I’ve worked in the gaming industry and I was surprised how some fairly standard questions about creativity, playing games, character development, etc. lead to detailed insights into the candidate’s personality.

We’ve had candidates answer “You have to organise a fun evening for the 80 employees of this office. Your budget is $10. What do you do?” (a question meant to leverage their understanding that 70 of those 80 are insanely creative people who barely need a pen and paper to have fun) by suggesting going to a strip-club.

“What’s your favourite game?” is a staple (no answer is disqualifying in most cases); “Which character do you play?” the obvious follow-up when it’s an option. Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed. The word “jiggle” was used, with a nervous laughter that I had to describe in my feedback as ‘cringey’.

If one of those people understand that they did wrong, I’m hoping they’ll give considerate answers to what are standard, common questions. I’ve never heard a full contrition during an interview (not on that matter) but that could be an interesting conversation. If they think that they did nothing wrong sexualising their colleagues, I would expect hiring manager to notice a nervous laughter, connect that to the previous employer and date of departure, and possibly prod discretely; “What do you think is missing in the game industry nowadays?” is a good follow-up. If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.

If you expect an honest answer from your candidate, and you don't expect a well-qualified candidate to choose a well-endowed female to be their character of choice, then you're living in a fantasy world. I understand that it's insane to talk about that during an interview, but I think it's fairly common for non-creepy people to choose a character they find pleasurable to look at.

> I understand that it's insane to talk about that during an interview

That’s the key part, though. Part of being a professional is knowing how and when to appropriately compartmentalize. Keep the video game heroine fetishes at home. If someone can’t keep that stuff to themselves for an interview, there’s no way they’ll be able to keep it to themselves on the job. Hire someone inept enough to discuss this on an interview and you’ve hired your next sexual harassment case.

Huh, you make quite the leap here?

If you ask me what kind of characters I play in an MMO (for example) then I'm going to honestly tell you that as a heterosexual man I find it pleasurable to look at a woman's behind while I'm playing.

That would be ONLY if you ask me "why do you pick females as playable characters?" however, I won't blurt it out of the blue.

I haven't harassed a woman in any capacity, in any setting, work or not, in my life. The mere idea to noticeably ogle a female co-worker or make sexual jokes towards them never even occurred to me. I learned that this is a thing for the first time in my life when I was 29 or so, when one colleague was fired for following two attractive coworkers around and not leaving them alone for a smoke break (WTF).

I think it's fair to give an honest answer if asked "why do you pick female heroines?". And yet it seems you'll flag me as a potential harasser?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you though.

Depends a lot on what the interviewer actually asked and how they directed the conversation, and also on how the candidate responds. If the interviewer is badgering the candidate to try to force a “damning” response, yeah, that interviewer sucks and is engaged in inappropriate behavior. But if the candidate jumps to tell you he likes to play half-naked characters, that’s also a red flag.

If an interviewer specifically asks if you only play female characters and why, that’s pretty weird. If your response is something like “because I like their jiggly titties” instead of something like “because I find them attractive”, well, that’s even weirder and frankly not work appropriate.

But yeah, if the interviewer is pushing you to discuss your favorite characters, you shouldn’t feel the need to hide the fact that you play female characters. That’s your preference so whatever. That’s different from making it overtly sexual.

Ah, I definitely wouldn't start discussing sexy female features with you on an interview, as if we're two drunk friends in a bar (I don't do that either but anyway).

I'll only answer in a potentially compromising way if pressured by the interviewer -- and even then I'm much more likely to retaliate with "why are you focusing on the fact that I enjoy looking at attractive video game characters so much?".

So my previous comment wasn't very accurate, sorry. But on the rare occasion I think I sense people stigmatizing sexuality itself. Happy to have been wrong.

Your question was totally appropriate. I can see how my comment could come off the way you read it.

I share your concern about stigmatizing sexuality. People are people and should not have to pretend to be asexual.

