Blizzard Entertainment reviews

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.

- 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.