They used to make good games too. The last 10 yrs or so have truly sucked the magic out of what Blizzard used to be.

@@TWLpontus Bad management can undo every effort of good workers, but somehow management is never held to the same standards as those below them.

overwatch cinematics

@@TWLpontus Exactly. Everything kinda went to shit after Starcraft 2. But they never failed at making cinematics

​@@TWLpontusAbout the time the WMV turned into a pandemic.

And Amazon is known for abuse... and tax breaks and screwing the poor and underemployed.

They pay their employees in Tech and IT very well apparently, it’s the grunts they don’t care about lol

​@@BrodyxBrownno one cares about the grunts XD

Judging an entire companies ethos based on a few anecdotes out of millions of people over several decades is nothing more than trendy "successful company is evil" BS. It's basically just a meme that people have turned into an insane stereotype they can use to sound virtuous and socially conscious without having to do any actual mental work.

@@NautilusGuitarsExactly with me hiring people. I had ONE negative interaction with ONE person I hired versus EVERY SINGLE PERSON I HIRED AND BOOM! Entire Godot Reddit jumping down my throat siding with the guy I hired.

I wonder how, hmmm

In other words, "seize the means of production comrades"?

@@SignorAde People are actually the means of production, nothing gets done without them, so you could say that totalitarian regimes did exactly that.

yeah and probably cares little for gaming, just for milking the cow for every penny he can. Whatever is not spent on the grunts, is extra for him.

@@SignorAdeand then do what? Make video games ourselves? 😂

Man I am eternally greatful I have a profession where my skills are in demand enough, that even though sometimes treated like crap, I still know they need me more than I need them. EDIT: Combined with being a member of a relatively strong public services union.

I mean tbf he has some extremely valuable skills and a lot of evidence from his previous occupation at blizzard so obviously they would treat him better

My nephew was a lead dev on an Amazon project and he said working conditions were great and so were the incentives. I think he'd still be there if Google didn't offer him an even sweeter deal. I was also surprised because I've read so much about how shit they treat their warehouse staff. Amazon is notorious for being one of the worst employers

office workers in general are very privileged

and suddenly I'm thankful I didn't pass the online entrance exam

Amazon tech jobs actually pay well. It’s all the other ones that suck 😂

When I had to move and needed to make money fast, Amazon paid really well. They were 5 hour shifts so they worked around my other job(I was an assistant manager at the time so that was difficult), they hired me on the spot under the condition I'd pass a drug test and they actually paid higher than I got when I was a general manager for entry level work. I didn't think the working conditions were great, but because the first week was "training" I pretty much only worked there for 2 weeks on the floor and got the money I needed so it was worth it.

Its actually not that blizzard pays badly or amazon pays better, its that pretty much every company skimps on pay raises. So if you stay in a single place too long, they won't ever give you a raise, and you'll find out the only way to get your pay up to standard is to keep jumping from job to job. The guy working on amazon for 10 years probably earns the same thing as the guy working on blizz for 10 years, which is less than the guys who barely got there.

@@metalhev3989 Unless the industry standard rate tripled in 7 years and Blizzard *never* raised pay, Blizzard paid badly.

​

Well you have to remember that different departments always have different cultures. I can use the warehouse job I had during my first two years of college. The people out on the factory floor were subject to what I felt was pretty horrible work conditions with nobody really caring for anyone else and management being probably the root of the problem. However, just across the wall into the warehouse our working conditions were amazing in comparison. It was a refrigerated warehouse so that was horrible, but the people were all the difference. Everyone in the warehouse had the opinion that we all know the job sucks, the least we can do is always help eachother to make it not suck. Obviously that doesn’t speak for all warehouses or factory floors, of course, but it’s always a perspective to think about.

Amazon treats their white collar workers great lol

Badge colors make a difference.

white and blue collars get treat differently, just like market place vs web service. Everything even out to make the AVERAGE stats seemed great on paper, as well as paying zero fed taxes.

​@@rovvy221they pay taxes. It's a published fact. People like Bernie sanders just claim otherwise to use the company as a whipping boy for their agenda

Bro the clips for blood elf’s when they released 🥹🥹 i absolutely lose it when I see animated music videos with those OG cinematics 🎉

if only we all had dads who could hand us jobs.

