Over a 150 Riot Games Employees Stage Walkout Over Forced Arbitration & Sexist Culture

[dalekphalm]

On 5/21/2019 at 9:37 AM, Stefan Payne said:

No, I mean the people who are up to no good and only do bad stuff, have the mindset of a Daenerys Tagerian and are total egomaniacs...

Sounds exactly like sexist assholes who are taking advantage of other people and making it worse for all other employees.

[ThePD]

Riot Games had an executive that was suspended without pay after reports of him nut slapping, grabbing the butts and farting in the faces of his subordinates. There has been some weird stuff to come out of the Riot Games studio that makes this walkout seem pretty legitimate. This occured in December of 2018.

[Commodus]

29 minutes ago, comander said:

You could make the argument that these people care more about making a point (or vying for social approval among their in-group) than they do about the reputation of the company among the external population. 

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of toxic stuff in the game industry at large. HOW you address it matters though. If you had cancer, you could try targeted surgery OR you could do chemotherapy. Targeted approaches generally are better from a "not killing yourself" perspective. The analogy holds as well, many innocuous cells also die.

 

What's wrong with trying to make a point?  If you see clear patterns of sexism in a company, the only acceptable option is to fight it in whatever ways you can.  If the leadership isn't budging on reasonable requests for change, you look into options like walkouts.

 

And frankly: screw the perception of the company until it sets things right.  It had multiple chances to make amends and refused them; it's not entitled to look good after that.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, comander said:

If an activist type protests, and the company (or even on project) shuts down, REAL PEOPLE pay the price for that person's selfishness, aggrandized sense of self-worth and myopia. The desire to mold everything to one's will is outright narcissism and shows a lack of humility. 

Do you suggest that if a company is violating ethics, it should continue to do so unfettered? The alternative to "just quit" won't solve the problem. There are too many software devs that need work that you quitting won't solve the problem, because someone else will just put up with a situation that ethically you shouldn't have to.

1 minute ago, comander said:

Revolutionary activity has a history of bad consequences... which are paid for by someone else. 

Think radical leftists bringing forth the French revolution... or the Russian revolution or... 

This part is getting quite off topic.

[Commodus]

5 minutes ago, comander said:

If an activist type protests, and the company (or even on project) shuts down, REAL PEOPLE pay the price for that person's selfishness, aggrandized sense of self-worth and myopia. The desire to mold everything to one's will is outright narcissism and shows a lack of humility. 

Revolutionary activity has a history of bad consequences... which are paid for by someone else. 

Think radical leftists bringing forth the French revolution... or the Russian revolution or... 

I'm baffled.  A company knowingly permits a toxic, sexist culture, and you're more concerned about the company's existence than the trauma it might be inflicting on its workers?  Hell no.  The innocent people will very likely find new jobs, and the guilty ones will hopefully mend their ways; I will not shed a tear if a company's behavior is so bad that the entire operation collapses.  Protesting sexism isn't selfish or myopic -- it's called taking a stand when you see something wrong.  Selfishness is staying quiet, putting mindless trust in mechanisms you know don't work, focusing on saving your skin instead of taking a risk to right an injustice.

 

The hilarious thing is that you're actually trying to condemn the French revolution just for existing, as if the monarchy was going to politely step aside.  There were horrendous acts committed during the revolution, but don't think for a second that the French would have been better off if the public had just submitted polite letters to the king.

[Commodus]

35 minutes ago, comander said:

I'm concerned about the innocent people who did no wrong who might suffer. 

Is it fair if someone who did no wrong loses their job because a project gets turned down or the company goes bankrupt?

I thought you'd say that.  But are they really innocent if the perpetrators are still at the company, inflicting suffering on women who come into the company in the future?

 

Yes, it's fair.  Completely.  A company is not entitled to exist simply because many of its people aren't guilty.  Enron had plenty of well-meaning workers, but it deserved to go bust because of its behavior.  You want a company to survive a sexism scandal?  Then encourage it to fire everyone it has good reason to believe is guilty.  Change systemic practices that punish people who come forward.  Be better -- don't just say that you deserve to stay in business no matter what you do.

 

35 minutes ago, comander said:

It depends on HOW you protest it. 
If someone killed your kid, went on a plane with 200 other people and you shot down the plane with an RPG, you'd be a monster, not a hero.

Of course you'd be a monster in that case.  But staging a walkout is not killing 200 other people.  For that matter, implying that all revolutions could happen peacefully is... naive.  The French revolution is not the Glorious Revolution.  And do you think Americans would be independent if they'd just petitioned King George or ignored the British government's orders?  Alexander Hamilton even wrote a treatise showing exactly why there needed to be armed resistance instead of taking the passive, submissive, conformist approach you prefer.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, comander said:

What value do you place on false positives relative to false negatives?

