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A former Valve employee talks about his experience

Nzyme32

Nzyme32

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Oct 28, 2017
5,305
Derrick01 said:
I don't know about gog specifically, but CDPR is well known these days for not being the best place to work.
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This is the video game industry in general.
In this forum, all I am seeing in a breed of platform warring for these topics, which is a shame since there is so much to discuss here

Especially as this topic does not even mention any companies by name, but is a bit more specific to software companies in general. There is a tendency to go for this kind of "flat" structure in tech right now, and it is so hit and miss specifically because oversight is either far too loose or not open enough. More importantly such structures seem more inclined to develop cliques, and those can be a wider mixed bag to function in. This is definitely something that is a joy for some and misery to others.

CDPR has same problems and benefits of any hierarchical company, but with the added game industry issues that come with it. There have been bad things said and good about working for them. Really depends on the person, but I thing self organising companies have an added issues of simply fitting it a culture in flux and more dependant on teams coalescing in a way you can function
 
Derrick01

Derrick01

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Oct 25, 2017
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Plywood said:
vAVNnmV.jpg
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This is still one of my favorite pics on the internet lol.
 

Deleted member 14002

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FyreWulff said:
Developers bumping other devs down intentionally is a symptom of stack ranking, because the way it works is everyone is ranked. Everyone on top of the rank gets bonuses, everyone in the middle is on notice, and everyone at the bottom is fired.

So instead of actually working, everyone at the company metagames instead and will intentionally sabotage each other to play to the stack rank.

One of the most notable companies to use this was Microsoft. As a connected note, Valve is formed by ex-Microsoft who worked there during stack rank, so they basically brought it with them.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer

https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking-internal-structure
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Damn. I'll believe this.
 
Nzyme32

Nzyme32

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Oct 28, 2017
5,305
Yazzees said:
Seeing how many people on forums like this just gobbled that shit up wholesale taught me a lot about how much gamers really understand the industry
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This is another amusing problem.
You can very clearly see the people here just to peddle platform warring and not reading any tweets / editorialising titles.

Rich is an industry veteran - talking about multiple companies and experience..... yet it is all about Valve (not even mentioned in any tweets), and missing the far more interesting points.

Also people are missing wealth of interesting discussion in the comments to these tweets. For anyone wondering about these two structures of company organisation - particularly in tech, there are great discussions here!

And yet here is just platform warring
 
aliengmr

aliengmr

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Oct 26, 2017
1,419
Nzyme32 said:
This is another amusing problem.
You can very clearly see the people here just to peddle platform warring and not reading any tweets / editorialising titles.

Rich is an industry veteran - talking about multiple companies and experience..... yet it is all about Valve (not even mentioned in any tweets), and missing the far more interesting points.

Also people are missing wealth of interesting discussion in the comments to these tweets. For anyone wondering about these two structures of company organisation - particularly in tech, there are great discussions here!

And yet here is just platform warring
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The title mentioned Valve so coming in here people are primed. Also, a number of people hate Valve, so they're primed and biased. Real discussion took a walk at the title.
 

Mister Saturn

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
308
Nzyme32 said:
This is another amusing problem.
You can very clearly see the people here just to peddle platform warring and not reading any tweets / editorialising titles.

Rich is an industry veteran - talking about multiple companies and experience..... yet it is all about Valve (not even mentioned in any tweets), and missing the far more interesting points.

Also people are missing wealth of interesting discussion in the comments to these tweets. For anyone wondering about these two structures of company organisation - particularly in tech, there are great discussions here!

