WotC Greg Tito On Leaving WotC: 'It feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of *****'

We reported earlier that WotC's communications director Greg Tito had left his 9-year stint managing the Dungeons & Dragons brand for a political appointment as Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Washington secretary of state's office.

Greg Tito Leaves Wizards of the Coast

Greg Tito, formerly the communications manager in charge of overseeing messaging for the Dungeons & Dragons brand, is departing Wizards of the Coast for a career in the public sector. Tito announced that he would be joining the Washington secretary of state's office starting this week, ending an...

www.enworld.org

In a surprising turn of events, Tito criticized his former employers, saying "It feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of a**holes." He later went on to clarify "Sorry. I meant "shareholders".

Tito is now Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Washington Secretary of State office in Olympia, WA.

 

[Nikosandros]

Read more of what Greg Tito has said about his time at WotC and particularly the last year or so he was there.

Read where, if I may ask?

 

[jerryrice4949]

All you have to do is be a better boss than WotC .

lol. A low bar indeed.

 

[Steampunkette]

Read where, if I may ask?

Sorry, I should've put "Greg Tito and others" but yeah.

There's not much on his Bluesky but I'm sure there's more out there. And there's a ton of folks who lost their jobs last Christmas when Hasbro's board took an axe to the company who spoke out about how shareholders demanding a higher bottom line wound up gutting the company. The whole traditional "Layoffs made record profits look even more record by reducing overhead!" line.

Or you could look at the OGL fiasco or the D&D Beyond "Legacy Content" fiasco or the GSL Fiasco or the...

Like. Hasbro's shareholders have not been stealthy in their intentional damage of the company, and employees and other companies that work with them have not been quiet about what's happened to WotC.

 

[Oofta]

....
Dude was treated badly and spoke up about it. People who refuse to hire people because they're scared they'd speak up about the bad treatment tells me their employees are treated badly and just haven't spoken up.

Where did he say he was badly treated? Because I read it as "I don't want my job to be working for a corporation selling stuff." I've known other people like that, it had nothing to do with how they were treated.

 

[Nikosandros]

Sorry, I should've put "Greg Tito and others" but yeah.

There's not much on his Bluesky but I'm sure there's more out there. And there's a ton of folks who lost their jobs last Christmas when Hasbro's board took an axe to the company who spoke out about how shareholders demanding a higher bottom line wound up gutting the company. The whole traditional "Layoffs made record profits look even more record by reducing overhead!" line.

Or you could look at the OGL fiasco or the D&D Beyond "Legacy Content" fiasco or the GSL Fiasco or the...

Like. Hasbro's shareholders have not been stealthy in their intentional damage of the company, and employees and other companies that work with them have not been quiet about what's happened to WotC.

OK, I had misunderstood. I thought that Tito had written something about this recently.

 

[Steampunkette]

Where did he say he was badly treated? Because I read it as "I don't want my job to be working for a corporation selling stuff." I've known other people like that, it had nothing to do with how they were treated.

You think it was a general statement about private companies versus public companies?

... I guess I could see that?

But given the context of the company he left, and what that company has done in just the last 3 years, resulting in him RACING to try and get ahead of every boneheaded decision the shareholders have made that resulted in the company screwing over it's employees or trying to screw over it's customers, y'know, since he was in communications and had to try and smooth over every land mine they placed...

I feel like it has a larger meaning than "I would prefer socialism or communism, actually."

 

[jerryrice4949]

If when you see someone saying that it feels good not to line the pockets of A**holes "Sorry, I meant Shareholders" and think "I'm a shareholder, does he mean me?" I would ask how much that retirement fund is "Lining your pockets" off his work.

The context of his statement makes your attempt to redirect his aggression towards the people he worked for into a broad insult to you and other people with a retirement account that gets diversified by the company holding your retirement account (companies that gamble people's retirement savings and sometimes LOSE THEM) is more than a bit of a reach.

Stretch first.

Oh noooo... you'd be unimpressed.

If he had the credentials to do the job, the availability to do it, and the skills and material you needed, would this stop you from hiring him?

Which is fine, sure. But if -this- would cross the line into "You're unhirable" then I don't think the problem is on this person's side of the office desk.