If someone feels like they were acted upon in such a fashion while they were innocent, they should pursue court action against their former employee in the form of wrongful termination.

 

However, if the company conducts an investigation, and has reasonably strong suspicions that said employee was a bad actor (for example, conducting sexist actions against another coworker), then that person needs to be terminated from employment.

1 hour ago, comander said:

If you excised 100 bad actors and 1 innocent person suffers is that OK?
If you excised 10 bad actors and 1 innocent person suffers is that OK?
If you excised 1 bad actor and 1 innocent person suffers is that OK?
If you excised 1 bad actor and 10 innocent people suffer is that OK?
If you excised 1 bad actor and 100 innocent people suffer is that OK?

These are all very hypothetical numbers.

1 hour ago, comander said:

Where do you draw the line? If the first figure (100:1) is deemed acceptable, is there a reasonable level of precision for a set of actions?

I draw the line at action against systemic issues. Action needs to take place. We cannot let these issues continue. If an innocent person gets caught up? That's horrible. And that person should use the full extent of the law to punish their employer for acting inappropriately and firing an innocent person.

1 hour ago, comander said:

At what level does fervor become recklessness? 

That was done at first. While the American revolution was imperfect, it was principally fought by soldiers. It is SUBSTANTIALLY different from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I'd suggest that's a somewhat romanticized view of the American Revolutionary War. The British combatants were definitely soldiers, for the most part. The Americans mobilized thousands of soldiers - but many were not soldiers until the day they decided to fight for their country.

 

And civilian casualties definitely still occurred.

1 hour ago, comander said:

With that said, if the world ended up with basically a BIGGER Canada and no US (that's the likely outcome of what would've happened without the American revolution), it wouldn't be the end of world. 

As a Canadian, I must interject. As much as I'm an extremely patriotic Canadian, who not only loves his country, but also his Monarch, the Queen Elizabeth II - I'm not a fool. I fully understand that Canada - as it exists today - likely wouldn't exist as an independent sovereign nation, had the American War for Independence not happened.

 

Had the British Empire kept it's hold over the US, and her resources (both natural resources as well as people), the world would be a very different place.

 

Would it be a bad world to live in? Hell if I know. But one of the reasons why former colonies like Canada and Australia could have a peaceful transition to independence was because of what happened in America.

 

Would Canada eventually still become independent? Perhaps. But it likely would have taken far longer to happen, and it might not have been so much in Canada's favour.

[dalekphalm]

11 hours ago, comander said:

What do you estimate the odds of success are?

I’m not a lawyer so how would I know this?

11 hours ago, comander said:

REASONABLY strong is the operative phrase here. It's effectively impossible to have a 0% false positive rate which is why I asked the next question... 

Not sure what your point is here. Because there’s a chance of a false positive, do nothing?

 

if we followed that rule, there would be no laws, since enforcement might include innocent people. 

 

Thats why we have laws and mechanisms in place to address false accusations, false convictions, etc. 

11 hours ago, comander said:

I think you misunderstood. I had asked as to what the appropriate odds ratio would be for a given set of actions. 

At some point between ∞:1 and 1:∞ there's an optimal TruePositive:FalsePositive ratio given your own personal value system. If I had to guess, I would say that (while it depends on the circumstances and the punishment involved) my own would be something like 100:1 to 200:1. 

Again, I’m not going to speculate on hypothetical numbers. 

11 hours ago, comander said:

If you lower the bar low enough (e.g. Bob looked at Sally for 5.32 seconds, the company policy is that 5 seconds is deemed excess eye contact and thus sexual harassment), at some point you'll end up having EVERYONE selected as an offender(including Sally), even if their behavior was factually innocuous (which I define as a false positive).

Let’s please deal with real situations. Nobody got fired because they looked at a woman for 5 seconds (unless they did this every day for years after being repeatedly told to stop).

 

If such a scenario happened, Bob would sue the fuck out of the company and win. 

11 hours ago, comander said:

The opposite extreme is a case where the bar is extremely high and effectively no one is selected irrespective of what happened. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic
Essentially pick your point on the curve (and yes, I recognize that the ideal is to have a perfect prediction - we aren't there yet, I crunch numbers for a living, I WISH THERE WAS A PERFECT ALGORITHM). 

