“And then I was a combat helicopter”: transgender testers complained of harassment at Blizzard Entertainment

Hired Blizzard Entertainment testers whose gender identity goes beyond “he” and “she” face inappropriate behavior from colleagues. Writes about this edition Pink Newsciting a large investigation of a toxic culture in Activision Blizzard

The story mentions the story of a transgender named Billy from the quality control department, who asked teammates to speak about him in the plural using the pronouns “they” and “them”, but received only a harsh refusal and bullying in response.

“To my request, one of the employees responded with a classic joke,” Well, then I identify myself as a combat helicopter. “Nobody stood up for me and did not try to correct him.”

Billy contacted the HR department and asked for a training to improve team responsiveness, but did not receive a response even after several months.

Another transgender, a tester named Andrew, was lucky: he did not hear anything bad about himself from colleagues. However, he has witnessed others being mocked and morally bullied.

Also, the company has a problem with displaying the names of specialists in internal programs. When making a transgender transition, a person asks to correct his name in work programs in accordance with new documents, but the management can ignore the requests for a long time, putting him in an awkward position. Or, after changing the name, the old name may appear in the system, and everyone around will know that this employee is transgender (although he himself, for his own reasons, preferred to hide it, fearing ridicule).

Quality control staff also complain that they are not paid sick leave, they have to overwork, and their salaries at certain times fall below market rates.

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