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Little Things That Irk You VI: The Rage Awakens

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    Took a while to read more but I still find myself in the same place: their firing (there were two and I’m still struggling to work out why only one is getting most of the attention) enables and empowers exactly the wrong people and I don’t think it should have been done on that alone. If you allow your audience to hold you to ransom, that’s exactly what they’ll do, and we’re seeing that attempted in many places.

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      I was wondering about that, too.

      Even if she was fired because some things she did added up to her dismissal, all those Redditors believed they had caused her to get fired. Next time they won't hold back, either.

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        Originally posted by Family Fry View Post
        The fact that two people lost their jobs over those tweets is incredible especially in 2018 the year of our orange overlord, you know the guy who calls mexicans rapists.
        Again, I do think the sacking was excessive. No arguments here.

        What I find funny though is even when she said this about total ***** death, last month.

        THAT didn’t get her sacked.
        Apparently that flew under the radar, like people didn't really notice it at the time. If it had blown up like this, maybe the developer would've been reprimanded.

        This is why I think there's more going on behind the scenes than what we're seeing, like some kind of formal reprimand/warning procedure. We only see the results.

        Originally posted by randombs View Post
        Even if she was fired because some things she did added up to her dismissal, all those Redditors believed they had caused her to get fired. Next time they won't hold back, either.
        True, but if you were that boss, what would you do?

        Like I'm sure every time a black CEO is disgraced in the public eye, racists on Reddit jump for joy. I'm sure every time a woman is convicted of sexual harrassment, MRAs online post about that everywhere.

        Now of course, I'm not suggesting either of those developers did something akin to the above, I mean it was a Twitter spat of all things. However, if you put yourself in the shoes of their boss, they're dealing with a member of staff who has insulted a valued customer. You can't condone those things because twats on the internet will celebrate the outcome, or you'll never reprimand staff for anything ever.

        Again, let me be clear, it seems crazy that these developers were fired over a Twitter spat. I have to assume it's related to matters over which we don't have visibility.

        Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
        Took a while to read more but I still find myself in the same place: their firing (there were two and I’m still struggling to work out why only one is getting most of the attention) enables and empowers exactly the wrong people and I don’t think it should have been done on that alone. If you allow your audience to hold you to ransom, that’s exactly what they’ll do, and we’re seeing that attempted in many places.
        It's getting attention because the guy, in this case, was a writer on the original Guild Wars.

        This is also what I mean by how the articles are reductionist; I've been part of that fanbase since 2005, and this comes in the midst of a complicated situation where many fans have recently started up playing the first game (either new, or just trying it again) and one of the chief criticisms made of Guild Wars 2 is that the storytelling is not as good as GW1. This is precisely the climate in which the playerbase is asking questions/making suggestions about the storytelling in-game.

        This guy worked on GW1 (the other developer had only worked for ANet for a year), so the community is somewhat bitter to see him go.
        Last edited by Asura; 09-07-2018, 14:12.

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          Originally posted by Asura View Post
          True, but if you were that boss, what would you do?.
          I'm still yet to see something that looks like a fireable offense. So to answer the question, I would do exactly what I have done with a couple of my employees - ask that they clean up their Twitter or set it to private. As you say yourself, this seems crazy based on the information that we have. So the answer to your question whether it matches mine or not should at least be: not this.

          Edit: to reply to your edit, if this guy is the one with all the experience and he also got fired, then shouldn't most of the press be focussed on him and why it's wrong that he got fired? He seems to be a footnote in this story. That's not fully making sense for me.
          Last edited by Dogg Thang; 09-07-2018, 14:14.

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            Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
            I'm still yet to see something that looks like a fireable offense. So to answer the question, I would do exactly what I have done with a couple of my employees - ask that they clean up their Twitter or set it to private. As you say yourself, this seems crazy based on the information that we have. So the answer to your question whether it matches mine or not should at least be: not this.

            Edit: to reply to your edit, if this guy is the one with all the experience and he also got fired, then shouldn't most of the press be focussed on him and why it's wrong that he got fired? He seems to be a footnote in this story.
            I too think it was an overreaction, but consider it this way.

            You're a boss at Mercedes. You've just sponsored Top Gear. One of your car designers has a spat on Twitter in which they call the new lead presenter of Top Gear sexist, when most people reading the spat would suggest there was little reason to make that assertion. Then you find out six months ago that they made a post celebrating the death of a popular F1 driver because they supported a cultural cause that they found offensive. One of your other employees wades in and supports this person in their assertion re: sexism.

            Now as the boss, you're well-aware that this female employee, working in a male-dominated industry, has reason to at-times believe her abilities are questioned purely because she's a woman. It's not entirely far-fetched; it does happen.

            That's pretty analogous to what has happened.

            What do you do?

