Paizo Update from Jeff Alvarez

Actually, they do.

When your boss you love is fired by a boss you don't and you look at the road ahead and all you see is discomfort and pain, quitting is a solid solution.

Regarding the "in protest" portion, Diego may feel that the firing was unwarranted. He may feel that the person doing the firing is unqualified for the job they were given. He may feel like Sara M and her crew were doing everything humanly possible to handle whatever the issues were that led up to the termination. He also, like us, may not have all the facts.

None of that means the firing was unjustified.

"What happened with the subscriptions in August? Why are we scrambling in September and October to make up for them? Why are we not keeping up with demand?"

Any of these questions (some of which were asked here on the forums, even) would be enough to terminate an employee from my workplace on general principle -- and that's not counting any personal factors or perceptions.

We should probably consider the fact that Diego probably saw what workload was being demanded of Sara Marie and made the calculated and reasonable deduction that HE would be expected to handle ALL of that workload with an even more reduced staff with even greater expectations.

Suddenly, it goes from "The company is purging all the good employees" to "The company is having a hard time reconciling 'facts on the ground' with 'perceived reality in the upper offices'".

I have yet to see a corporation of any sort that doesn't have this problem.

People don’t resign in protest over justified firings.

If the reason Sara Marie was unceremoniously fired is actually because of the rumored fight she put up to keep her team safe during Covid then they need to offer her her position back.

Why? Because if that is true, then they reversed course for forcing the CS team back into the office, they should reverse course on the firing.

Can't say just how quiet I would become on that matter alone if I got an official post from Sara Marie's account that say 'Hey guys, I'm back'

The work on the transphobic work place is going to take time. I accept that even without actually acknowledging the issue they are putting plans in place to correct that course. It would be better, MUCH better, if Jeff acknowledged when he screwed up, or even if not him personally then the company as a whole, but history tells me he has a hard time swallowing that pill.

Buhlman's follow up post and all of Mona's posts are great examples on how to take personal accountability even if you don't know in the moment that you are screwing up. Respect for that, and gives me hope for the future of senior management with them on the team. People are people and when we know better we do better.

Jeff appears incapable at this time to accept responsibility on behalf of himself or the company for the missteps in the past, and current issues beyond 'we now clean the rugs regularly'

Individual rooms are great, if you aren't now cutting the number of people going to conventions in half. But not stating explicitly that 'This is a step we are taking to be more inclusive as a company, accepting that we may not have gone far enough in the past to be inclusive. We apologize and plan to correct this course moving forward.' Is a far cry from stating 'individual rooms for everyone who attends cons' without giving the reason why.

People don't resign in protest over justified firings. They may not have all the information, but when someone states their reason for quitting is in solidarity with someone who was fired? Then it is clear that they quit because they feel the firing was unjustified.

If Sara Marie has better offers out there than what Paizo offers? The least they can do is offer to meet whatever any competitor is offering and then let Sara Marie choose if she wants to come back and help build this better future that Jeff is claiming is coming. That is bare minimum on how to rectify that situation if she was really let go for standing up for her team. Because that is what every manager SHOULD be doing. Because Paizo has apparently reversed course on allowing people to work from home.

People DO resign in protest over justified firings.

Both myself and my wife are among them.

Diego never said her firing wasn't justified. He said it was cowardly, and that the two bosses responsible were not worth working for.

People DO resign in protest over justified firings.

Both myself and my wife are among them.

Diego never said her firing wasn't justified. He said it was cowardly, and that the two bosses responsible were not worth working for.

Are we working with different meanings for "unjustified"? It's likely the firings weren't illegal.

People don’t resign in protest over justified firings.

They most definitely do. I've done it before. Here's an example..

You get a new boss. You don't agree with the way that they're handling things and think that it might add more stress onto your team during a time where morale is already terrible. You bring up your concerns with new management and while they may take your concerns into consideration it doesn't change the decisions that are being made. You can either ignore or completely disobey those orders or you could criticize new management to your direct reports.. That would be a firing for insubordination.

If you've been with a company for a long time and people like you and also don't agree with new management they could very easily quit out of protest or support for you.

The thing about companies is that they're giant slow moving machines that are stubborn and sometimes need to work plans out and have them fail in order to course correct. If you go against that machine then you're going to be held responsible for it, whether you agree with the decision or not.

Companies aren't sentient beings. It's not "it's hard to change the company", it is "it's hard to make people who run the company change". Talking about companies as they were floating sentient obsidian obelisks only makes it easier for those who should be doing changes dodge any accountability, responsibility or liability.

