Reeeeeeee! -Blizzard staff
I think being expected to be in the office 3 days a week is completely fair.If you live in the area where the office is located, having that in person collaboration is super helpful to getting things done and furthering the goals of the team.People just being lazy and entitled as always.
They're absolutely doing this knowing that a good chunk of their development team will quit as a result. Having people voluntarily quit is a hell of a lot cheaper than having to pay severance benefits to those you lay off. Also, having worked two different dev jobs that require people to come into the office PART time, I can tell ya'll first hand that Blizzard is gonna have a HARD time finding quality developers to replace all the people who do quit. This is legitimately diabolical and will absolutely result in a huge downshift in quality for all their games.
They need to justify the overhead of paying for the campus that barely anyone visited during Covid. Doubt they'll sell the campuses and just stay with the main corporate building. Besides, according to the devs their best inspirations were those off the cuff water fountain meetings. Either way, the workers were foolish to think that WFK was going to be a permanent thing. Other than corporate saving money and keeping an eye on their employees. Who knows maybe they're keeping up with all the other companies in the area forcing their employees to come back.
They will make exceptions for over performing employees. I was WFH way before Covid at ABK. I'm sure some will get to stay home since they have proven they can do it, still out perform others, and they can't be replaced.
I think Hybrid is the best approach. 3 or 4 days wfh. Friday everyone in office. Team lunches and happy hours after work. It's good to see people in person once in a while.
Where I work, we are hybrid 3 day office 2 day WFH but that was for only the people who were unreplaceable and those that were replaceable they were promptly either promoted to dead-end jobs where growth and promotion isn't happening or shipped overseas for cheaper labor.