I agree with everything but your last sentence. Can people not look at other people anymore? And I am concerned you are actually sexually harassing the female employee by asking her that question and singling her out for her sexual appeal and gender.

I agree with this. Asking a female employee “if she noticed any sideway look” seems very inappropriate. It puts her on the spot in what I would assume is a very uncomfortable way, and also prompts her to be thinking about a potential hire as a creep (because of what you said, not anything they actually did).

If you want an actual female opinion on the candidate, have your female employees active in interviews. Then ask them what they think about the candidate. Your female employees are just as capable of evaluating candidates effectively as your male employees.

> Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed.

Are these characters ones made available to them by the game developers? If so, what's the offence here?

The offense is that it’s not work-appropriate to discuss in those terms. The person who tells you in an interview that his favorite character is his favorite because she’s half naked and “jiggly” is one who’s going to discuss similar things on the job. Don’t be surprised when you hear this same candidate discussing Scarlett Johansson’s breasts at the office. Or worse, a co-worker’s breasts.

>If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.

I wonder do female candidates get the same test? Not judging, just curious if there is a double standard, and why.

They won’t automatically know, but:

1) Anyone in the industry presumably knows about this news. If someone’s end date at Activision Blizzard is January 2022, they’re going to have a strong suspicion.

2) Backchannel reference checks (very warranted in this case) will likely confirm it. Activision Blizzard wouldn’t confirm anything other than start and end dates and any candidate-provided references are going to say good things, so it’s important to network and ask somebody who worked there at the time.

> 1) Anyone in the industry presumably knows about this news. If someone’s end date at Activision Blizzard is January 2022, they’re going to have a strong suspicion.

The first sentence of the article mentions:

> Activision Blizzard Inc. has fired or pushed out more than three dozen employees and disciplined about 40 others since July as part of efforts to address allegations of sexual harassment and other misconduct at the videogame giant, according to people familiar with the situation.

(Emphasis mine.)

For those who more closely follow Blizzard and/or WoW news (fansites such as MMO Champion and Wowhead), several people were known to be fired or left the past year. So the date January 2022 is entirely arbitrary by you, but also, important to note the following: some people left because of the scandal while they were not the culprit, or other reasons (many people were laid off because of, well, I can't say bad financial result but that was the reasoning. Also, state of games in decline). Just because someone left Blizz in 2021 does not mean much, but if you look into certain people who did leave in 2021 then, yes, you will find allegations. End date alone is meaningless though, and quite frankly falls under the definition of guilty by association.

I guess one has to ensure that they don't leave a company the same time such firings happens

You're probably overestimating the degree to which a hiring manager investigates a candidate, or even cares that a candidate was caught up in what appears to be a mostly political event (as far as we know from public information).

Do you keep track of the month and year of every corporate scandal, and compare it to the resume of all applicants? Or do you just say "oh, you worked at Blizzard huh, do you play WoW?"

Right, but if there’s an applicant from Activision in the next month or so that didn’t leave voluntarily, then it might warrant further inquiry.

Presumably some of these folks will need to try to find work ASAP.

But months or years down the road chances are slim it’ll stick out.

> that didn’t leave voluntarily

How would you know this?

I sure as heck have never volunteered information like that.

Most interviewers ask some version of “why did you leave?” or “did you leave voluntarily?”

Not sure what the repercussions are of simply lying to the interviewer though.

A lot of companies will also say if the former employee is eligible to be employed there again. A negative on that plus a January separation date won't look good for those folks.

> A lot of companies will also say if the former employee is eligible to be employed there again. A negative on that plus a January separation date won't look good for those folks.

I suppose that may mean something if you're playing detective with a former Blizzard employee's resume, but I'd be cautious in reading too much into "if the former employee is eligible to be employed there again" generally. I know of a company where HR policy is that all involuntary separations are ineligible for rehire, including things like downsizing layoffs.

Why would you be ineligible for rehire after a downsizing?