And yet here is just platform warring
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Not surprising really. This forum from administration downwards is seemingly all about ideological warring primed with confirmation bias, only natural that this fascinating first-hand account of how these developement groups operate daily would be met with, "lol I knew Valve was trash."
 
skeezx

skeezx

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Oct 27, 2017
20,429
perhaps an elucidating glimpse into valve but what i'd say to this "ex-employee" is, welcome to the american workforce. that's just how it is bruh
 
Nzyme32

Nzyme32

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Oct 28, 2017
5,305
aliengmr said:
The title mentioned Valve so coming in here people are primed. Also, a number of people hate Valve, so they're primed and biased. Real discussion took a walk at the title.
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Mister Saturn said:
Not surprising really. This forum from administration downwards is seemingly all about ideological warring primed with confirmation bias, only natural that this fascinating first-hand account of how these developement groups operate daily would be met with, "lol I knew Valve was trash."
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Crayon said:
That title is f***** up. I didn't even realize he hadn't specified valve.
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Welcome_To_ResetEra.GIF

Case in point

KA5zD1a.png
 

Deleted member 2171

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there isn't just heirarchical and flat, there's also counting how many levels of management are between you and the CEO.

Companies with 20 layers are slow to change by design.

A heirarchy with like, 4 layers, can more nimble than the megalayered company and have more direction than a flat one.

And a flat one that pretends they don't have any heirarchy is worse than one that actually admits they have bosses.
 
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Soundchaser

Soundchaser

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Oct 25, 2017
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Crayon said:
That title is f***** up. I didn't even realize he hadn't specified valve.
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Valve is the only self-organizing company mentioned in his Twitter bio, so I went with this title. I didn't mean to imply that this discussion is solely about Valve. Though some things he mentioned aligned well with what we know about Valve, such as the Oculus debacle, the employee's handbook, and the famous Greek economist who didn't last very long at the company.
 
Crayon

Crayon

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Oct 26, 2017
15,580
Soundchaser said:
Valve is the only self-organizing company mentioned in his Twitter bio, so I went with this title. I didn't mean to imply that this discussion is solely about Valve. Though some things he mentioned aligned well with what we know about Valve, such as the Oculus debacle, the employee's handbook, and the famous Greek economist who didn't last very long at the company.
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I don't think it's a particularly malicious title or anything. But looking now, I have no doubt that it shaped thead. I was trying to pay attention and it still got by me. The context was a little bit off.

"A former valve employee talks about his experience (at valve? No? Well fuck me!)"
 
Nzyme32

Nzyme32

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Oct 28, 2017
5,305
Soundchaser said:
Valve is the only self-organizing company mentioned in his Twitter bio, so I went with this title. I didn't mean to imply that this discussion is solely about Valve. Though some things he mentioned aligned well with what we know about Valve, such as the Oculus debacle, the employee's handbook, and the famous Greek economist who didn't last very long at the company.
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That is baffling and seemingly obvious of an agenda you have. It isn't hard to see the many places he has worked and his history of discussing all of these.

The Greek economist was discussed quite a while back. If memory serves he went to work with the Greek government at the time during the financial crisis, something he wanted to do for a long while according to his blog and some interviews.
During that period he even discussed some of the (albeit crazier) ideas he had for getting around the economy issues there relating back to the "video game company" he had previously worked at. In part he lost his government position for trying to do this.

Ben Crasnow would have been a far better example for what you are trying to paint, as it illustrates are far more insidious issue
 
Maledict

Maledict

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Oct 25, 2017
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Ionic said:
I feel like I've played enough TF2 to have seen the effects of the defensive coding and mucking up of things, purposefully or not. It was interesting to hear Carmack said those mega bonuses during the Doom boom led to some pathological behavior. Is the solution to make fewer bonuses for work done relative to others and focus on people just having their agreed upon salaries instead?
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There's a lot of research that shows performance related pay only has a beneficial effect on very menial jobs. If you are screwing table legs into tables, it can motivate you to work faster to get the bonus.

At any other level of work incluisng management, creative work, coding and basically anything other than pure menial work it actually has a negative effect. It reduces creativity and distorts behaviours by focussing people on the pay not the work.

It's one of those things that seems like a good idea (pay people more if they do a good job!) but contrary to common sense actually has the opposite effect.
 
farmland

farmland

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Oct 30, 2017
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I think it's worth mentioning that Valve isn't actually a co-operative. There's an ownership class and it's delusional to think they don't have power.
There are plenty of co-operatives that function well with non-hierarchical workplace democracy. Valve is a weird contradictory combination of capitalism with co-operative leanings and its not surprising that such contradictions cause problems.
 