Dude, mannoroth slithering and chucking still is burned into my brain. I'd put the cinematic dvd on the tv too watch them lol

Ive watched the cinematics so many times they are so damn good no game has EVER to this day EVER made a cinematic as good as any of the WoW cinematics up to Wotlk i can't speak for anything after lich king though because i quit playing after that

Damn it reinhardt! Is something that i still regularly say

I can't seem to find it, can you tell me what the cinematic is called?

@@minimushrom Honor and Glory

@@minimushrom kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qbeWnph53tHNdZ8.htmlsi=RCcXmHi6zZi_0jQ6

Mk Ultra

Feels a bit Howard Stern

@@67steinip “Howard is that you?” 😂

this "podcaster voice" is called vocal fry, it's a skill you can learn

No it’s not. Lol He has a clear, deep tone. Vocal fry is when you close up your vocal chords and force air through a tiny space causing a gravely, quiet, annoying character

@@nicholasriley4729 oh youre right i must have mixed up the terms, but the radio voice is definitely something you can learn

It was the games studio and not the warehouses. Two totally different environments.

@@goldenhate6649 I still hear horror stories about people who work in their corporate offices. It's not the same type of stress obviously, but it still doesn't sound like a great place to work.

@@mowkikowski true. their corporate can't be that good if mgmt is forcing their workers return to office for arbitrary reasons and you can be fired if you dont comply

@@goldenhate6649 Yeah but theyre still owned by the same C*nt... same working conditions just a different enviroment. you are treated like a robot

@@goldenhate6649I got a young brother that works on one of the warehouses… he actually says that it’s chill enough even during Christmas days. Pay is low (but above minimum wages enough to consider it over other easier minimum ones) and they only require him to work 20hrs a month to keep his job intact. Not saying is the pinnacle of greatness but far from what people would imagine for an “Amazon warehouse”. Big busy international metropolitan city we live at.

You know you could always work on an indie game on your own. Even if it's just a passion project.

I did the same thing. Dropped out of a game art/animation program 2 years in after hearing about the working conditions from our professors who were mostly still in the industry and realizing that I'd be making the same salary with a 4 year degree as I was working at my summer job at a fish market. The industry literally depends on exploiting passionate young college kids who don't know any better.

By the way what job you are currently working??

This is why I'm not seriously going into game development. Honestly have no idea why people go through such punishment for a non-essential job.

@@concept5631 This is starting to explain why the game market is super dry. Nobody getting paid to innovate. while big companies copy paste

ain't that the truth brother

I dont think i understand what that means. Wouldnt putting legendary amounts of effort into a company be good?

not if you dont get a reward for doing that@@m0nookiE, at least in the beginning they had the pride of shipping good games, but later not even that, they put a lot of effort on adding stuff they didn`t want in the game because they knew players would hate, but where still forced to do it

This young people don't want to put in the "Legendary" work anymore!

​@@m0nookiEThe problem is that these companies make their employees work long hours for low pay on the basis that they should feel privileged to be able to work at this "legendary" company. But the reason that the company is legendary is because its employees have put in a tremendous amount of work in order to build that reputation, so making it seem like it's a favour the company has done to the workers and not the other way around is disingenuous.

Lmao they do not get paid they get a purpose.

What you want is for them to get paid and benefits like it’s a career but that will never be a career but simply a hourly job and that’s exactly how they should be paid just like any unskilled worker. If you are 30 and still unskilled hourly labor than that’s on you and shut up.

@@waynewayne9693 You are acting way uncool, sure its not a crazy job, but it needs to be done. If all those workers had better careers, you would not be getting your packages. Same goes for other "unskilled" jobs.

every job, regardless of skill, should pay a livable wage and benefits.@@waynewayne9693

@@waynewayne9693 your acting very edgy rn lmao it would be nice if amazon could treat them like human beings, im not asking for them to have 999k a year salaries but like let them use the bathroom and have breaks, i mean even the kids in ethiopia mining lithium get more breaks than amazon workers at this point

I revisit the cut scenes so often it’s wild Nothing beats Arthas🔥

@@kylewindere2133ersame still go back and watch Arthas my son

No joke, those cutscenes were what made me try the games in the first place!

Blizzard cut scenes back in the day were insane, the opening of Warcraft 3 is still one of the best things I've ever seen

The intro to WoW and especially both Starcraft games! His dad has etched out some memories for a ton of people, that's for sure!