You'd be surprised at the kinds of hr policies that makes their own sense, but has no common sense.

Most likely to avoid someone returning on false pretenses to retaliate against being downsized in the firstplace.

Yeah that's the sort of policy a sociopath would think is a good idea.

Maybe because when downsizing you pick the lowest performers that for whatever reason you haven't already fired

> Maybe because when downsizing you pick the lowest performers that for whatever reason you haven't already fired

"Lowest performers" doesn't imply bad performers (e.g. a strong team of A & B players).

Also downsizing can happen in different ways. For instance: "we're closing this whole site and laying off everyone who works there," or "this project failed [due to bad leadership], so we're laying off the whole team."

There was an interesting comment on HN a while ago to the effect that "I have personally seen one team laid off and another kept, while everyone agreed that the laid-off team was performing better, because the rent on the building they were in was more expensive".

Because someone made a shitty policy.

Presumably for the same reason that, after sleeping with your friend's wife, you wouldn't try to make friends again.

What's the need of stigmatizing these people? If they did wrong, they have been fired for it. They don't need to be permanently punished for a mistake. That won't help anyone.

This is a tricky issue. I agree in principle because I like to think that people can change and learn. On the other hand if you hire someone with a known track record, if they then harass members of your staff, you've got some serious questions to answer about potentially knowingly putting them at risk.

Being fired for harassment/abuse doesn't magically mean that you'll never harass or abuse someone in the future. Hiring someone with a track record of these issues puts your other employees at risk.

Are you saying they can't ever be hired again then?

Not at all (and I'm not really sure why you're leaping so precipitately to that).

But someone's previous conduct in a professional role is absolutely relevant information when considering hiring them; that's why we have the concept of a reference at all. It's not stigmatising someone or being unfair to them to consider their prior actions.

If someone has previously been fired for harassment, then that doesn't mean that they should never be employed again. Rehabilitation is totally possible, but it's not an automatic thing: someone with that history should expect it to be a concern for future employers, and should be able to outline (as you would with any other issue) the steps they've taken to mitigate it and ensure the same behaviour won't be repeated.

I'm sure they could figure it out based on when their employment with Activision-Blizzard ended. Do they want to risk being wrong with the guess and passing up a good employee because of it? Possibly not.

I feel like that's an uncharitable take.

Even if you take a very nihilistic view of company morality... for simple liability reasons, most places don't want someone fired for sexual harassment.

But it's trivial for those fired to not get caught. For example, it's likely some (not a majority, but some) people are leaving Activision Blizzard over what's been uncovered, they could claim to be part of that group. Or they could just lie and say the left earlier.

As pointed out above, other employees may have left because of the misconduct aimed at them in the same time period.

It'd be more than a little ironic to tar all of those with the "suspected offender" brush.

That's exactly what my comment says

Nihilistic? I was pointing out that there is some info one could use to inform their guess about whether someone is one of the harassers or not. And I'm saying I don't think it's a strong enough signal for most companies to use that information to filter applicants. If they did, they could be passing up people who happened to leave around the same time. How crappy would that be if people who left because they hated the awful state of things at ActiBlizz were getting caught up in that filter?

> Do they want to risk being wrong with the guess and passing up a good employee because of it?

Would it be illegal to ask if they were fired in connection with this push? If the candidate answers no, they’re clean or a liar. If they demur or confirm, you have your answer.

"Article says fired or pushed out"

So I presume HR had a chat and offered them a pile of money to resign - or if they didn't accept, indicated there would be an investigation into their behaviour.

Presuming they didn't choose option 2 and lose - when asked, nobody's going to say they left for sexual misconduct.

In my country, you can verbally tender your resignation in the meeting to fire you, and the company will almost always accept.

It saves the company some paperwork, and weakens the employee's case for taking them to court for wrongful firing. In exchange, the employee can truthfully tell future employees they weren't fired.

In the US this would be a bad idea if you wanted to try to claim unemployment wages.

