> The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says.
It really is the element in the complaint that stands out.
First, pay and promotion discrimination are widespread and are less shocking. Acceptable? No. I like DFEH's authority to go hard after companies to get this addressed, but I somehow shrug and say "Let the lawsuit parade begin. Ok, Blizzrad can go first."
Second, some of the anecdotes in the Blizzard complaint come off as problematic but not shocking. "Cube crawls" which seem like "get drunk at work" parties that led to sexual harassment: getting drunk at work is a management-stupid recipe for trouble. DFEH Lawsuit worth? Less obvious.
Third, the named executive who was a creep comes off as a problem for that creep. He was let go quietly and management didn't otherwise change. It's hard to tell if this is worse than average for creep executives. Lawsuit worthy by DFEH? Unlikely on its own: management acted to address the issue.
But the suicide. The victim was exploited, harassed, and abused as an employee. The complaint insinuates that her traveling coworker had demeaning sex toys on hand. It's not obvious if she was the intended subject of the coworker toys, but it is implied. Her suicide seems to have been preventable and, therefore, tragic. More than anything else it suggests that the other elements of the complaint led her to a feeling of hopelessness in her work environment. It is not a stretch to imagine that she was not alone in that feeling as a result of that environment.
RIP, victim. The lawsuit will bring insufficient justice for you and negligible peace for your family. Perhaps it will begin some broader change.
Absolute degeneracy. I don’t understand how a professional workplace could devolve to this. I have trouble talking about non work matters for more than a few minutes, How do things get this far?
How does it happen? There are still people throughout this thread downplaying this and making it seem like it's not a big deal. People have been bringing up the issues of sexual harassment in our industry, but folks like James Damore have a lot of support in believing it's just that women are just less interested in technology and don't suffer from any discrimination. You've got literal incels on this site threatening violence and getting support for blaming their problems on feminism. The signs of this behavior are everywhere and women (in particular) have been talking about it for ages. Why has it been so easy to write them off? Efforts to stop these sorts of environments will get companies labeled as "going woke". To me this Activision / Blizzard situation is inevitable when so many of our communities are willfully blind to these behaviors and have been for decades. What isn't being reported on?