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Nzyme32

Nzyme32

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Oct 28, 2017
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Soundchaser said:
What agenda? If you look at my post history, you'll find that I'm quite enthusiastic about anything related to Valve. I even made a mod for Half-Life 2: http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/waterworks/
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I don't really care who or what you support, but your way of "guessing" what people are being discussed and editorialising a narrative from it pretty much prevents much conversation on what the tweets are actually about - which is far far more interesting than "Valve".
This is something I'm personally quite invested in having worked in both environments. I think Rich has/had his own company and definitely worked at several other tech companies support the "flat" structure, to benefit and detriment.

farmland said:
I think it's worth mentioning that Valve isn't actually a co-operative. There's an ownership class and it's delusional to think they don't have power.
There are plenty of co-operatives that function well with non-hierarchical workplace democracy. Valve is a weird contradictory combination of capitalism with co-operative leanings and its not surprising that such contradictions cause problems.
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From my own experience, I know of no truly "flat" organisation. There is always a hidden layer of politics and power, often with an old guard that have connections and influence.

This is neither bad nor good to me. There are lot of issues that influence whether this is to benefit or detriment of others, and whether the culture of specific groups is something I am compatible with or not. It feels like this can change based on the work, timelines, people, size. I have had horrible and wonderful experiences working in such companies but I am still inexperienced to truly judge the two organisational types and there various other forms.
 
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Soundchaser

Soundchaser

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Oct 25, 2017
1,618
Nzyme32 said:
I don't really care who or what you support, but your way of "guessing" what people are being discussed and editorialising a narrative from it pretty much prevents much conversation on what the tweets are actually about - which is far far more interesting than "Valve".
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Dude, if I somehow derailed the conversation, it was not intentional and I'm sorry - I have no idea what other self-organizing companies Rich worked at, and I found him through his blog posts about Linux at Valve, so that's what I went with. No need to paint me as some kind of schemer here.
 
JahIthBer

JahIthBer

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Jan 27, 2018
10,420
I don't think Gabe wants to manage the company anymore, he should hand it over to someone else.
 
farmland

farmland

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Oct 30, 2017
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Nzyme32 said:
From my own experience, I know of no truly "flat" organisation. There is always a hidden layer of politics and power, often with an old guard that have connections and influence.

This is neither bad nor good to me. There are lot of issues that influence whether this is to benefit or detriment of others, and whether the culture of specific groups is something I am compatible with or not. It feels like this can change based on the work, timelines, people, size. I have had horrible and wonderful experiences working in such companies but I am still inexperienced to truly judge the two organisational types and there various other forms.
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For sure, hence why I said function well, not perfectly. I think this is fundamentally an issue with any permanent institution. I know it happens a lot where I work and it doesn't have a flat structure.

The existence of informal power doesn't in my mind justify formal hierarchical power structures, but I think that goes beyond the scope of this thread.
 
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A More Normal Bird

A More Normal Bird

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Nov 14, 2017
2,342
farmland said:
I think it's worth mentioning that Valve isn't actually a co-operative. There's an ownership class and it's delusional to think they don't have power.
There are plenty of co-operatives that function well with non-hierarchical workplace democracy. Valve is a weird contradictory combination of capitalism with co-operative leanings and its not surprising that such contradictions cause problems.
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Yep, and as others have mentioned that contradiction seemingly extends to the management practices in play (stacked ranking). It would be interesting to know if this is deliberate or just unforeseen consequences.
farmland said:
For sure, hence why I said function well, not perfectly. I think this is fundamentally an issue with any permanent institution. I know it happens a lot where I work and it doesn't have a flat structure.