I think it represents a social expectation that ever aspect of an employees life belongs to their employer. And that's just weird.

Like I get it if they're attacking a minority group or shooting off strings of expletives or posting other widely objectionable material.

But this? Come on.

Cool.

HAH! No.

See this? This right here is an admission I don't think you intended to make. That he might become "Disillusioned" implies there's an actual Illusion to see through. That your company would do things that make statements like his a response he or others might give.

And rather than acknowledge that and address it, most companies would rather not hire people who don't comply with the company line after they've left.

If you want to keep this from happening, treat your employees well and it won't be an issue. Read more of what Greg Tito has said about his time at WotC and particularly the last year or so he was there.

QFT.

If someone owns a business where they're scared to hire someone who badmouthed their previous business for fear their own business would be badmouthed? I would immediately wonder how they treat their employees.

Dude was treated badly and spoke up about it. People who refuse to hire people because they're scared they'd speak up about the bad treatment tells me their employees are treated badly and just haven't spoken up.

Yet.

People become disillusioned for a lot of reasons. Even employers ‘who treat their employees well’, whatever that means being that it is so subjective, have employees that become disenchanted or burned out.

In my experience few companies have all happy employees. And I find that how companies treat their employees waxes and wanes depending on a lot of factors. My organizations was very flexible and employee friendly the past couple years when labor was being hoarded and employees were hard to come by. Now it is swinging the other way with less flexibility, more rules and some potential downsizing. A lot of it just depends on who has leverage at that moment in time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's interesting how folks here are focused on how they could potentially be offended by Tito's comment and not what they reflect about the workplace culture at WotC, which I think is his real point.

Even if Granny has a retirement fund that owns some $HAS, she's not likely to be the sort of shareholders he's talking about.

Chasing the best possible quarterly profit has made many (all?) publicly traded corporations behave in a monstrous manner. It doesn't just make them behave in anti-competitive fashions; doesn't just cause many of them to cut corners wherever possible in the goods and services they produce; it also creates a terrible, toxic place for employees to work.

"Dur, why doesn't he just quit, then?" the would-be champions of the publicly traded corporation always retort.

He did.

And if he's going to be doing public communications for the state government of a blue state, saying chasing shareholder valuation can be bad isn't exactly going to limit his career possibilities. At worst, he ends up working for legislators in California, Washington or Oregon, who can keep him gainfully employed the rest of his life. At best, everyone says "yeah, I worked for a publicly traded company too, and it sucked" and no one cares.

If you are offended by the extremely common thought that, hey, maybe chasing shareholder value often makes companies a bad place to work, manage your companies and invest your funds accordingly. (There are companies that don't behave that way, but they're famously good places to work because they're so unusual.)

 

[MGibster]

Finding out someone said something vile or horrible on their publicly facing personal accounts which might reflect poorly on a corporation and someone calling shareholders a dirty name are a wide gulf.

That's what I'm saying.

It's not really about the shareholders though. If I see a candidate and they're talking smack in public about their former employer it's going to make me wonder if they'll do the same about my company. It's especially concerning if the candidate is seeking a marketing position. But like I said, the rebuke was relatively minor and I wouldn't automatically reject a candidate. And it's not entirely unfair to think that maybe a former employee wouldn't talk smack if management had treated their people with respect.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

They wouldn't be where they are if someone calling them a jerk would be enough to make them consider the feelings of other people.

No one is saying that those public statements are an issue because someone at Hasbro's feelings might be hurt. The problem with those public statements is that a future employer will wonder if that person has trouble interacting with others. The workplace is a social unit, with many personalities, where there is a goal set by an employer who pays the employees' wages. A manager looking to fill a spot is going to avoid folks who have any whiff of being hard to work with.

If a former employee genuinely has an issue with their former employer, there are many other avenues they can take (filing a grievance, lawsuits, speaking to the press... with a case in hand, etc.). All that a random Twitter blast conveys to future employers is that the poster has little self-control and poor judgement. Especially if that Twitter blast has zero facts or details of what went wrong. If the poster has a legitimate case, there was a more adult route that they could have taken. If they don't have a case, then their reaction was childish, to be kind.