Chief Change Officer
#201 Benedikt Oehmen: From Game Development to Career Redevelopment
Wed, 26 Feb 2025
After 17 years at Blizzard, Benedikt Oehmen was living the dream—until layoffs hit like a surprise boss battle. While the ending was tough, he didn’t hit “quit.” Instead, he rewrote the script, turning his own experience into a mission to help others navigate job loss. In this episode, he shares his hard-earned insights, including his “Big Three” strategies for rebounding, thriving, and finding the next great opportunity.Key Highlights of Our Interview:From Physicist to Gamer at BlizzardFrom 17 Years of Loyalty to Facing Layoffs: When Blizzard Prioritized Profit Over People“I started with Blizzard in 2005, and by 2018, after 13 years, the focus had shifted from creating epic experiences for gamers to just making more money.”Breaking Free from the Corporate Overlord: Coaching Passionate Geeks on Their Own Terms“Bound to a corporate overlord who tells me what to do and where my priorities are. And all my efforts basically go towards making rich people even richer in a sense."From Panic to Possibility: How to Flip Career Transitions into Exciting New OpportunitiesLearning in Disguise: How the “Big Three” Turns Mistakes into Milestones“Being kind to me is all about self-acceptance, embracing the good things in our life and not looking at what we think we are missing.”______________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Benedikt Oehmen______________________--**Chief Change Officer**--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs,Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts.6 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today. --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Benedikt Oehmen and how did he start his career at Blizzard?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Every day, it seems like you can't escape news of layoffs, corporate downsizing, or restructuring. Today's guest, Benedict Uman, has been directly impacted.
Benedict has spent 17 years with Blizzard, a market leader in creating epic gaming experiences. In today's workplace, loyalty to employers or even employers' loyalty to employees feels like a relic of the past. So how was that experience for him? For the most part, it was positive and enjoyable. But then, things shifted. Hearts were broken. Homes were shuttered.
Now, Benedict is turning that experience into something powerful. He's built a full-time practice to help others navigate similar challenges of layoffs and downsizing, offering a shift in mindset and sharing the principles from his book, where he lays out his big three strategies for stepping out of the shadows and moving on. Better, faster, and stronger. Welcome, Benedick. Welcome to our show.
Hello. Thanks so much for having me. I'm feeling very honored among all your distinguished guests to be here.
Benedick. You've written a book which is freely available. Through this book and your coaching practice, you're helping people through career dilemmas, layoffs, and various forms of corporate downsizing. I'm sure many listeners are eager to hear more about your insights, your philosophy, and your approach to these challenges.
But before we dive into that, could you share a bit about your own story? Where are you originally from in Germany? What brought you to France? And what did you do there? Let's start with your background and then we'll explore different parts of your experiences in more depth.
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Chapter 2: What were Benedikt's roles and experiences during his 17 years at Blizzard?
Okay, sure. Sounds great. So I'm born in Germany, close to Cologne and Dusseldorf, so in the western part of Germany. In 2001, I moved to Heidelberg to study physics. And did my bachelor's degree there in physics and asked myself, what do I actually want to do with this? Once like in real life.
And my brother made me aware that Blizzard, which was one of my favorite gaming companies or Z, my favorite company of all times when it comes to games at the time and still is. He said, hey, they're looking for support staff for the Game Master, for the in-game customer support. That's all.
Let's take a semester off of physics and see how the real world looks like working for a real company in France, close to Paris. And so I sent my CV, I had an interview and said, awesome, when can you come? And then basically took the semester off, started at Blizzard. I loved it so much that from the half year I was taking off originally, that quickly became one year.
Then I changed from customer support to community management and communications. And then I stayed for 17 years total instead of a quick semester and then going back.
Wow. You've stayed with one firm for 17 years, taking on multiple roles. Talk about loyalty. In today's workplace, loyalty to employers or employees. Even employers' loyalty to employees feels like antique. Premium, high value, but very, very few people truly understand the value. How was that experience for you? Tell us about how your roles evolved over time.
You mentioned that you study physics, which I have to admit, I know nothing about. I've always thought people who study physics are super smart. But then in a gaming company, you were dealing with customers, working with people and creating games. How did all of that come together for you?
Okay, so I started in customer support, so basically helping players in our premier game at that point, World of Warcraft, if they had any issues in-game. Then I quickly transitioned into community and communications, where the team that I worked in is the linchpin between the community and the game developers in the States. It's like they're communicating back and forth.
We try to get the game closer to the players, but also understand the players' needs better to feed that back to the developers, especially for the European market and the seven languages that we were looking after. I really loved that part because for me, succeeding together, that's where my heart beats.
And it was in this position we were responsible for making sure that together with the community, we were creating the most awesome gaming experiences for all players. And that really fascinated me. I loved it. And that's why I gravitated to it so strongly. As I stayed in the team, I became more and more experienced with the subject matter.
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Chapter 3: How did the merger with Activision impact Blizzard's culture and Benedikt's career?
And that was a shock to us because many of us, we started with Blizzard as our first company. And as I said, it really felt like a family. And all of a sudden we were to say goodbye to a third of that family. And we didn't know if we were impacted ourselves. So a lot of different and difficult emotions came up for everybody. We felt shocked. Oh, how can that be?
Like we've been doing so well and I thought we are still doing well. And yeah, it was a really hard time for everybody involved and people had many different reactions because in France, after the announcement, it took about a year. before that reduction actually took place.