"systemic issues" is vague. I'm willing to bet that 100% of people have had negative thoughts at some point. That's systemic. Should all of humanity be nuked? I'd be willing to be you think that's too extreme. What about systemic actions which don't bother 99.9% of people but greatly bother 0.1% of people? What if it's 90% to 10%? Where do you draw the line for materiality?Where do you draw the line for proportionality of recourse?
What if one demographic was singled out (e.g. poorly educated men from Alberta who think that what they're doing is OK since they're treating people as their mother would expect to be treated and she's fine)? 
 

In most cases, the expected monetary value of such legal action, net of legal costs, is negative. Are you proposing anything to help those who get caught up? Maybe a legal defense fund? Would you be personally willing to donate to a legal defense fund for those who claim to be falsely accused (and their presumably entirely innocent families)?

In almost all cases if you win, you can usually get the opposing party to pay all legal fees. Plus if you were fired over something like false sexual conduct claims, your monetary award is going to be massive to begin with (plus things like lost wages). 

11 hours ago, comander said:

What if it's a case where an organization is "sufficiently corrupt" and collapses as a result of agitation, taking out the non-corrupt people with it (e.g. company bankruptcy). There's arguably no legal reprieve in that instance. 

I'll preface this by stating my knowledge of Canadian history is a few hours on wikipedia, few 1ish hour long documentaries on the US, Canada and the UK along with generally reading a lot so... different perspective and in many ways limited. 

If a company is so corrupt that it entirely collapses? So be it. 

 

If the company has any competitors, they will likely try and scoop up as many former employees as possible to expand and take over the market share the first company once had. 

 

Its also an an opportunity for a new company to arise. 

11 hours ago, comander said:

As you had stated, things likely would have taken longer. They likely would be to a lesser degree... but they still likely would have happen, albeit differently.

Independence wouldn’t even be guaranteed had the Empire not lost the American colonies. That was the start of the Empires decline, and they slowly bled territory and power afterwards. 

 

This is is all speculation of course. 

11 hours ago, comander said:

Which is why I generally error on the side of "do no harm" and "avoid extremes, radical behavior and revolutionary behavior". Obviously no guarantees - it can be viewed as a serious of many stochastic elements with a lot of "chaos" and complexity so to speak. 

You have to realize that “do no harm” (meaning take no action) often causes harm itself. 

 

For evil to fester, all it takes is for good men (or women) to do nothing. 

[dalekphalm]

13 minutes ago, comander said:

The first bit would imply that you lack the sufficient expertise to even voice a legitimate opinion. 

To be frank, zero commenters here, yourself (and myself) included, have sufficient expertise to voice any sort of legal opinion on the matter. You asked what I think the odds of a legal challenge like I posited was of being successful. A lawyer would have to answer that question. Any guess I gave would be essentially in the dark.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

The second bit begs the question - why bother with group action at all when victims in general should be able to deal with their issues legal system?
If one victims cannot reasonably be assured justice, then why would a second group expect justice?

Because not everything is illegal, even if it's distasteful. A place of employment can (and usually does) hold a higher form of ethical conduct than what is simply "legally allowed".

13 minutes ago, comander said:

It's not a hypothetical. It's a question about your value system. Your actual, real world set of values.  I assume that your set of ethics is not hypothetical. 
If 200 people were killed in the pursuit of 1 murderer, you'd likely be outraged. If 1 person were killed in the pursuit of 200 murderers, you'd be fat less outraged.

We're not talking about murder, so you can drop that argument.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

If you lack the self-awareness to even begin to guess at what your threshold is, that's fine. There's a certain humility to that. 
 

That's why actions and measures need to be carefully considered. "Less is more"

Less is more, sure. But no action is no action. And that's what you seem to be in favour of. Riot, in particular, has a problem. The victims tried legal action, and were forced into non-judicial binding arbitration, which usually favours the company. Action needs to be taken. A walkout, for example, is a good place to start.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

 It's easy to sit up on a pedestal, pass self-righteous judgement and then stand back and do nothing when things go wrong as a direct result of what you pushed for.

If things go wrong, they should be addressed on a case by case basis. And if the system isn't working, it needs to be adjusted or change... kind or like with Riot, where the system isn't working...

13 minutes ago, comander said:

That isn't evil, it's not sociopathy... but it's not normal either. 

Sorry, what's not evil? The systemic sexism being festered at Riot (and potentially other places), is very much evil in my mind. Not the "Hur Dur gonna take over the world" evil, but like most things in life, it's not black and white. There are varying degrees of "bad". This is one of those degrees.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/netflix-five-second-staring-rule/
>Netflix Bans Employees from Looking at Each Other for More Than Five Seconds

Those employees who are negatively affected, should sue Netflix over that matter. You should lobby on their behalf - start a GoFundMe for a legal fund or something. Act.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

Would you want to go through such a scenario for yourself? You'd "win". How about your best friend or your father?