FRRRRRR

SERIOUSLY, I've always wondered who the people who work on those WoW cinematics are. Your father is a legendary talent.

The best thing I can say about Blizzard is they had the best game cinematics over the years. ❤

For me it doesn't get any better than WoD's cinematic. Fugitive Garrosh on the run fresh off his defeat in Siege of org hopping timelines to save his father and tell guldan to get fukt, to rebuild the iron horde to face the legion Worst xpansion but best cinematic, by far

I can still feel that *_NOOOO!!!_* to this day

There's probably a difference between how Amazon e-commerce is run versus Amazon Game Studios

Amazon pays tech workers very well. They're the highest paying large company for many product mgr / software engineer type jobs.

​@@bocelottwell of course they do the expectation level is way up there. Just because you pay someone doesn't mean they will always stick around. Sometimes the money simply isn't worth it.

Not only that, but the fact that he’s a relative to the director of cinematics, and they still treated him like crap, says a lot about them.

Amazon's dev teams are very well paid, in my country they pay as good as Microsoft or Googl e

Lmfaooooo

Nepotism at its finest

@@michaelbranchini9133If u r serious i’m worried

@@michaelbranchini9133in his case it’s different blizzard makes a TON of live service games, he sold his son to modern day slavery.

@@sosa8549 yeah i could totally see it happening, pulled some strings and they welcomed him because he is the son of the director. good for him that he left though, all in all, it made his resume to be impressive enough to be accepted into just about any related company. not to say that blizzard have any high standards however, them paying for less indicates that they would take in any manpower for less

Just realizing how much he sounds like Howard Stern

Morning radio is still a thing just no one under the age of 50 listens to it lol

Yes...like all of the OTHER billionaire radio hosts out there lol The hell does that even mean? XD

@@vaevictusdeus My god replies in comments these days just make me sad. You can’t be a functioning human and be this stupid.

@@vaevictusdeus He's saying thor's voice is nice.

It's the "my uncle works for Nintendo" kid but he's not lying. 😆

Telamon is my dad

@@DrakeOolaI cant tell if this is an extremely outdated roblox joke or not

​@@palmberry5576dude i think it is, that shit was crazy

My dad owns Microsoft and he'll ban you! 😡

It's because times have changed. 35 years ago? 1988 We had just won the cold war within the past decade, shooting the US dollar into the stratosphere as the US becomes the only superpower in the world It was easy to pay you a good wage for your job in the 80s no matter what you did, and that effect steamrolled into the 90s

@@greenbean4422Odd because wages are out of control. I'm driving through states where the minimum wage is under $8/hr and Burger King have signs out offering $17/hr and nobody wants it...

@@trevordwyer5638 that's not true that no one wants it. I worked at a few fast food places and they always had their signs up even when they were not hiring.

@@greenbean4422 you can make that argument. However my argument is that since the 80's most corporations have outsourced their manufacturing to other countries, increasing the profit margin. Unless you work at a rare company, most of that gain went to the executives. The company I work for, my dad works for, has expanded exponentially in the past 20 years, becoming a global presence. The amount of money they waste now is incomprehensible, hundreds of thousands of wasted products every quarter. This is not my lone opinion, my dad also agrees that the company has been more limiting on what bonuses and benefits they give. They cut our cafe funding, holiday bonuses and incentives, while the executives enjoyed a 600% increase in pay during covid. Its happening throughout the US, and it's only getting worse. With how universities are separating the rich from the poor. There are countries that keep public schools well funded and equal, so the rich in those countries attend them, and the kids learn the experiences from others struggles, and have some of the most beneficial company policies because of it. So really, the greed in the US companies can be attributed to the large separation between private education vs our public education. That and the incredibly individualistic views that the US has now vs back in the 60s.

@@greenbean4422 Moreso its because Blizzard went through intense management changes after it became part of Activision, which radically changed the entire culture of the company.

True, and ironically this foolishness all but guarantees a future degradation of quality that will eventually undermine that legacy-perhaps to the point of complete failure.

@@hopefulpellinore5490 it's because big corporations underestimate the artistic value of videogames. Look at how Wolkswagen behaved with Lamborghini and Fiat with Ferrari: unlike EA that gutted the studios they acquired just to improve the profits on the short term, Fiat and Wolkswagen p left them intact, and give them the resources needed to do their work, even if it meant losing money for a few years, which allowed both Lamborghini and Ferrari to become extremley profitable. As it turns out, american corporations simply aren't capable to manage prestige brands.