Rysky wrote:

People don’t resign in protest over justified firings.

They most definitely do. I've done it before. Here's an example..

You get a new boss. You don't agree with the way that they're handling things and think that it might add more stress onto your team during a time where morale is already terrible. You bring up your concerns with new management and while they may take your concerns into consideration it doesn't change the decisions that are being made. You can either ignore or completely disobey those orders or you could criticize new management to your direct reports.. That would be a firing for insubordination.

If you've been with a company for a long time and people like you and also don't agree with new management they could very easily quit out of protest or support for you.

The thing about companies is that they're giant slow moving machines that are stubborn and sometimes need to work plans out and have them fail in order to course correct. If you go against that machine then you're going to be held responsible for it, whether you agree with the decision or not.

Problem with this, and I mean this honestly, is that everything can be justified from a certain perspective. Everyone is the hero of their own story and that doesn't mean they can't be the villain of someone elses.

Justified in this situation isn't talking about 'Allowed by corporate rules' It means that in Diego's opinion that it should not have happened. In his opinion it was not 'justified'

If someone is fired and you believe they should be fired you would quit for them?

It is a lesson in semantics and agreed definitions here and I don't think that the for's and against's in this situation will likely see eye to eye.

Buhlman's follow up post and all of Mona's posts are great examples on how to take personal accountability even if you don't know in the moment that you are screwing up. Respect for that, and gives me hope for the future of senior management with them on the team. People are people and when we know better we do better.

Both of those statements are personal statements and not company statements. They were also addressing behavior specifically assigned to them that gives them a negative light. WHICH by the way is Slander. I'm wondering if Jessica [Edit: autopilot mistake earlier :|] understands the legal repercussions there (well maybe she does, she's been pretty quiet).

Jeff appears incapable at this time to accept responsibility on behalf of himself or the company for the missteps in the past, and current issues beyond 'we now clean the rugs regularly'

His responses represent the company not the individual. I understand that it's hard to separate the two, and it's dissatisfying, but organizations do that to protect the entity beyond the individual.

Gloom wrote:

Rysky wrote:

People don’t resign in protest over justified firings.

They most definitely do. I've done it before. Here's an example..

You get a new boss. You don't agree with the way that they're handling things and think that it might add more stress onto your team during a time where morale is already terrible. You bring up your concerns with new management and while they may take your concerns into consideration it doesn't change the decisions that are being made. You can either ignore or completely disobey those orders or you could criticize new management to your direct reports.. That would be a firing for insubordination.

If you've been with a company for a long time and people like you and also don't agree with new management they could very easily quit out of protest or support for you.

The thing about companies is that they're giant slow moving machines that are stubborn and sometimes need to work plans out and have them fail in order to course correct. If you go against that machine then you're going to be held responsible for it, whether you agree with the decision or not.

Problem with this, and I mean this honestly, is that everything can be justified from a certain perspective. Everyone is the hero of their own story and that doesn't mean they can't be the villain of someone elses.

Justified in this situation isn't talking about 'Allowed by corporate rules' It means that in Diego's opinion that it should not have happened. In his opinion it was not 'justified'

If someone is fired and you believe they should be fired you would quit for them?

It is a lesson in semantics and agreed definitions here and I don't think that the for's and against's in this situation will likely see eye to eye.

It goes beyond even "should not have happened". Generally to quit in response to a firing means you think it was particularly egregious, not just that you wouldn't have done it.

Yoshua wrote:

Buhlman's follow up post and all of Mona's posts are great examples on how to take personal accountability even if you don't know in the moment that you are screwing up. Respect for that, and gives me hope for the future of senior management with them on the team. People are people and when we know better we do better.

Both of those statements are personal statements and not company statements. They were also addressing behavior specifically assigned to them that gives them a negative light. WHICH by the way is Slander. I'm wondering if Sara understands the legal repercussions there (well maybe she does, she's been pretty quiet).

Yoshua wrote:

Jeff appears incapable at this time to accept responsibility on behalf of himself or the company for the missteps in the past, and current issues beyond 'we now clean the rugs regularly'

His responses represent the company not the individual. I understand that it's hard to separate the two, and it's dissatisfying, but organizations do that to protect the entity beyond the individual.

Agree to disagree. If you haven't, feel free to read up on my personal interactions with Jeff while he was Doxxing one of our community members and how he fails to understand that what he did is wrong and dangerous. Follow the link in the post to read the real time events and see how long and how justified he felt in using our personal information to try to intimidate us into submission. Sadly he rolled a 1 that day and to this day I still don't really believe he understands what he did was wrong.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43h04&page=7?Staff-Change-Update-from-Paiz o-President-Jeff#335

Go to Jeff Alvarez Doxxes Customers..

