Q&A With Blizzard Entertainment Employees

Whatevers clever

Your favourite clothes! Obviously be clean and tidy, but however you feel most comfortable!

There is no clear cut path. Its every dog for themselves scenario. Rat racing is rewarded.

Extremely.

If you come in as an associate, you might be able to get promoted within a couple years if you work harder than everyone else in your team, but getting past that point can be a gamble regardless of performance due to budget constraints.

Excellent. I haven't interacted with any disenfranchised employees. Outlook feels great, and staff are engaged.

Generally high because people are passionate about working here. But a frequent complaint is not being paid fairly compared to other companies. (There is a trade off for a fun culture, team events, etc. You don't come here to get great paycheck, you come here to enjoy your job.)

Good on game teams, bad on tech teams

1-2 hours on phone, 1 interview day on site, with prompt feedback cycle.

Varies. Can take up to a few months to get a response to an application. Can take several interviews for a position (about three). Each interview is about 30-60 minutes.

All day

Be yourself, demonstrate knowledge and enthusiasm. Most importantly, demonstrate to iterate on design ideas with interviewers, even if you don't know the problem space well, we're trying to get a feel for how to work with you, and your ability to adapt and pick up new ideas, not a comprehensive analysis of existing skills.

Be qualified. Show your enthusiasm. Don't trash-talk former employers. Be respectful of your interviewers, even if they will be your subordinates. Don't panic or rush your answers. Be willing to say "I don't know; I'd have to do some research/thinking." Do not lie.

Use buzz words

Does perform background check.

No

Background check yes, although that may depend on the position. If you cannot pass a drug test, you should resolve your personal problems before applying.

It is available as necessary.

You can’t

That depends on the department/team and your position. If you are non-management in QA or CS, you won't be able to work from home. However, I have seen managers, producers, and engineers allowed to do it, but only for one-off situations. You're probably not going to find many, if any, positions that let you work from home every day. Even Morhaime comes to the office.

Doing the best work of my career.

Diablo 4

Great brand, great product and amazing co workers. Blizzcon is always something to look forward to every year along with all the amazing employee events throughout the year!

Depends on how fast they need to backfill

Next day.

Depends on dept

Likely same-day or overnight.

Casual

Most people wear an untucked t-shirt and whatever kind of pants, but some still wear office casual or fancier if they want. You can wear pretty much anything that isn't inappropriate in public.

The koolaid is not worth it

Ask a lot of questions, take a lot of notes, listen and observe. Learn how and why something is currently done the way it is.

Very helpful. Everyone is happy to answer questions, etc.

Overwhelmingly friendly and helpful.

Staff are given a generous amount of time to secure an alternative position via the internal mobility process, and of they are not successful, or opt for redundancy, they receive a competitive redundancy package.

If you leave voluntarily, you can put in your two weeks notice, say your farewells, pack up your desk, etc. If you are fired, you called into a meeting and informed. You are not allowed back into your building. Your stuff will be packed up for you. You won't get a chance to say goodbye unless you have personal communication channels with your coworkers. It's highly unlikely you will be fired without seeing it coming, because if you are doing something wrong, you will probably be given a generous amount of time and warnings to correct your behavior. Layoffs for budget reasons are uncommon.

Be an engaged engineer, and comfortable to be surrounded by and learn from some of the industries finest.

Aside from obvious requirements like understanding your coding languages, you should have good communications skills, a desire to understand the features you are building, humility, and a thirst to keep learning new things. Keep your code easy for others to understand, even if that mean making it less compact. Remember that your team is there to help you, including QA. Be willing to answer questions for your QA team. Remember that just because it's not a written feature requirement, a good user experience is key, and if QA writes bugs about a bad user experience, those are still very valid problems, regardless of user story acceptance criteria. Be willing to follow team standards/coding practices. Work hard to create a polished, professional product, even if it's only an internal tool.

Enjoy self-respect, enjoy your work on projects that matter, great working environment and hours, and get paid well.

Because you love their games and because the office culture (casual dress code, toys all over everyone's cubicles, people passionate about games and other nerdy hobbies, etc.) It's a very fun place to work and people typically care about their job and the company. Be advised, most people are very liberal, but if you can keep your coworkers from bickering about politics or wear headphones, it's usually not that annoying. Also, the women-only programs are practicing straight-up discrimination, but those are the sort of things you have to put up with at many companies these days.

Intensive but very fair.

Average

2 phone interviews, 1 on-site site with 4 interview sessions, meeting roughly 10-15 people through the process. I received feedback promptly the following day.

Months

Very favourably.

Easy

Hours are somewhat flexible. Work/production schedule has a lot of built-in flexibility.

Not

Generous opportunity to work on amazing projects with a great career outlook.

Inclusive and fun

With dignity.

Very poorly

Depends on your department. Technology is very innovative.

Not

i've been with blizzard for more than 10 years, i trust mike morhaime. i contribute a lot of the company's success to him and his leadership. i can feel that this company trying to treat its employees well and i believe it mainly comes from the leaderships conscious choice.

He is a down to earth, accessible man. Unfortunately, a lot of others are mismanaging things.

Amazing - it's one of the best places to work because the company (and each respective team) is very cognizant of the need for folks to have a life outside of work. Yes, there are times where we need to crunch but they are very generous with us working from home or taking days off for a mental recharge.

Probably great for those at the top. Non existent for most.