> Would it be illegal to ask if they were fired in connection with this push?

I think so; since they weren't charged with a crime, I guess privacy comes into play.

That said, if someone was sacked for sexual misconduct, nobody would hire them if they end up working with women. (I'm aware I'm gender-stereotyping here, but unless I missed it, all allegations were from women aimed at men. As is often the case.)

Do they deserve a black mark following them around?

It depends on whether they realize the error of their ways and have improved. If not, they shouldn't be around women.

I mean, I don't want to stigmatize people and I want to believe that people can change if confronted with the error of their ways, but I've seen too many instances where it just didn't work like that. If they are still behaving inappropriately in the workplace, they should not be in the workplace.

And you are the judge?

No, the employer that fired them was the judge.

why would they know

The games industry is not that big, it is not difficult to get backchannel references on almost anyone who has been in the industry for more than a few years.

If they call Blizzard checking references, does Blizzard say “we fired them for sexual harassment.”

Not sure if its the same in the USA, but in Europe there are massive legal liability issues to giving a negative reference - most places give no reference or a standard set of terms because of this

Europe is a big place with lots of different cultures and regulations.

Eg in Germany, employers are both legally obliged to give a reference and to make it not-negative. It's a weird place.

Which they basically circumvent, by using a language where a reference which is just good and not extremely good means it's a bad reference.

Courts have started catching on and are punishing the most well known euphemisms, too.

Many companies I consult for in the US won’t provide a negative reference but instead answer all reference questions with: “I can confirm that they were employed here from MM/YY to MM/YY”. If you hear that it means it didn’t end well.

Otherwise, many managers are happy to give a positive reference.

We had a strict HR policy of “name, rank, and serial number.”

We were only allowed to confirm dates of employment, and were required to direct all referrals to HR.

Our HR was run by lawyers, and was very tight about all kinds of policies.

In one case, I once had to lay off a couple of employees. HR policy demanded that I do a “perp walk” to HR, before telling them in an HR ambush. I felt that this was unnecessarily humiliating and dehumanizing (I was right. One teared up), and informed them in individual sessions in my office. HR wrote me up for that. They were technically correct, as this gave the employees the chance to cause havoc (except that I immediately walked them up, after informing them. HR was really concerned that I would say something legally liable -I did not). A big part of my job, as a manager, was to act as a buffer between my employees, and a rather coldhearted and dishonest HR department.

I will say that the company I worked at, had a very diverse workplace (below the Executive Suite), and harassment was not ever an endemic problem (of which I am aware). I know of a small number of instances (over 27 years), where people (men and women) were fired for inappropriate behavior.

There was definitely a “the rules only apply to the little people” thing going on, but not in any really significant way. HR tended to look the other way at the C-Suite doing things we mensch weren’t allowed to do, but they kept it quiet.

One of the things that I most enjoyed about leaving the company, was going to my former employees’ and coworkers’ LinkedIn pages, and giving them the glowing references they deserved.

The American culture of layoffs always surprised me. In Poland, for a typical work contract, the law mandates 1-2 months of layoff time. That is, the layoff decision is given two months in advance, but you keep working for those two months. Also, there are no surprise "security will escort you to the door where you can wait for your personal things" layoffs. I guess because people don't get taken by surprise with a layoff and are given enough time to find a new job, there is much less concern and acts of employee retalation

In the US, it is usually an ambush. I think that union shops can negotiate something like what you describe.

Here's an old Dilbert comic, that summarizes it: https://dilbert.com/strip/2002-04-25

Huh. My company won’t do anything more than confirm date of hire and salary.

You could probably get a manager to give an informal reference “off the books”, not on company time.

They confirm _salary_ ?! How on earth is this not private information? When negotiating salary for a new job, the employer will sometimes try to coerce you into giving this info in order to low-ball you and now all they have to do is call your former employer... wtf

And yet I'm sure they try to keep anyone still employed from revealing their current salary to their coworkers.

