Paizo Jessica Price (ex Paizo employee) spills the beans

[Retreater]

Carpet cleaning sounds like it's petty, but when it's SEVEN years of built-up dust, dirt, and God knows what else has been tracked in from outside (and remember, this is the Pacific NW, where there's rain, snow, road deicing chemical, pollen, etc), to the point where it's triggering asthma attacks in people, that's a serious safety violation. When the physical work space affects people's health and management's reaction is to roll their eyes and say "deal with it," that's some serious disregard for the health and safety of your employees right there.

It's probably actionable. No one should have to work in an environment that makes them physically ill, or exacerbates conditions they already have. An indoor office environment should be free from problems like that, it's not a freakin' construction site where you'd expect dust and dirt to be all around.

Yeah, they should've taken care of it, absolutely. I'm in management, and there's no way I would let something like that happen to my employees. I was just concerned that I was missing the rest of the story.

 

[billd91]

There's definitely fallout going on in the Paizo forums too, some long-time participants are not happy with Sara Marie being sacked or the other allegations.

 

[Ringtail]

Thread by @Delafina777 on Thread Reader App

@Delafina777: Welp, Paizo just fired their two most senior customer service people (one a woman, one a POC) for apparently being too willing to push back on abusive management. Of course, this also means that the...…

threadreaderapp.com

In case you didn't realize, this post by Kenada has a collection of all the tweets in a more readable format.

I'm disappointed so far. The evidence does look pretty damning, but I'm also wary of Price. Her stuff certainly comes across as vengeful, but I believe that's it's probably true. Sometimes in our anger we can exaggerate or forget stuff. I'm curious what Paizo has to say about this, the only response I've seen so far was one from Mona claiming there were a lot of false claims, but it read a little like internet drama, two personalities firing back at each other. I'd like to see an official and professional response to some of these claims.

At the moment I'm reserving my judgement. I've never had a subscription since I play 5e, so I don't have to worry about giving them money right now. I can just abstrain from any purchases until I know more. Still at this point I'm leaning towards siding with Price and the other affected employees. I was just about to propose switching my 5e Group to PF2, but that's gonna be on hold for now.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Woah. No need to go personal. I’m a left wing supporter of the Green Party not a right wing cancel-culture-nut. I just believe in natural justice and accountability… neither of which Jessica Price is displaying. You are right, she isn’t breaking a social media code of ethics… I’m saying there should be one.

Genuinely sorry for lumping you in with the right-wingers on this one. Basically the worst thing I could assume of someone, so, really, apologies.

But I also think a lot of notions and expectations of professionalism are antiquated, and have been more often used as a way to stifle criticism and protect institutions than to help the people who really need help, particularly those with less power. Same goes for the discourse on civility. Not much worthwhile has ever been gained by people being cautious, civil, or even professional, a term that's hard to define but easy to weaponize. Even if you disagree--which you obviously have every right to--there's no putting all of the genies back in all of the bottles. This is just how the world is now.

 

[Parmandur]

Read the whole thread now: I believe every word of it.

 

[John R Davis]

Sad..I haven't transitioned to PF2 so haven't supported them with money in a long while but I do hope they get things sorted in good order

 

[Grendel_Khan]

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Paizo employees talking about a toxic culture, but I also don’t see what we will learn from what will doubtless be a corporate doublespeak statement that says next to nothing aside from “fake news!”.

Yeah unless a company issues a full mea culpa, including at least one person in management actually suffering a permanent consequence, no official response will ever matter. I was at Facebook during some of the worst of their scandals, and I couldn't believe that no one got sacked or resigned "to spend more time with my family" or whatever. The best-worded assertion of contrition means nothing of someone's head doesn't roll.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm disappointed so far. The evidence does look pretty damning, but I'm also wary of Price. Her stuff certainly comes across as vengeful, but I believe that's it's probably true.

Read the whole thread now: I believe every word of it.

I do too, but not because of anything Price said, but I'm basing my opinion on what everyone else is saying. I'm sorry, but Price has a history of being untruthful and trying to make everything sexist when it isn't. And her very first tweet to start this issue was not true (why highlight the gender/ethnicity of the two people who left unless you thought that was the reason they were let go, when nothing suggests that. And the "PoC" she mentions wasn't fired like she claimed either.)

So I'm afraid there are too many red flags there for me to trust her. However, there is plenty of collaboration by others, and it's plausible (sadly all too common in this industry), so I believe this has happened. Which again, blows my mind that something so easily resolved was allowed to blow up. If I were an investor in a company that did this, I'd be peeved.

 

[Justice and Rule]

In case you didn't realize, this post by Kenada has a collection of all the tweets in a more readable format.

I'm disappointed so far. The evidence does look pretty damning, but I'm also wary of Price. Her stuff certainly comes across as vengeful, but I believe that's it's probably true. Sometimes in our anger we can exaggerate or forget stuff. I'm curious what Paizo has to say about this, the only response I've seen so far was one from Mona claiming there were a lot of false claims, but it read a little like internet drama, two personalities firing back at each other. I'd like to see an official and professional response to some of these claims.

At the moment I'm reserving my judgement. I've never had a subscription since I play 5e, so I don't have to worry about giving them money right now. I can just abstrain from any purchases until I know more. Still at this point I'm leaning towards siding with Price and the other affected employees. I was just about to propose switching my 5e Group to PF2, but that's gonna be on hold for now.

Yeah, it's disappointing. I'm definitely going to be sending an email threatening to cancel my subscription if things aren't done in response t this.

Though perhaps we should have always expected this sort of stuff. Jessica states that the problem isn't the writers, editors, or actual creators, but management. And the problem with this entire industry is so much of management comes from a different era, one where this sort of s*** (particularly the sexual harassment) was not a big deal and you could have more regressive views on things (the story about the "Madness" mechanic and the response to why not putting a stress mechanic out was definitely bad). Hearing that Paizo's progressive outlook is largely because of a push from the bottom is heartening at a certain level (since it does show that change can occur bottom-up) but at the same time incredibly depressing as it seems like the top just isn't interested in that sort of thing. After watching Wizards continually Sideshow Bob themselves on this stuff, it was nice to think that Paizo was doing good stuff with the Mwangi Expanse book and such. Now it seems like Paizo's editors were just more adept at getting good stuff through by comparison.

Given that it's a smaller company, I hope this manages to have consequences. They are certainly warranted for what seems to be coming out.

 

[Ancalagon]

And the "PoC" she mentions wasn't fired like she claimed either.)

Is the POC the person fired, or their assistant?



Because from reading this, Sara Marie was fired. But is she the POC, or is the POC Diego Valdez (who resigned in protest)?