So there was a phase for about half a year, three quarters of a year, where people could volunteer to leave so that the 30% would be filled up with volunteers as much as possible.
and during that time frame it was getting increasingly difficult because few people a couple of people said there's too much pressure i i don't want to deal with this anymore i just want to get out and they left ahead of time i for myself decided i wanted to stay around to help my team through this process
And it turned out my team was completely gone at the end of the process because they reduced the entire community team to one person instead of around 10. which was, of course, a big change. For me, I took it as an opportunity to say, okay, good, this part of my career is done. Let's transition to somewhere else in the company.
And I went from a publishing to a production environment and localization, so the translation of our games, and started there as a manager, helping the team over there, the German and Italian team in particular,
to transition through what we were going through because now they also lost about half to a third of their co-workers and now they needed to do more with less resources so there was a lot of change management to be done somewhere where I thought great I can make a positive difference here for the people to actually remove roadblocks make their lives easier so they can get
the stuff that do best, they can get that done with as little interruption as possible. And that actually worked quite well. But then in 2020, the second shoe dropped and they announced, hey, we are going to close the Versailles office completely. It was super tough and everybody that remained in the hopes of being able to keep on with Blizzard, then those hopes shattered.
Now everybody was faced with, okay, what am I going to do now? And in that environment, I sat down with my team and said, okay, it is what it is. We all have to go through these five stages of grief again that we just passed through the year before with many of our friends leaving. but we'll come out of it on the other side.
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Chapter 4: What strategies did Benedikt employ to handle layoffs and career transitions?
And once you're in a good space to think about it, I want to have a discussion with each and every one of you, what you want to do moving forward after Blizzard and what we can do right now to get you started on that journey towards a prosperous future where you feel fulfilled and happy and have a good job even after Blizzard. And that, in a nutshell, were my 17 years at Blizzard.
So, if I look at your journey, it seems like, for the most part, two-thirds of it, your time at Blizzard was quite positive and enjoyable. You had the right kind of culture, a great team, And you were learning through different roles. But then something changed. It seemed like the trigger point was the merger.
New policies, a shift in business direction, and ultimately a change in the overall culture. That's when a lot of changes started happening for you personally, as well as for the team and the things you care about at this company. Over time, especially around the COVID period, you found yourself trying different things, staying engaged in the firm, but the whole environment happened.
shifting, becoming less familiar and no longer the right fit for you. With the downsizing and layoffs, it sounds like that was the moment when it became clear that it was time for you to move on. And now you're channeling that experience into your current practice, helping others who face similar challenges and layoffs.
At what point during or after your time at Blizzard did you have that testimony like, hey, I've been through this tough experience. Why not turn it into a way to help others? Was there a specific moment that made you realize, this is what I want to do. This is my new mission.
Yeah, so that was definitely towards the end of my time at Blizzard when I was exploring more and more coaching techniques and more and more workshops with my team to really empower them to take charge of their own destiny and do so with hopefully a more positive outlook on their own abilities and their own future. it really starting to make a difference for them, but also for me.
In that moment, I realized, wow, like coaching, I really resonate with that. Not telling people what to do, but listening to them where they are right now, where they want or need to be in the future. And then together, explore that possibility space of what they can start doing right now with a long term view, but very small and iterative steps right now to get to where they need to be.
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Chapter 5: What is Benedikt Oehmen's new mission after leaving Blizzard?
And that's when I discovered for me and said, hey, after the time at Blizzard, I'll have some time and I have some resources. I'll get certified in coaching. I want to know more about that and I want to be able to do it professionally. And during the following year, I did then exactly that. And that's what convinced me doing that course with other coaches.
Wow, yes, this is really what I want to do moving forward because I'm not bound to a corporate overlord who tells me what to do and where my priorities are. And all my efforts basically go towards making rich people even richer, right?
In a sense, and now I have the freedom to work with people that share the same values, that are geeks like me, which to me just means they embrace what they love without reservation and they're not afraid of showing it. So people who do that, they don't need to be gamers, they don't need to be nerds or anything, but they're just unapologetically passionate about what they're doing.
And those are the people I love working with because that is my background and that's the life that I lived at Blizzard and I will forever be thankful for having had that time and the opportunities that Blizzard afforded me to grow into that person that I am today who is...
a lot more safe in his own abilities and okay not having a normal nine to five job but being my own boss and having my own company and and living a little bit outside my comfort zone and pushing against it steadily so yeah i'll forever be grateful for that and it's it led me to where i am today and it's a really exciting space so yeah
It sounds like your journey into coaching was part of your own self-discovery, where you eventually turned that interest into a full-time practice. Now, when it comes to career transitions, people handle them in different ways. Whether the transition was triggered by downsizing, layoffs, involuntary resignation, or simply wanting to do something different.
not everyone sees it in a positive light. Some people see transitions as a failure or setback, while others see them as opportunities for growth, while others see them as opportunities for growth. Personally, I see career transitions as growth opportunities, though I admit that there was a time in my life when I didn't.
I used to see them as personal failures, which made the process really tough for me. But back to you, now that you've built a coaching practice and have been working with people, what do you think causes some individuals to struggle with seeing career transitions as opportunities? Why do some people see it as a setback or even feel resentment towards making a change?
So to me, it comes down to your point of view and how you choose to engage with that event in your life. That event being your parting ways with your former employer, either by your own choice or you're being forced to because you have been laid off or the company is no more. And we can choose to look at that and say, oh my God, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
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