Blizzard Entertainment Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

Warm and inviting culture that celebrates your inner geek-- whether that is gaming, role-playing, movies, comics, you name it. Blizzard offers many avenues to level up your skills at Blizzard U. They frequently bring in guest lecturers and have classes in art, programming, and also classes in leadership and management. Fellow colleagues are the best in the world at their craft. I believe that everyone at Blizzard is really trying to make the best game possible for our players. On development teams, there is a good work-life balance and it's rare in the past few years that there is a long run of overtime work.

Cons

Rent in Irvine can be high and options for a social scene can be limited compared to Los Angeles. Just something to consider.

Pros

The Blizzard community is very unique. We are filled with fun, smart, passionate people who care about what we do and the impact we have on our players. The work life balance is amazing - our family has families of their own that we care about. We have celebrations for releases of new games and expansions which involve a champagne shower! In addition, we are taking the entire company to Vegas in March to have a party celebrating all our wins for 2014. The benefits are extremely rich. Health/dental/vision/pet/Autism insurances are available, 401K w/a 20% matching and MUCH MUCH more! First year employees get a total of 5 1/2 weeks off (vacation/sick time/holidays/Christmas Break) and goes up a week the beginning of your 2nd year. Blizzard employees stay a LONG time! Our service awards are unbelievable. At 5 years you get a sword (yes it is real1), ten years you get a shield and twenty years a crown. We set you up for battle!!! The values of the company match my personal values which is huge!

Cons

Compensation is very competitive however, the structure of the comp plan is unlike a typical comp plan. Base + profit sharing + bonuses. It can challenge your annual budget plan, just needs to be more creative!

Pros

There is so much community with this company it is hard to select just a few pros. Very much a company that tries to balance work and home life with healthy lifestyles.

Cons

As with any company there will be cons no matter what department you work in. The grass isn't always greener. The one con would be for the folks who don't get to enjoy any type of holiday due to needing to be there for the customers.

Pros

Outstanding place and colleagues to work with and expose your ideas. We iterate a lot and the core value "Every voice matters" is taken seriously.

Cons

Workload is growing up fast but they don't invest in off sites leaving the work life balance damaged. The same 3 resources of 5 years a go are the only ones office with triple the work.

Pros

Everyone who works at Blizzard is incredibly passionate about gaming and Blizzard IPs. Work hard and it will pay off. Great benefits and employee perks.

Cons

long hours and the work/life balance isn't great depending on what team you are on.

Pros

- Industry leader in gaming - Great work culture and a focus on work/life balance - Incredible awards for years of service - Numerous employee appreciation events - Vacation/Time-Off is very competitive compared to other companies in the industry

Cons

- Parts of the company foster a mentality of leaving and then coming back to get to the job level that you want to be versus providing the opportunity to learn and grow - Career growth and skills matrices aren't clearly defined - Many decisions are made by committee, which can lead to drawn out deadlines and a lack of precision in execution.

Pros

great team and there are a lot of perks to enjoy

Cons

the downside is there's is little work life balance

Pros

This is now a production house, which could be viewed as a pro to some people as development decisions are now hammered down and owned by producers. So things get done faster now, but at the cost of development team morale and overall game quality. Blizzard was a fantastic place to work pre-Titan days. Iteration and dedication to the design and player experience was number one priority and the whole company was behind it. Blizzard does have a pretty good work/life balance although some teams crunch way more than others. Blizzard offers decent benefits but does not compete with other top-tier companies in terms of vacation time (It takes 8 years to get 1 more week of vacation). It also has great healthcare (even though it seems to change every year) packages.

Cons

After project Titan failed, things changed dramatically at Blizzard. It went from being a design house to a production house. Now we have producers and business people dictating the direction and scope for games instead of the developers themselves designing great new features for their game. I've been to too many meetings where producers outnumbered actual game developers, which has created a culture of micro-management and over-lording. The producers don't do a good job of listening to the developers and what the developers think are best for the project and instead dictate from on high based on conversations with business and marketing people about what should be done next for each game. The company is very risk averse at this point and the executives are unwilling to layout a vision for the future (or maybe just don't know what we should be doing). Unless it is a competitive PvP game, the company upper management feels hostile towards other styles of games that it could be successful in.

Pros

Great place to push your boundaries, experiment and succeed! My manager (senior lead in my department) gave comprehensive and ongoing feedback and expressed recognition when goals were exceeded. Salary and benefits are competitive for the local market (in Latin America, apparently not the same for California based colleagues). Team oriented culture, a lot of autonomy and opportunities to take your ideas to the next level. Very PR focused company, and a great company to do comms and PR. Incredible passion for what they do, their products, games, and company history. Very talented people in the Game Development teams and international publishing teams (Marketing, PR, Community, Biz Dev, etc) Work life balance is decent My team leader and senior regional leader encouraged team members to be bold and not to be afraid of trying new things. It's a great way to do 'creative and bold' marketing and PR. Robust onboarding process. A lot of trust from middle management in the regions.

Cons

Interview process, hiring and oboarding can be tough for international workers where Blizzard does not have robust physical operations. Mine took over 6 moths for example. Company is improving in this regard and dealing with this growing pains however. Small teams and flat structures... this is usually a plus! BUT in this case that puts serious limits on your options to grow and be promoted, specially in PR and Comms team, unless you relocate overseas. A lot of confusion on what "Global" and "U.S" functions are, as an American company both terms are usually confused, particularly when developing "Global" plans and activities that in any other company would be considered solely "U.S. focused". North America (aka Global) teams while well intentioned, lacks understanding of other markets dynamics and global trends. Several managers and even directors in senior positions (mostly in HQ) got there after many years in the company but lack advanced management skills or even technical skills gained through previous work in other leading global cutting-edge companies... IMHO talent/skills/exp. in middle management can be improved. I used to do a mental exercise back when I was at Blizzard: if we were at a meeting and at the table we had the "Global (Marketing, PR, Communications, Biz Dev) Manager" from Blizzard (or one of our franchises) and at the same table we had the same/equivalent roles from other leading tech/digital companies (Amazon, Disney, Netflix, AirBnB, LinkedIn, Universal, Facebook, Apple, etc.) ... would we (Blizzard) have the best or at least top 5 best qualified and brilliant professional in the table? Most of the times I answered myself: I highly doubt it (not even close).

Pros

The employees are great to work with; they are definitely the strongest part of the company. Work is challenging dealing with so many teams with large projects. More so now with the a lot of the tech shifting to new tech (kubernetes, cloud, containers, etc.) while trying to maintain the old stuff. Good work life balance; they actively try to make sure people aren't worked too hard. To be fair, some of this stuff probably depends on the team you are working on. Prior to COVID they had lots of events and food for employees that were always a great time. They've done a great job pivoting during COVID and empowering employees to continue to get stuff done while also making sure employees maintain a good work/life balance. Overall I would say there is a positive outlook for the future based on the new games coming out soon and how they have been pivoting toward modern infrastructure/development the last couple years.

Cons

Some teams could use some more resources and it shows. Dealing with a lot of legacy stuff and lots of teams things sometimes move slow. Pay could be a little better to be more competitive. Especially if you aren't getting a promotion.. even high performing employees don't usually get reflective raises. Granted the last couple years have been "down" years for Blizzard particularly. Overall the company is struggling to maintain their history of quality while moving towards a faster release cycle to keep up with the times.