many things that shouldn't need approvals now need several from different departments.

Also, working 80+ hour weeks is part of the DNA here... so definitely come in expecting that.

Advice to Senior Management – Greater transparency is needed into the performance management and compensation processes.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Blizzard Entertainment as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Fun place to work, lots of perks, everyone was really nice

Cons – Hard job, players could be very rude, players could be very inappropriate

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Fun environment, decent management. Can't complain about the benefits either. It was fun when I first started and continued to be fun until the layoffs in February.

Cons – I was lucky enough to stay, but the culture shifted. They are also very few women working there, and as the only girl on my team, I felt excluded from a lot of activities, and I felt that some of my team's behavior was unprofessional. The culture changed from producing quality to work, to just producing.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep a closer eye on your TMs. Don't necessarily micromanage, but make sure they are still behaving in respectable/professional manners.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than a year

Pros – Working at Blizzard is undoubtedly fun. Out of the thousands of employees there will be awesome people that you can clique with and create your own niche. For me it has been connecting with the few people that "get it", are highly visionary, and don't put up with the corporate nonsense. These are life-long connections that shouldn't be taken for granted. The on-campus gym is another fabulous place for this.

Cons – This is purely from a QA perspective, but from what I gather, there similarly unfortunate organizational practices in other departments.

Too much of an old boys club thing going on in management. I believe this stems from several core reasons. For one, there are very few valid metrics in evaluating performance, so both personnel and project management become a trust/friendship/lets-just-have-a-good-time orgy that favors conformity and obedience over truly amazing work. QA in the game industry is very behind other software testing, so the standards are already quite low. Second, I think stems from the types of personalities within the organization. Gamers hiring other gamers turns into a very incestuous fear-driven, sometimes even anti-social, approach to solving problems. To be agile, one must first dig into themselves, challenging who you are and what you. Insecurity acts as a barrier.

I am on a very awesome team that is trying to incorporate software testing practices into our daily routines, but management does more to impede our progress than to empower. Why should we accept sub-par wages when we're the ones trying to up the level of professionalism?

Advice to Senior Management – Pay attention to what teams are cutting edge and will be defining the standard of the department. Blizzard QA is better than many other game companies, but that doesn't mean it should l

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – In my experience - Every Voice Does Matter
Freedom to be creative with solutions and changes to the environment while supporting the culture.
Crazy passionate, hard working and smart people to work with.
True belief and passion in the products and experiences we provide.
Highest level of care to all employees development in the department.

Cons – Tenure often trumps external knowledge/education even in cases when those methods are proven standards.

Advice to Senior Management – Be sure to show excitement and added involvement so autonomy is not confused with sink/swim.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great benefits: sick leave, insurance, paid time off, on-site gym and break rooms. Free subscription to games, lots of memorabilia, and comfortable/casual work environment. Relatively easy to get along with coworkers as team building exercises were pretty commonplace.

Cons – Increasing level of micromanagement: heavily monitored breaks from desk (even to go to the bathroom) and constantly changing expectations as far as productivity, customer satisfaction, and other criteria. Possibility of being placed on deep overnight shift, although if that's your thing, it works out.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – From the very top, Blizzard is committed to its employees. They have great perks and great policies.

Cons – The middle management is completely broken. There are no decision makers, no delegators, and no trust. Endless chains of meetings are the normal, and nobody who is allowed to make a decision has any motivation to do anything.

Advice to Senior Management – Put the focus on creating things, instead of keeping the focus on trying to create things. Actively pursue and reward people who are contributing, not based on their supervisors but their peers. Assume your supervisors and directors are misleading you to make themselves look good, because at least several are.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Blizzard Entertainment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – always feel excited while working at Blizzard

Cons – Senior leaderships don't listen suggestions from lower levels