This happens outside of the gaming industry even, just look into how SpaceX treats its employees. The other thing that "incentivizes" them to do this is that it does actually look good on a resume to have these companies because of how reputed they are. I don't know if that really holds true for Blizzard anymore after all the lawsuits, but for similar companies, you can go into it knowing it'll suck and you'll at least have a nice bit of leverage to hopping onto another job because recruiters and algorithms see, "Ooh big company!"

@@mozzjones6943 the problem with many american corporations is the composition of their shareholder boards, too many investors without any of them having a majority share, wich means the corporation is run by the CEO with the only goal of always increasing the dividends.

That's the culture of American corporations

Cool

yeah man, I remember Burning Crusade being released and going round to my mates to watch the intro cinematic together cos back then Blizz's cinematics were lightyears ahead.

I agree the Blizzard ones are legendary, but come on you never re-watched the openings to old Squaresoft games? Final Fantasy VIII and Parasite Eve particularly stand out in my memory. Capcom and Eidos tended to have great stuff for their time as well. I'm talking about that golden age of cinematics from around 1995-2005. So the cinematics era to me is from the start of the 32 bit disc based era to the launch of 7th Gen consoles with the Xbox 360, which is shortly after World of Warcraft. I will say though, those cinematics on Warcraft III and early WoW stuff were so far beyond what anyone else was doing at the time. They're impressive enough to hold up today in some parts.

@@dwatts64 Damn right mate!

I feel like there may have been more than one person’s hands involved

@@Zealant But his dad was the DIRECTOR. Which means he DIRECTED the story, narration, setting, visuals, etc. Basically put the puzzle pieces together to make the cinematics.

@@Zealant True but yeah as the person above me wrote, Director is in charge of it, if cinematic failed then everyone would have pointed fingers at him.

​@@mystrre3553It's not quite that as a role in the industry, Director of Cinematics is the one in charge of the department and tends to be the one in meetings discussing the needs, expectations, standards of their departments, tool requests (and sometimes the more tricky, challenging things that need multi departments to agree) Doesn't take anything away from his role, it's just that it's not the same as say a Director on a film - it's more like a head of department

I mean he did greater work than being a movie director arguably by pioneering a new field and settings industry standards. He is also more famous than most due to the stories still being told about him by highly influential people and by being the antagonist in one of the biggest South Park episodes ever. Kindof a legend.

have a radio voice and talk shit about blizzard = guaranteed youtube success

If it's a family then it's one that isn't getting any Christmas cards lemme tell ya.

​@@PirateSoftwarethink it'll get better under Microsoft?

​@@PirateSoftwarethatll show em!

Yet between him and his father put in 30 years. This dude is full of crap

Well, seeing how they are taking their employees for granted, want to milk them for every second of their time and not pay them adequately, I'd say that it definitely looks like working for family XD

I don't think every rung of the corporate ladder is underpaid. I doubt the CEO is underpaid. Directors may or may not be high enough, but they're definitely upper management.

Nah, he was just a human being who had talent give. To him by the one true God. People like you are the worst.

It think you mean “The breast we can do…” 😏

@@tc2241cringe

You're a couple years late on the joke, but good effort.

@@FlynnApollo it's never too late to make fun of blizzard for that

thats a W tho

Amazon tech is way different than Amazon retail in terms of quality and pay. How do you think they were able to say that when looking for new headquarters the median salary would be 6 figures and 1000s of them?

Amazon tech side is considered part of the big 4 bc it pays above average wages

They pay okay. Their vesting schedule is pretty crazy and they usually pay lower than median.

I heard that they payed decent, but the working hours were extramly bad (mainly in th warehouses)

Developers/Engineers at Amazon have tremendous salaries, even without the vesting portion considered. My signing bonus alone was >$50k.

"Thank gawd for cold fusion!"

Ugh such a good show...

​@@UltimateEnd0 Right!? I loved that show too.