Nobody would want to go through such a situation. But nobody wants to be falsely accused of murder either - it happens. In the rare case when it happens, they should seek remedy. In this case, it would be a wrongful termination lawsuit, which ideally should include some sort of public apology by the company that absolves the affected person of any hint of guilt.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

There's an equivalent discipline where "do no harm" is a standard maxim (more accurately - “primum non nocere”) - the medical industry.

Yes, and? Do no harm usually means act in the best interest of the patient. That sometimes means not giving them a treatment that won't help, but will hurt. That also means sometimes giving them a treatment that might be painful or even harmful, if the outcome will save their life or otherwise give them a better outcome in terms of standard of living.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

For cancer, it is correct that doing nothing is a terrible approach. The ideal approach is NOT ignore the issue and to take cautious, measured steps. Think slowing down gradually before taking a sharp turn in your car vs slamming on the brakes at the last moment. 

We well understand cancer and it's progression. I fail to see how that can apply here, when we're venturing into mostly unknowns.

13 minutes ago, comander said:

Unmeasured, radical and revolutionary fervor - usually the kind you see in protests - is a recipe for disaster. This is especially the case when one or more people is coming from a position of ignorance (e.g. not being familiar with the common law system and its various precedents, being an adjudicator in a situation where there are unknowns as well as unknown unknowns, etc.)

You have yet to suggest an alternative for the people who have to deal with this? What should these people do? Nothing?

13 minutes ago, comander said:

---
For the record, I don't think you're an evil person and I believe you're generally well intentioned. 

That's good, because if you thought I was evil, that would be... ridiculous at best? Absurd? But I digress. I full well know there are far right leaning individuals on this forum who think I'm quite evil. That's their own prerogative.

[Trixanity]

Christ. This really went off the rails. Stick to the topic. There is no comparison to be made with violent revolution. These are employees voicing their concerns with their work environment.

 

This isn't some kind of hearsay either. It's been known for years that Riot is awful in many ways. Multiple sources, both private and public, have come forward regarding this. Some of the people in the industry with the most integrity have confirmed that the reports that have come out over the years are valid. So while you might call into question the likes of Kotaku and rightfully so, this isn't just some random hit piece spun out of thin air.

 

When the company can't deal with problems due to the corporate culture and it forces arbitration to the disadvantage of employees, then employees only really have two options: quit or escalate the situation in a manner which can't be ignored. It's perfectly valid to protest. It's also valid to draw media attention to it. In fact it's probably the only thing that might push the company to change although the jury is still out on the possibility of Riot turning things around. 

[dalekphalm]

15 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Christ. This really went off the rails. Stick to the topic. There is no comparison to be made with violent revolution. These are employees voicing their concerns with their work environment.

 

This isn't some kind of hearsay either. It's been known for years that Riot is awful in many ways. Multiple sources, both private and public, have come forward regarding this. Some of the people in the industry with the most integrity have confirmed that the reports that have come out over the years are valid. So while you might call into question the likes of Kotaku and rightfully so, this isn't just some random hit piece spun out of thin air.

 

When the company can't deal with problems due to the corporate culture and it forces arbitration to the disadvantage of employees, then employees only really have two options: quit or escalate the situation in a manner which can't be ignored. It's perfectly valid to protest. It's also valid to draw media attention to it. In fact it's probably the only thing that might push the company to change although the jury is still out on the possibility of Riot turning things around. 

Agreed.

[Trixanity]

36 minutes ago, comander said:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

Talking about how group action can go wrong by citing examples of it going wrong is logically valid, especially in cases where characteristics overlap.

I will admit that it is not a perfect analogy. There are logical leaps which weaken it (though I believe less so than the flaws with the logical leaps made by countering view points). With that said, the right approach would be to aim to find many analogs and to check what that general propensity is with respect to some variable or set of variables in question. If you want to go a step further you'd try to look at things from a temporal perspective and see if there are mathematical hints of causality (e.g. checking granger-causality [not the same as actual causality])

Yeah, I don't think a walk-out is comparable to beheading the nobility.

 

And yes, I understand what you're trying to accomplish but it isn't working. Not even a little bit.

 

Your arguing on the premise that Riot Games isn't Riot Games but alas Riot Games is Riot Games. Likewise you're arguing on the premise that the employees in question are overstepping somehow but they aren't.

