One of World of Warcraft Classic's lead developers was fired by Blizzard after protesting an employee evaluation policy, according to a report by Bloo

Blizzard fires WoW Classic lead after he protests employee evaluation policy

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2023-01-24 01:00:10

One of World of Warcraft Classic's lead developers was fired by Blizzard after protesting an employee evaluation policy, according to a report by Bloomberg (opens in new tab) .

Brian Birmingham, who is the lead engineer on WoW Classic, refused to give an employee a low evaluation in order to meet a quota introduced by Blizzard in 2021. The process, called "stack ranking," requires managers to give about 5% of their employees a low performance evaluation to fit on a bell curve of relative performance. According to Activision Blizzard sources who spoke to Bloomberg, a low rating reduces an employee's profit-sharing bonus and "could hamper them from receiving raises or promotions in the near future."

In an email to staff expressing his frustration with the policy, Birmingham wrote that Blizzard executive leadership justified the policy by claiming it will "squeeze the bottom-most performers as a way to make sure everyone continues to grow." He also said that he was asked to keep the policy secret from employees.

In practice, Birmingham believes that stack ranking "encourages competition between employees, sabotage of one another’s work, a desire for people to find low-performing teams that they can be the best-performing worker on, and ultimately erodes trust and destroys creativity."