As a former Amazon employee, I will say they actually did pay you (if you were a direct employee and not a contractor) higher than most that did similar work in the area, plus some extra benefits that others didn't get (like free dental and eye coverage automatically even for part time employees.) Now, I wouldn't call that "paid like a human" but the problem is that no one was being paid like a human anywhere. Amazon just had to pay better and provide better benefits than everyone else nearby. The problem came in when peak season ended (I was in the shipping warehouse) and they had to get rid of excess employees. As for the work, the facility I was at was allowed to be more autonomous and therefore had pretty decent working conditions because what we were doing was experimental, but as our facility and other facilities like ours matured our processes, Amazon's corporate started to get more and more strict which made conditions worse slowly over time. That being said, I have since worked in places that are much worse than the Amazon facilities are and I can't believe they don't get more attention. Warehouse work SUCKS. Amazon is bad and absolutely deserves the negative attention it gets, but companies like Geodis and XPO deserve that same attention if not more. Right now a lot of the attention is on Amazon's contracted drivers, and having worked directly with both the truckers and the last mile delivery drivers and found they were getting screwed pretty hard by ridiculous time demands and low pay. The problem is that the market was oversaturated with drivers and the employers that paid well didn't need help because everyone flocked to them first. Basically, if Amazon needs more of something, they will pay well and offer decent benefits. If it's something they think they can get without trying, they will be the most bottom of the barrel negotiators you will ever meet. Since truckers are more in demand they've been training their own (I left when they were piloting this program in 2018 and 2019) as well as trying to be better with contracted short haul and OTR drivers, but they still treat their last mile contractors like crap. EDIT: Oh yeah. Some definitions since I realized they're a bit esoteric. Last Mile drivers are your delivery guys. They're the ones that drive up and deliver the package to your door. Short haul drivers are truckers that make short, usually 1-4 hour trips one way to deliver a trailer full of stuff. OTR, AKA Long-Haul are the ones you see in the big sleeper tractors. Their hauls will take 5 hours or longer one way.

The thing is, the complaints about Amazon usually aren't usually about the pay, but the working conditions. Of that, the place where the complaints come from is the Delivery Warehouses.

He's not mentioning any numbers

Same. I applied to work there back in 2010. I would've had to move across the country, but I was ready too had I got the job. After hearing so many of these horror stories of working for them, I'm glad it didn't happen.

You learn a lot while being there. I left after 6 years when it was very apparent they wouldn't promote me but had no issues promoting other people ahead of me. Now I almost make triple what I made there.

I agree! but when i visited the company I saw what it devolved to.

@@shrugrug7172 big yikes

​@@shrugrug7172 You probably did the work of 3 people which would cost them more to promote and retrain multiple people to replace you.

init, when your dad is that senior in terms of game development and your experience STILL fuckin sucks... oof.

I thought that instantly 😭

brilliant comment

Nepotism is likely the reason why he kept that low wage. He was daddy's boy, got in via daddy and then just stayed that way.

​@@miriamweller812 lotta assuming going on here.

What is ghost

@@taintwasher3703 it was gonna be another starcraft game, but wasnt gonna be an RTS, but more like a TPS (tho i dont know much about how the gameplay was supposed be). However, the proyect got scrapped and the game never released.

@@taintwasher3703 A shooter set in the SC universe which was stuck in development hell for so long that it began as an N64 game and died as a GameCube game and never made it to a finished product lol

Heck yeah!

Godot is better

Game maker is awesome, it's what I learned on

Aw how cute, your daddy got you a job at Blizzard. That is so sweet.

​@dntakemesrs you obviously dunno how good this guy is at hacking and cybersec lmao

What the f

8 Interviews is absolutely criminal

Yep. I think some large companies tend to behave that way for the interview process. Exact same thing happened to me over 6 months and countless rounds of interviews for Bass Pro Shops. (hilariously different industry but I'm a web designer)

absolutely deplorable

they flew me out and interview me alllllllll day for a very low paying game design job then ghosted me

markiplier was the dad

I've boycott Blizzard since China made them screw over the hearthstone dude.

Except he never actually sites any real reason why "it sucks" to work for Blizzard... weird I say, but sure believe anyone who complains as if their word and lack of evidence is golden

@@Saldivinorumhe literally said the reasons why it sucked for him… why are you so quick to doubt someone talking bad about a big company? Your comment reads like you got triggered by the video and instantly and hurriedly typed this comment up

​@@sci-figameguy8241Exactly.