Yes, those are personal statements by Buhlman and Mona. Which is why I said personal accountability.

Actually, they do.

When your boss you love is fired by a boss you don't and you look at the road ahead and all you see is discomfort and pain, quitting is a solid solution.

Regarding the "in protest" portion, Diego may feel that the firing was unwarranted. He may feel that the person doing the firing is unqualified for the job they were given. He may feel like Sara M and her crew were doing everything humanly possible to handle whatever the issues were that led up to the termination. He also, like us, may not have all the facts.

None of that means the firing was unjustified.

150% agree with Reckless here. In fact, I've seen this exact scenario play out more than once.

Again, I doubt the fors and againsts will see eye to eye on this. People don't quit in solidarity for unjustified firings.

As I've mentioned before, they most definitely do. I've seen it happen. I've DONE it. You might not agree with me on that and that's fine. But that doesn't make you right here.

Justification and Legal Justification are two different things, I agree but they're not really that far apart. Justification requires some sort of qualifier to state what is being justified.

When used in the case of a firing like this, asking if the firing was justified would typically point to a legal and corporate standard. That is the standard that I'm applying here.

Asking whether or not it was justified on a moral standard is very shaky ground as you'll have to define which set of morals you're going to apply and it's not something that people should ever really get involved in outside of philosophical debates.

so dangerously close to the point.

I'm not? My point is that both sides will never see eye to eye on this....

I have a clear understanding that a company can feel something is Justified and can be protected under the law while an employee can also feel something is not Justified and not be protected under the law.

/shrug

It's a curse being able to understand the nuances.

You're not, sadly.

EDIT: I suppose, by your chosen definition, myself, my wife, and Gloom are not people. Thank you for the gratuitous othering.

Nah. I would say that you guys have a higher level of reasoning that allows you to analyze things a bit differently than someone working off of feelings.

I get your stances, well I am not going back and re reading, but I get them.

I understand that you didn't agree with a firing, but understood that it would be justified from the corporate perspective and quit anyways because you felt you did not want to work for a company that would fire someone for doing what you felt was right.

That is literally a justification for quitting. Cool beans. I am not telling you that you are wrong that you can quit for whatever reason you want, but I am telling you that when someone quits in solidarity they feel that the reason someone was let go wasn't justified. Even if it was something as egregious and snapping at a manager.

You are definitely people. We just disagree on a perspective.

Yoshua wrote:

Buhlman's follow up post and all of Mona's posts are great examples on how to take personal accountability even if you don't know in the moment that you are screwing up. Respect for that, and gives me hope for the future of senior management with them on the team. People are people and when we know better we do better.

Both of those statements are personal statements and not company statements. They were also addressing behavior specifically assigned to them that gives them a negative light. WHICH by the way is Slander. I'm wondering if Sara understands the legal repercussions there (well maybe she does, she's been pretty quiet).

Yoshua wrote:

Jeff appears incapable at this time to accept responsibility on behalf of himself or the company for the missteps in the past, and current issues beyond 'we now clean the rugs regularly'

His responses represent the company not the individual. I understand that it's hard to separate the two, and it's dissatisfying, but organizations do that to protect the entity beyond the individual.

Sare had nothing to do with the allegations made towards Erik or Jason, so why would she need to be worried about slander laws?

@Cori Marie

I took that as if Sara Marie was making public statements about why she was let go she may have to worry about it. But I may have read it wrong.

Honestly in Washington it is common practice to offer a 'Severance Package' which is a thinly veiled NDA which makes you sign an agreement for a few thousand bucks to not speak ill of your previous employer.

I assume anyone who doesn't scream in outrage over being let go around here was offered a Severance.

Fact that Diego had no problem posting as soon as he quit leads me to believe this even more in this case. Just conjecture and guessing on my part before someone jumps in and tells me how wrong I am.

Speaking of subtleties, I think changing from "unjustified" to "unfair" or "unwarrented" would reconcile our cross talk.

Because being able to be (reasonably) justified is exactly what makes something not unjustified. I mean, that's how language works, I think.

From personal experience I have to agree with Reckless.

I used to work at a grocery store that had a department manager that was an incredibly friendly, charming, outgoing guy that was loved by everyone there.

He was also stealing food and helping customers steal food.

