...employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc.Yeah as opposed to say 20 and 30-somethings whose drinking and bar-hopping make for great sleeping patterns and stellar focus. Or Jennifer Aniston fans who wile away the scrolling through various sites to see what her latest comment on Bradgelina. Or TNC readers who...Oh, wait. No, you guys are great. Your doing a civic duty. I'm sure your employers understand.
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Apparently employers are being instructed to avoid WoW players:
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The funny thing is the author shouts out Everquest....you sure you didn't write this TNC?
I don't care how obsessed a WoW player you are, it can't possibly compare to my obsession with the 2008 election. If it were possible to burn out the refresh function for fivethirtyeight.com and RealClearPolitics (as well as TNC and fellow Atlantic voices, obviously), I would have done it months ago.
I've played WoW off and on over the past couple of years. I take long breaks from it however because a lot of other players take it way too seriously. Often a mistake one (meaning me!) might make in a group is responded to with genuine anger by other players, which isn't at all fun. I'm reasonably smart and don't make that many mistakes - at least not big ones. But when someone is looking for that one item. Man, you better bring the best.
Your doing your civic duty?
Let's make that "You're," please.
-grammar police
Talk like that is objectively pro-Lich King
H,
You have to take those breaks. I find I can't play for more than a year.
Hear hear on the election thing. My workplace iPhone usage has probably quartered since the vote.
I'm very curious how this would even come up in a job search. Do people tout their experience leading a guild on a job interview? I imagine every person I have ever interviewed with assuming a reference to a guild meaning my last job was operating the apothecary at some Colonial Williamsburg style historical theme park. I don't think that would be helpful to securing many types of employment.
show me the employee that gives 100%, excluding immigrants.
how do they determine whether a candidate plays WoW.
your right TNC, everyone has their distractions, and gamers have many skills that can be applied to the workplace that someone who gets trashed every weekend may not have
Speaking of civic duty, as an educator who teaches active citizenship and advocacy to high school students here in New York City, I've included this blog in my lesson plans on numerous occasions.
Google is a double-edged sword, my friends. I'm assuming there is somebody out there who can start with a basic google search, find all your blog posts, social networking sites, pictures, online aliases, what games you play, what bars you hang out at, who your friends are and what color you dyed your pubes last night within about 60 minutes.
Even a cursory google of your name will usually turn up something embarassing, especially for the under 30's who grew up online. And wrt this post, if you played WoW even a little bit, there is a post somewhere out there with your epic nerdgasm over finally getting that last set piece drop from Blackrock Spire.
Um. At the risk of outing myself as one such fan -- I'm not. Really. Team Angie! Just kidding. Sort of. --- it's Brangelina. As in less Brad, more Angelina.
Shutting up now and feeling appropriately ashamed.
Jordan, it's funny you should mention that. The partner and I got into a long discussion about the perils of blogging, Facebook, etc. last night. (He thinks I'm a wee bit cavalier about what I write on my blog.) Apparently just about every potential employer not only asks about all manner of online activity (including, of course, the president-elect and his transition team), but makes the most of Google.
I don't worry about that nearly as much as the fact that my mother reads what I write.
The sad thing is, if you lead a competitive raiding guild, it most definitely does take actual real-life people/management skills. It's kind of like managing a sports team, except for a sport where you have 25 people on the field at a given time and a bench about twice that. But of course, only a few thousand people (defined as the guild leaders of the top few thousand raiding guilds in WoW) in the game worldwide (out of 10 million) can claim that kind of experience.
*salutes*
Anything for my country
Sir Ta-nehisi sir!
I kind of see it but don't really. I'm careful not project my own experiences with World of Warcraft with what employers might have with other folks. God knows we've all heard the stories and some of us have lived them.
But this position is the equivalent of saying not to pass along anybody who drinks socially because he might be an alcoholic. That would be a stupid, foolish decision that would not indicate responsible management. In a culture that that has assimilated gaming, a smart recruiter/employer needs to ask more probing questions to determine whether the candidate is responsible with his hobbies, not just assume.
I think if you wander into a job interview with the carpal tunnel brace on, start saying things like "screen shot or it didn't happen", and type all interoffice email in 1337-speak your employer might get the idea that your mind is indeed elsewhere.
haha. i dont even play WOW but if i had to get a job based on my "sleeping patterns" i'd be unemployed.
I have it on good authority -- well, okay, I just live in Silicon Valley and know far too many people working in the computer and software fields -- that the Internets would grind to a halt if employers we no longer hiring players of World of Warcraft.
Is there some sort of rampant real-life guild-on-guild PvP going on? Sort of like the Nortenos and Serrenos only with those fake swords you buy at cutlery stores? Because I'd pay good money to see my friends working at Apple hitting each other with warhammers while screaming "For the Horde!"
This is the kind of voodoo that employers use when they have too many applicants chasing after too few jobs. Plays Warcraft? Unreliable. Overweight? Shows poor self-control. Fidgets? Can't focus. Eager to get the job? Shows desperation. etc., etc., etc.
One sad side-effect of high unemployment is that all of us will be placed under this kind of scrutiny, allowing employers to force all their life-style standards on the rest of us.
Any difference between the MMO gamers and the ones playing Minesweeper or Solitare?
Companies should only worry about MMOers if they find a lot of Runescape installed everywhere.
Maybe we should all be like Jennie Breeden and just stick to LARPing.