Now lets not get hasty. They make bad games AND treat their employees like shit. If they went back to making good games , most people would be chill.

New to capitalism? You people vote for it in great majority every single time, so you clearly must love it.

​@@miriamweller812new to voting commie?

@@miriamweller812 Of course we do, capitalism is the greatest economic system that has ever existed in human history. That doesn't mean it's perfect, it has a lot of issues, this is one of them. Comunism on the other hand is proven to just lead to famine and poverty. Voting for comunism or any other system because of capislism's failures is dumb af. You gotta vote for what you believe will fix capitalism's failures.Also, you probably don't know what capitalism is, most people get it wrong.

@@miriamweller812yup I love the thing that has brought more people out of poverty than anything else.

​@@andrewpyrah😂😂😂😂😂 best comment ever.

Every company makes profit by stealing from its customers and employees. End capitalism.

Capitalism

Valve has entered the chat

That's the name of the game in the modern day, big corporations consider having to pay their employees a loss of profit and they try to slash it as much as they think they can get away with. Government regulation is the only reason they aren't paying us in cheap food and cages to live in on company property.

They make that money by sucking the joy and inspirations out of their developers, forcing them to prioritize monetization over anything else.

We really need to be more considerate of Blizzard, they're just a small billion dollar mega-corporation, we can't expect them to pay the people making them those billions!

Don't forget the monthly fee. Activision was a bad idea.

yeah, warcraft 3 is a sss+ tier game and the cinematics give it the s+

you are cringe if the cinematics are the ONLY good thing you think has come out of blizzard lmao. Stop shitting on them to just be trendy bro its fucking weird.

It's like that everywhere where you been🤣🤣🤣🤣. It's cry babies like this guy who thinks he entitled and thinks he should get paid more but in Reality PC programming is dime a dozen now days and he's only bitching about blizzard NOW because of the back lash of blizzard lawsuits.

Capitalism goes brrrrr

@@kristoffer3000 Greed goes "haha" and it shouldn't.

@@kristoffer3000capitalism at least has to entice and retain willing employees. Your central authority socialism/communism system will assign you the labor in the same seized factory and laugh as you starve on your minimal rations and imprison/shoot you if you speak up. Instead of being a slave to mother nature and your own capability you are a slave to the systems greater need. Great job.

It fuckin sucks and it’s making game quality go downhill.

So they can take your money to give it to politicians you don’t support and make promotions based off of seniority? I know a carpenter who loved his union until he saw corrupt they can be. As a non union iron worker, I’ve never worked on any job with union carpenters that went smoothly.

@@fortyninehike I don't know how unions work in the US, but truly it cannot be worse than this anyways. If they unionised, they could finally have some leverage against their bosses. Giving a bit of money to get to industry standard (which would be a litteral tripling of their wages) will always be worth it. Also, if you're unhappy with the union you're choosing, then meet with the other union members, and hold the vote to change union. That's the point of a union: to make collective decisions. So if they're as corrupt as you describe then call them out and make the change happen. Finally, in my country there is law prohibiting unions from meddling into politics. I would assume there is the same there. At my workplace, unions negociated a deal with the management to get the wages aligned on inflation in 2022 (which was a 7% raise for everyone).

exploitation of those who would rather work in video games than other CS jobs

They'd get outsourced to Pajeets in India, like 90% of CS jobs already have.

​@bobing1752 in the US, unions are good for only three things: 1. Protecting members when they complain about illegal or unsafe practices (usually) 2. Driving up the cost of doing business while driving down the quality expectations, usually resulting in offshoring 3. Political bribes...I mean, advocacy

he only said he got paid like a human tho

@@fw_salmon5392 it's not that bad. I'm sure they gave him his own bottle to pee in.

That's because Amazon being a bad place to work is a meme. You saw the headlines about incels peeing on bottles, but you didn't see the crazy high pay, insurance and hours they actually have. Bottle pissers got that idea from doing it at home. You don't just decide to start peeing in bottles *at work*

amazon entry level factory working is pretty abysmal but that's what to expect from a warehouse there higher Tech jobs are a whole different story tho there's still some stress but that comes with any job FYI this is coming from someone that worked in the warehouse for 3 years and just Started doing software development for them for Prime video Not to long ago

Companies generally treat replaceable workers like dirt, but they don't treat hard-to-replace workers like dirt.