[Trixanity]

4 minutes ago, comander said:

Well, would you mind explaining why you believe that large groups + anger != bad things

The easy response would be why you believe organized activities to combat poor conditions are inherently bad? You haven't really been convincing in that area.

 

We even have a concurrent event of the same nature: walk-outs for climate change. They're yet to do anything bad despite believing that governments' apathy will be their doom.

 

There is not yet any evidence that any bad things will be caused by these walk-outs. The things you point to happened in another era under different people under different circumstances on a much larger scale and with no authority to keep things in check. There are so many factors that simply make your argument invalid.

 

Is there a possibility that any group might overstep? Yes, the same way a person, organization, company, government or any other entity might. Is it more likely that a group than a person might overstep? Possibly but that does not deny them the right or ability to join together to solve a problem they can't do individually. There's a reason we have a common phrase saying there's strength in numbers.

 

If they've complained and/or been treated poorly for years with no recourse or change then their options are few hence current events.

 

You should commend them for actually doing something.

[Trixanity]

13 hours ago, comander said:

Good goals !=> good results; often times the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When I was 3 years old I thought that the fish would want Coca-Cola. I hope you believe me when I say that my heart was in the right place. I was really sad when the results turned out poorly. In that case, forcing my good intentions on another party was no different from an evil act. 

When others are to pay the price for one's activities, this is the baseline set up for a moral hazard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

This of course is from a probabilistic perspective. Playing the lottery is a bad idea when viewed overall, but there are niche cases where it works out. 

Also note that my stance is "slow, steady, deliberate, input from those who would bear any burden" - organized walkouts are usually "WANNA GO FAST, cliches of like minded people, loudest opinion wins" which is a formula for recklessness. 

There are historical examples of things at a bigger scale going wrong along with examples of smaller scale things having deleterious effects borne by others. 

From a probabilistic perspective there is reason to be wary. 

The how matters. 
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers" is also a saying and, when mad, people can become momentarily stupid. There's also a wide body of research into sub-optimal decision making in crowds. 
 

A happily ever after story is NOT the bullied 7 year old making a bunch of friends and coercing a larger group to make concessions and to be afraid of even the slightest infraction. 

There's evidence of stupidity here. "Renewables solve everything" has become a mantra. It ignores environmental destruction (chopping down every tree but achieving energy sustainability still means extinct humanity). A future of ten thousand solar panels in every town creating a thermal hotspot has its own issues and it ignores some other fundamental facts (pollution from resource extraction/manufacturing). At least in the UK (I don't have values for the US), around 25% of the country would need to be covered in solar panels to get all their power from solar. 

 

 

The way to avoid a crash is to not go fast. The issue is that you might end up in a situation where your beginning state is [0,0,0,0,0,0] and you want to get to 1... but in doing so you end up with disparities [1,-1,0,1,0,-1]; suddenly you have clusters of groups that are less functional than prior and more divided due to uneven progress and increased differentials in conditions. 

Yeah, you're not really going anywhere with this.

The whole premise for your arguments is skewed just enough for it to be wrong across the board.

If your understanding of a subject or situation is off, then you have no chance of understanding anything within it.

 

Your apathy towards the employees is actually disturbing. You seem to not want to understand their plight or can't understand it. I don't know which one is worse. You seem to have this idea that the employees must not harm the company at all costs. They must restrain themselves and hope somehow that at some point someone will do something despite evidence suggesting that years and years of issues and attempts to solve them have gone either unnoticed or ignored. A walk-out isn't harmful. It actually might give Riot Games the option of legally firing them if nothing else. Your premise is that them grouping up and doing a walk-out will somehow spiral out of control. That group dynamics might incite violence or cause them to overpower the company with unreasonable demands or some shit that makes no sense. What recklessness are you even talking about? If anything it seems like you've moved 20 steps ahead in your mind to the absolute worst case hypotheticals. This is a walk-out. Nothing more. 

I do see that you're attempting to move it towards the idea is that this is a result of extreme left ideas of SJW and MeToo and all that jazz but there is no evidence for that from what I've seen. It's just your mind making leaps again.

 

The environmental comparison completely went over your head I see. It wasn't about their goals but about the supposed recklessness being non-existent. They have no power either as is evident by the lack of accomplishments (yet). 

 

I must say that I'm astounded by what I'm reading from you. I'll actually going to come out and say it reads like rambling. Not even trying to be offensive but that's honestly what my impression is. Just look at it from a human perspective if you can. Then you might actually understand what's going on instead of linking it to a host of different ideas that have no relevance and trying to come up with reasons why people should not be allowed to band together to protest.