When this was discovered, he was of course fired - and a significant portion of his department quit in protest because they loved him. A crappy situation, but what could management do? Not fire a thief just because he was popular?

Now this is not to say anything one way or another about whether Sara's termination was justified.

But people absolutely do resign in protest over justified firings.

EDIT: Wow a lot of posts got added to this in the time it took me to write this. I haven't read them, I don't know what more was said, so for clarity this is me agreeing with Reckless' post on the last page. XD

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Companies aren't sentient beings. It's not "it's hard to change the company", it is "it's hard to make people who run the company change". Talking about companies as they were floating sentient obsidian obelisks only makes it easier for those who should be doing changes dodge any accountability, responsibility or liability.

Spoken like somebody who has never worked in Project Management. Whenever you have large system with many people involved in the direction of it you're going to have delays and resistance in getting anything changed.

They're not sentient beings but they are most definitely a conglomeration of people working together for a common goal. And they most definitely do not "turn on a dime" when it comes to making adjustments.

Yeah, corporate culture is definitely a thing. You can especially see it in big places when new leadership comes in with expectations of radical changes. People tend to keep doing what they've always done. It takes time and effort to change that from the top.

OTOH, most of the problems here seem to be with top management, so it's not quite the same situation. We're not talking a corporate conglomerate with the bad practices entrenched at every level of the system. We're talking a small company with most of the allegations aimed at top management. While it's hard to get that management to change, if they do, that's most of what's needed in this case.

Speaking of subtleties, I think changing from "unjustified" to "unfair" or "unwarrented" would reconcile our cross talk.

Because being able to be (reasonably) justified is exactly what makes something not unjustified. I mean, that's how language works, I think.

Agreed. So to be clear though. I won't change my verbiage because I personally believe I am right.

But, if it helps you can swap the words out as synonyms as needed when reading my posts.

As I've mentioned before, they most definitely do. I've seen it happen. I've DONE it. You might not agree with me on that and that's fine. But that doesn't make you right here.

Justification and Legal Justification are two different things, I agree but they're not really that far apart.

I've not quit in solidarity; I've definitely quickly found another job after seeing someone I care about unjustly let go, but that's because I'm selfish and want to keep a roof over my head. I've also seen people unceremoniously let go and they take a few key people with them to their next gig. It actually happens quite often in the tech industry.

@Cori Marie

I took that as if Sara Marie was making public statements about why she was let go she may have to worry about it. But I may have read it wrong.

Honestly in Washington it is common practice to offer a 'Severance Package' which is a thinly veiled NDA which makes you sign an agreement for a few thousand bucks to not speak ill of your previous employer.

I assume anyone who doesn't scream in outrage over being let go around here was offered a Severance.

Fact that Diego had no problem posting as soon as he quit leads me to believe this even more in this case. Just conjecture and guessing on my part before someone jumps in and tells me how wrong I am.

Nah, it was specifically pointing to Erik and Jason's statements which addressed the allegations that Price brought against them specifically. He drug Sara into this part of the conversation without even knowing what he was talking about.

Rysky wrote:

And you have absolutely nothing going for you to believe it was justified.

When someone makes a claim like this the burden of proof is on them. Lacking any sort of proof one should assume that the best possible scenario took place. Otherwise people could make claims all day without anything backing them up and put a ton of people who did nothing wrong under a huge amount of stress just trying to prove something didn't happen.

Agreed.

Provide the proof to back up your claim.

Gloom wrote:

Rysky wrote:

And you have absolutely nothing going for you to believe it was justified.

When someone makes a claim like this the burden of proof is on them. Lacking any sort of proof one should assume that the best possible scenario took place. Otherwise people could make claims all day without anything backing them up and put a ton of people who did nothing wrong under a huge amount of stress just trying to prove something didn't happen.

Agreed.

Provide the proof to back up your claim.

Prescriptive statements don't always have a truth value and thus there could be no evidence to support them one way or the other.

Elegos wrote:

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Jeff's statement is a small step in a good direction, but I'm not gonna restart my subs and throw more money at Paizo unless I see some substantial, major changes. These take time, sure, so I'll hang around and look out for them.

Worst thing that can happen is Paizo going under and some serious company buying the rights to Paizo IP and hopefully hiring the actual talent behind the products. Who knows, maybe that would be WotC, thus reuniting Wes, Lyz and few others with Pathfinder?

Not to diminish the issues being discussed, but if you want Pathfinder run by an ethical company, I would not be choosing WoTC

They pay people money that lets them live in Seattle, that's rather ethical.