Well, for the record, my productivity and efficiency increased appreciably when I stopped playing computer games. That's correlative, not causative.
TNC,
I've got a friend in Chicago who, at times, refuses to go out or hang with any of his buddies for days or weeks on end so that he can WoW it up. Sometimes he lies to us and says he's busy with stuff to do for work, but then my brother once caught him at his apartment playing the game instead. I've got no problem if he's a Class 50 Knight Warlord, but it does have an effect on his ability to socialize with us properly.
Of course, I think the bigger issue for employees who lack focus or have strange sleep patterns because of WoW isn't that they are irresponsible. It's that they hate their jobs and would much, much, MUCH rather be questing instead of sitting at a desk looking over company reports.
Looks like it's back to work for me......sigh.
I do spend far too much time discussing sports and politics, although I forced myself on hiatus from my favorite sporting sites.
I'd hire a WoW player for anything, you guys are desensitized to repetition and tiny rewards. Wait till your boss starts coming to you with assignments in quest form: "TNC, I need 5 posts on old school rap, 3 youtube videos, 10 commentaries on race in america and a print piece. Reward: I'll raise your salary by $10/year and give you a silly looking hat"
Really, this whole "no WoW players" thing is just an excuse to discriminate against blood elves.
I wonder if this is something the online show "The Guild" will cover? Sounds like an amusing side plot.
Jack: what are the stats on the silly hat? Is it better than the silly hats that other players^wemployees are wearing? Also will this quest affect my blogosphere rep? 'Cause I've been grinding that forever in hopes of unlocking the memeorandum and technorati achievements.
@Jack: If you were going to maximize repetitive work out of a WoW player, there better be a pretty good pet to get out of it. Like a rock with a smile painted on it. I hear those are big with the kids.
@Doctor Cleveland: Substitute "gnomes" for "blood elves" and you might be on to something.
To me, this is like refusing to hire anyone who ever has a drink. Of course a practicing alcoholic who polishes off a bottle of vodka every day is not likely to be a star employee, but there are plenty of us who enjoy a drink now and then and still manage to get work done during the day. It's the same with WoW. There most definitely are plenty of obsessive game-addicts whose workdays are spent covertly researching talent trees and scheduling raids. But there are plenty of us who play more casually and still manage to get a good night's sleep, thank you very much.
I remember there was a question on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me... about what habit would disqualify you from serving in the Israeli army. The answer? DnD. Apparently they believe it means that players aren't in touch with reality.
I'm lucky, all my potentially embarrassing stuff is listed under Jim Franks. Feel free to try and figure out which one. One of the few times I've been glad of a common name.
Jack, very funny! But what about the quests that involve killing an instance boss? Killing bosses sounds fun, but the rewards are all negative - unless of course one lives in the evil Star Trek universe where that's the accepted rout to advancement.
"Kill my boss! Do I dare to live out the American dream?"
Gah ... Fat-fingered the last comment. That's a bit of Homer, from one of the Halloween episodes.
Seriously. If employers are worried about WoW players not being "100 percent" dedicated to the job, then what about these potential hirees?
1) The guys and gals with 6-year-olds starting off at school, needing parent/teacher conferences on a bi-weekly basis?
2) The guys and gals who are football/sports fanatics who take every weekend to RV to their alumni for gameday? And by weekend I mean "all the days after Wednesday, and maybe up into Monday thanks to the 3-kegger tailgating hangover".
3) The guys and gals volunteering at their community churches for such things as soup kitchens, blanket giveaways, bake sales to fundraise for all these homeless shelters getting overwhelmed this post-Bush era?
4) The guys and gals working two extra jobs to pay for health care/mortgages/college loans?
Think any of these groups are giving "100 percent" at work? Think employers have a right to discriminate against any of them?
It wasn't a Halloween episode. I'm ashamed to say I know that.
I have had two kids and have gone through honeymoon periods with two online games (WoW and Shattered Galaxy). I can say, without a doubt, that the children caused far more disruption of my worklife than any late night gaming did.
Both kids basically reduced me to zombie status for the first eight months of their lives as they were both breastfed and refused to sleep through the night for far too long.
I am also frequently called upon to miss work due to school closures (weather), school plays, music festivals, track and field meets, and child illness.
Based on my experience, no parent of young children should ever be considred for any position with any company.
Someone pointed out the fact that employers WILL Google you. There was an article in the WaPo on this... turns out young teachers were posting stupid and very unprofessional stuff on their Facebook profiles and principals were not amused.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702213.html
As a late thirtysomething who grew up just before the days of the web I'm often quite shocked at what people will post. Having made it through grad school to get a tenure track research job, I'm often asked by my fellow students a few years ahead or my students now about the job thing. One thing I say: Make sure to start cleaning up your internet presence a year or two BEFORE you plan to go out on the market. You can explain away a WoW habit or those pictures of the trip to Cabo with your old girlfriend if it was a few years back. You can't if it's last month.
This is even more true given zero-defect hiring now that the economy's down.
Sure, my employer understands.
So how come you're the only Atlantic blogger blocked at work by Websense? Same URL, right? I assume you've done something dastardly to the link that makes me have to come home to read your stuff.
WoW is a truly appalling habit. As an employer I would discriminate as well.
You go around killing stuff in true hack 'n slash style. Its nothing like proper DnD at all.