Hopefully not in CA.

https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/discrimination/salary-his...

> California Assembly Bill 168 took effect in October, 2017. This legislation bars employers from asking job applicants about salary history when applying for a position.

I guess asking a reference isn’t quite the same as asking the applicant, but still it’s pretty inappropriate (if not illegal) and I’ve never heard of a past company revealing past compensation information.

In my experience these positive references are either a small quote taken from a LinkedIn reference, or a quick phone call.

If you help your manager succeed, they will almost always be happy to help you out with a good word. It’s only a few minutes so no one is worried about it being on or off the clock in my experience.

It has become standard (at least outside of tech) for companies to only confirm dates of employees, without further comment on a (former) employee's tenure.

The goal is generally to avoid litigation in the event that any such comments could be construed as libel or as interfering with the employee's future employment...and with good reason, since a lawsuit over a negative reference for anything other than a for-cause termination (such as sexual harassment) is generally very costly to defend against even if the former employer would win on the merits.

What in the world? What is the point of a reference if it can only be good?

hardly anybody actually asks for references now because they most likely won't get anything interesting out of it. they just do employment verification and that's it

What effect does that have on hiring? Are companies more averse to giving someone a shot since they can’t get information about their experience?

Law of unintended consequences, perhaps?

Specifically which parts of Europe? It's a big place, and I have given negative references with no fear of liability. And that includes across EU borders, including the UK.

In Germany I’ve read recommendations range from meekly positive to very positive, and that encodes the actual recommendation.

But just like the UK press can't describe anyone as 'tired and emotional' anymore these days, because that particular euphemism for 'drunk' has become transparent, many of the traditional German euphemisms for sub-par work have been attacked by the courts.

I'm currently in the UK, and at least here I've been told by legal that a negative reference can lead to massive issues in front of an Employment Tribunal, and that it's effectively not worth it when we can just decline to give any reference at all.

On the flip side, a reference has an implicit duty of skill and care to both the former employee and the person asking for the reference, so an overly-positive reference can also lead to legal liability from the person asking for the reference.

In some regulated industries the content and form of references is also regulated as well, for example see pages 11 and 31 of https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/SYSC/22.pdf

(None of this is legal advice)

The U.S. Bill of Rights [1] protects giving negative references.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

That's not quite how it works. In practice, in the US, liability comes not so much from giving a positive or a negative review, but from giving an incomplete one. This is most apparent as a result of giving a positive review and leaving out the bad bits. In this case, you might be liable for the negative consequences of hiring someone based on your positive review.

For an extreme example, see Randi W. v. Muroc Joint Unified School Dist [1]. In that case, the plaintiff sued several school districts for fraudulently or negligently providing positive recommendations for a teacher who ultimately sexually assaulted her. The California state Supreme Court held that the school districts were liable because there was a substantial, foreseeable risk of physical injury to a third-party resulting from the misrepresentations.

For this reason, it is common practice for businesses to decline to provide a review and instead simply confirm a prior employment relationship and the dates of the employment.

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/14...

That’s a great point, but at least as far as negative references go, you have libel/slander law with robust free speech protections. It’s nothing like Europe.

Personal references are protected, to the extent that liable and slander laws would apply.

Any HR person / lawyer will tell you providing a negative review of an employee, let alone with amount of detail, opens you up to liabilities that aren't worth it.

As an employer, I've been told that, if called, I should only provide the date a person started with the company, the date a person left, their starting and ending salaries (murky now given salary history laws) and whether they'd be eligible to be re-hired.

I ask any employee we fire for cause not to list us as a reference.

> whether they'd be eligible to be re-hired

"Bob isn't eligible for rehire. Wait, I think the line cut out a bit there, I said Bob isn't eligible for rehire. Just wanted to make sure you got that: Bob is not eligible for rehire, no way, no how, nosirree."

Keep in mind: the judges that interpret the law are humans, not computers.