The existence of informal power doesn't in my mind justify formal power structures, but I think that goes beyond the scope of this thread.
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Are you counting democratised workplaces as a formal power structure, or just referring to ownership/non-accountable (from a worker's perspective) heirarchies?
 
farmland

farmland

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Oct 30, 2017
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A More Normal Bird said:
Yep, and as others have mentioned that contradiction seemingly extends to the management practices in play (stacked ranking). It would be interesting to know if this is deliberate or just unforeseen consequences.

Are you counting democratised workplaces as a formal power structure, or just referring to ownership/non-accountable (from a worker's perspective) heirarchies?
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Yes I would consider it a power structure (though one where power is more diffuse), but my critique wasn't about power itself but about who has it over whom, hence why I referred to hierarchical power.

In a general sense though I use traditional class analysis when looking at the economy, ie who controls/owns the means of production, so it's definitely from a perspective that values the worker.
 
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shintoki

shintoki

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Oct 25, 2017
15,324
Some of this is just the status quo in general. The very first programming class I took, the prof said to protect your code. It's called job security. Not disagreeing with a lot, but it also stretches everything to an office space comical level where it feels like nothing would get done, when quite a few are just norms.
 
UserDoesNotExist

UserDoesNotExist

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May 4, 2018
242
To the young'uns reading this: it may feel cathartic to let your frustrations out after leaving your job, but trashing your ex-employer in public is a damn good way to ensure that you don't get a future employer.

Even if your outburst is 100% factual, people will remember you as the guy that can't be trusted. And you NEVER want to be the guy that can't be trusted.
 
Avitus

Avitus

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Oct 25, 2017
12,959
Soundchaser said:
Another interesting series of tweets in the replies:
]
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Reminds me of what Jeri Ellsworth said after she was one of those let go:

"Now we've all seen the Valve handbook, which offers a very idealized view. A lot of that is true. It is a pseudo-flat structure, where in small groups at least in small groups you are all peers and make decisions together. But the one thing I found out the hard way is that there is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company. And it felt a lot like High School," she said.
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https://news.softpedia.com/news/Val...-Like-in-High-School-Ex-Dev-Says-366425.shtml
 
Big-E

Big-E

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Oct 25, 2017
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I have been interested in flat models in terms of school district set up. The way it is explained in education is that a flat model would work like this. Things that directly affect the classroom would need to go through the teachers for discussion. Things that affect the school as a whole would be decisions that principals would have to make. Decisions on a district level would be handled by the Superintendent where they can bring on input from all over but ultimately it is there decision. The idea is that you don't want the Superintendent making decisions that directly impact classroom teaching without input from those that would be affected.

What I don't understand is how this works in a business. Teachers aren't allowed to just do whatever, they still get assigned a class and have to work through curriculum. I really fail to see how Valve has a flat model and instead has a hierarchical one that pretends its flat and has the lower workers sipping the koolaid.
 
Moebius

Moebius

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Oct 28, 2017
5,431
I've been reading through some of the glassdoor posts and it's exactly as I expected. Valve is making so much money from steam they don't care about making games. I can understand that, but they should at least try to improve the user experience. They've recently given chat an overhaul, which is nice but you can tell that everything they've done to steam has been to improve sales. Again, they are a business, so fine, but I wish they would update the library view. It's terrible and outdated. The posts also mention Gabe has not been in charge for years. I really wonder who's running the show and what will happen when these people leave. If all they care about is money it seems like they would just want to sell the company but maybe no one is willing to pay what they're asking for. It will be real interesting to see what happens with Valve in the next few years.
 
Big-E

Big-E

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Oct 25, 2017
3,169
I know Valve is doing fine business wise, but this is the first Valve sale I have not spent at least $100 since they started them, The only money I have given valve this year is Dota Plus and Battlepass related.
 

Vaibhav

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Apr 29, 2018
340
Corporates are like this. Why people assume they will simply go and work and get paid?

There will be trauma, harrowing moments. Best company to work for lists are mostly rubbish. No corporate can claim to be best place to work. Its everywhere.
 
water_wendi

water_wendi

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Oct 25, 2017
2,354
The company built by a Microsoft millionaire is a corporate free for all hell to work in? Not really a shocker.
 
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