            Perhaps you ask the employee to delete the offending info, remove their comment that they're working at the company, and issue an apology. What if they refuse? What do you do then? Plus, even if she does, people aren't necessarily going to forget that she works for you. The two employees might want to stand firm by their assertion, and not issue an apology, arguing that a fuss is being kicked up over nothing.

            This all comes down to something more fundamental, I think, which is this: should employees be held accountable by their employer for what they say online, if they list their employer in their profile?

            I think some people think "no", some people think "yes", and I suspect both of those groups struggle to understand the other.

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              Hmmm... you're having to make some real jumps to get to this scenario, saying it's pretty analogous but then having to leap to speculation to actually get there (what if they refuse?). Which is funny given you start with the sponsoring of Top Gear, a show which took actual physical violence for someone to finally get fired - was that an intentional jumping off point or a happy accident?

              But seriously, your post yet again is centred on her and this is genuinely a piece of the puzzle I'm missing - why is your post about defending her firing when TWO people got fired?

              Edit: By the way, one other piece of info I don't have here (and I guess I could look it up) is about the comments about this dead YouTuber. Were they valid in any way? I know nothing about him.
              Last edited by Dogg Thang; 09-07-2018, 14:48.

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                Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                But seriously, your post yet again is centred on her and this is genuinely a piece of the puzzle I'm missing - why is your post about defending her firing when TWO people got fired?
                I don't see why you're saying that. I mentioned the second person in my post, inasmuch as they seemed to be involved.

                Their firing perplexes me even more, though, just due to their length of service at the company. This is why I think something else has gone on.

                And yeah, the dead YouTuber was a big figure in the recent gaming movement we don't talk about.

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                  Originally posted by Asura View Post
                  Their firing perplexes me even more, though, just due to their length of service at the company.
                  This and also, from what I can gather (am I right?), he just seems to have jumped in to support or defend her rather than being part of the initial issue. It's seems so weird that there isn't a bigger thing made over his firing - it feels like the bigger deal. But yeah, you mentioned him but the issue you present is what she did, not what he did. I guess that's all the info we both have but, yeah, something feels weird there.

                  If what she said about the YouTuber has some basis in reality (and it seems it does), that doesn't seem like much of a big deal either unless you're one to believe that we can only say nice things about dead people no matter who they are. Unless again, this is a PR thing about the power of the community who might not like it rather than actually being something truly wrong, and that's a dangerous thing and comes back to my initial thinking that enabling or empowering this type of thinking is a mistake.

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                    Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                    This and also, from what I can gather (am I right?), he just seems to have jumped in to support or defend her rather than being part of the initial issue.
                    From what I've read of his tweets (god it feels so ridiculous when I type that)...

                    Y'know, I had a longer post on-the-go, but I've just got bored of this. It's just a total ****-up from start to finish.

                    At the time, when I read into it (literally as it was going on) it seemed much more straight-forward. An employee of a company said something that was construed as offensive to a favoured fan, another employee defended the remark, and they were fired for it. It just reads like a calamity of errors.
                    Last edited by Asura; 09-07-2018, 15:52.

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                      Seems I built a fire and walked off as it burned with this. I’ll have a back read and catch up.
                      Last edited by fishbowlhead; 09-07-2018, 15:56.

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                        I was about to write a massive post too, but it's got nothing to do with me.

                        It's just a good lesson to look before you tweet.

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                          I do think, at least on this occasion, the bigger story is the guy who was sacked for backing up his female colleague, he had been working at that team for a LONG time, standing alongside her got him fired (or he resigned about her being fired) either way he lost his job because of it, absolutely no doubt about that.

                          Let’s just say even if she was trouble behind the scenes and the other guy was as well. The community think they have caused it, subsequently they now know they have some power over those developers, which ultimately may not even be the real reason but they will go with that anyway.

                          All this week would tell me if I was a Guild Wars 2 developer on twitter, lock your profile immediately.
                          If I was the boss I would have spoken to them both about it and possibly suggested locking their profiles or logging off twitter for an extended period of time. All you are telling your staff by firing those two is it doesn’t matter who you are or how long you have worked for us you had better toe the line with the community no matter how toxic they are towards you.

                          Another thing games developers get a bad rep for being quite closed and secretive, something like this happens it just closes off more than it opens.

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                            Originally posted by Family Fry View Post
                            Another thing games developers get a bad rep for being quite closed and secretive, something like this happens it just closes off more than it opens.
                            As a longtime observer of the industry, this isn't going to move things much. The one which did was the Assassin's Creed "too hard to render women" fiasco. That was the one which got many publishers to audit who, on their payroll, was public and who wasn't, and be more guarded on what people say to the press.

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                              Jetlag is a mofo.

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                                Yeah, I travelled to Sheffield last week and my body is only just catching up.

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