I try not to even have a "tone" when I saw that. Completely neutral. No implications.

Will they give you a magnitude attached to those liabilities? Anybody can falsely sue for defamation, so you need an average cost value beyond the mere possibility of lawsuit to get a true representation of the problem.

The cost may be minimal, but the value of giving a bad reference is zero.

Would be more useful if you pointed out which part of the Bill of Rights provides this protection.

might help to stick to the countries laws you should be understanding

Impossible because it doesn’t

The 1st amendment.

which one protects giving negative references

In general, employers just confirm the dates of employment. Saying more than that potentially opens them up to legal liability.

The will not. They will confirm start and end dates, ask if the termination was voluntary, and may ask if they would hire them again in the future.

And even some 'voluntary' termination might be a case of somebody being managed out or asked to leave.

definitely not. If they're smart they will only provide confirmation about whether or not the person worked there, what their title was, and maybe if they would hire them again. but that's it

Blizzard won't say that, too much liability.

What does it mean that there is too much liability? What liability do you have for saying true things?

"That person was fired because an investigation conducted by our company suggested they participated in sexual harassment."

Imagine that a previous employer said something bad about you during a reference check, and what they said wasn't true, and it caused you to lose a potential new job. You'd definitely have a good reason to sue them.

Now, imagine the same scenario, except what your previous employer said was true. But you sued them anyway.

In both cases, you have the ability to sue. In both cases, unless there is some very strong and obvious evidence against you, a judge and/or jury might take your side.

From the perspective of one of your former employers, it's just not worth the risk to give details about why someone was separated from a company.

People exaggerate the amount of risk for this kind of thing, but the benefit to the company giving the bad reference is also essentially zero.

I agree with both your points. To be honest if the same signal is sent by merely confirming employment dates but not literally disparaging the former employee, I fail to see how there’s any additional legal protection. The implication is tortious interferus in both cases.

That's why many companies don't give any details at all, whether positive or negative. This way your line of argument doesn't apply; not from a logical point of view and also not from a legal point of view: no signal is sent at all.

I agree with you too.

For the sake of my argument, I was conjuring the scenario where companies give either positive recommendations or bare minimum ones.

why say anything when you can just say nothing. they don't care about it that much as long as the offender is gone now

> What does it mean that there is too much liability? What liability do you have for saying true things?

Problem is, in many countries, it's not a fact until a court has made a judgement.

Bearing in mind that the accused employees are technically and legally innocent, you are introducing a few problems. First, the disadvantages of calling these people criminals:

1. They can (and probably will win) sue you for calling them a criminal.

2. The resulting news that a court found against you is a bigger problem. You called someone a criminal, they sued you for it and won. Now you have to deal with the fact that as far as the public goes, you just fired and shamed innocent people.

3. Finally, after the news gets out, all the employees who were laid off in the same round and with same accusations now have legal precedent to challenge your accusations of criminality. And due to precedent, they will almost surely win.

Now, the disadvantages of giving only their start/end dates and job title when called:

[uhh, I can't think of anything ...]

It all boils down to "there is some risk in badmouthing them" vs "there is literally no risk, 0% risk at all, is saying nothing about their behaviour".

That opens Blizzard up to litigation by the fired employee. At least more than not saying anything.

Even if you think something is true, someone else might contest that, and ask a court to decide. Court battles are costly and time consuming.

The liability to Blizzard or the firing company is that the fired employee sues Blizzard, “I did not get these jobs because they tarnished my name to potential employers.”

Because no corporate investigation has to meet the same standard as a court of law. You can fire someone if you think they did something wrong. But when you make statements, it's possible the employee will claim it is libel and you will suddenly need to prove their misconduct at a higher standard in a court of law.

IANAL, but basically it's not worth it. The company already has what they want: Not working with that employee. Anything past that is unnecessary risk.

They are probably working under "at will" employment agreement so can be terminated without establishing a cause.