I was talking to Lulu about this...WotC has Hasbro Bank. Paizo does not not. And all the history of RPG industry, money is in short supply at the best of times.

Will also add as a local Washingtonian, Seattle is too effing expensive even for people making six figures. I know. It's why I moved to the East side of the state. Even Spokane is getting that way, with housing jumping nearly 33% since last year.

I was talking to Lulu about this...WotC has Hasbro Bank. Paizo does not not. And all the history of RPG industry, money is in short supply at the best of times.

WotC has "Hasbro Bank", but WotC also has a responsibility to its corporate masters. Even more than Paizo, Hasbro isn't going to throw money away when it doesn't have to. If WotC is paying higher salaries, it's not out of the goodness of Hasbro's heart, they're getting a return on that investment. Even within the D&D section of WotC, they're not running at a loss just to be nice.

I suspect if there is a reason they're able to pay more, it's that their economies of scale are better. Especially when it comes to paying authors, artists and any other creative types. D&D's much bigger than Pathfinder and they can spread the salaries out over more sales.

Of course, it's also possible that paying more has direct benefits as well, in terms of getting the best talent and in terms of employee retention, which can save a ton of money in ways that aren't obvious to many.

Anorak wrote:

I was talking to Lulu about this...WotC has Hasbro Bank. Paizo does not not. And all the history of RPG industry, money is in short supply at the best of times.

WotC has "Hasbro Bank", but WotC also has a responsibility to its corporate masters. Even more than Paizo, Hasbro isn't going to throw money away when it doesn't have to. If WotC is paying higher salaries, it's not out of the goodness of Hasbro's heart, they're getting a return on that investment. Even within the D&D section of WotC, they're not running at a loss just to be nice.

I suspect if there is a reason they're able to pay more, it's that their economies of scale are better. Especially when it comes to paying authors, artists and any other creative types. D&D's much bigger than Pathfinder and they can spread the salaries out over more sales.

Of course, it's also possible that paying more has direct benefits as well, in terms of getting the best talent and in terms of employee retention, which can save a ton of money in ways that aren't obvious to many.

Right, I was trying to be succinct instead of exact. My general point remains, WoTC can afford to pay better than Paizo, regardless of the reason for that affordability.

I think most binary approaches end up failing because life exists across a spectrum. Whichever side of the binary ends up coming off as (not necessarily actually being) the most inflexible tends to lose. Every once and awhile you'll get two equally inflexible sides and establish some sort of equilibrium.

So despite most people having nuanced views on this matter, regardless of where they fall, all the views are being placed in one of the two following categories.

1. Paizo is bad/Paizo did bad things, aka 'Paizo must change.'

2. Paizo is good/Paizo did not do bad things, aka 'Paizo should stay the same.'

So sure, some people are saying 'I support position 2, this entire affair makes me more supportive of Paizo because I dislike position 1 so much.' And some people are saying, 'I not only support position 1, but I know specifically of these two/ten/four score changes that must be made.'

But that's the binary. I've heard all of the following views.

A. I don't know enough about this situation, so I support X until shown otherwise.

B. People who support X are annoying/stupid/phobic/other negative, ergo I support Y.

C. Other people's reactions are unacceptable.

D. I think Paizo will change, and I support 2.

E. I support 1 but I'm not entirely sure how much Paizo must change.

F. Paizo should support what I think is morally right over what the law says.

G. Paizo should support the law over what others think is morally right.

H. F&G aren't mutually exclusive, are they?

I. I don't trust the people making allegations, so 2.

J. I trust people making the allegations, so 1.

K. I trust some (not all) of the allegations, so X.

L. I only trust evidence, which makes me support X.

M. There is no way to get evidence, which makes me support X.

I probably could go through the entire alphabet without even getting into the sidetrack discussions that have cropped up, but I will say I'm wary of absolutes past the most basic of verified facts. (Sara was fired and made a post. It says X. Jeff responded to the situation and it says Y. He responded again and it says Z.') I don't like presuming I know someone's unstated motivations, and I don't like unsupported predictions of the future. And I don't like getting rid of neutral positions, assigning them to a side, or suggesting that the neutral position is inherently superior to the others.

At the end of the day, I want to see that Paizo has clear policies that do not discriminate against their employees for things they shouldn't be discriminated against, and I want to see Sara Marie land on her feet and go on to be successful. I guess that puts me on the 'side' of position 1, even though I don't think Paizo is bad, and I don't believe there's evidence for many of the accusations and I don't find all of the accusations to be actual problems regardless of their veracity.

Things are usually more complex than a binary.