17 ms·

Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

353 points by taigeair 10y ago

elthran 10y ago
Is there any change here, or is this just the fairly common repost of this?
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Also, is it still accurate? I heard its way off now.
  - DasIch 10y ago
    I doubt that there are many, if any, organisations capable of creating such a handbook and have it be accurate.
- casperb 10y ago
  This is still the first issue published in 2012. edit: And I can confirm this with my backed up version from 22 april 2012. This is the same PDF.
kuharich 10y ago
Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527
- beyti 10y ago
  yeah, too old for me but maybe useful for new comers on hn, IDK.
- chriswwweb 10y ago
  Year over year over year somebody posts a link to this PDF since 2012 ... source: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Valve%20Handbook&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Valve%20Handbook&sort=byPopula...
- thinkt4nk 10y ago
  hn becoming reddit
denzell 10y ago
Keen to know how they are different now.
cdevs 10y ago
I wish my company was this organized
bishops_move 10y ago
Even if it's not accurate to Valve of today, it's a helluva reach goal for most dev-oriented companies.
sebastianbk 10y ago
As a Microsoft employee I am so happy that we got rid of stack ranking a few years ago. It encourages a bad behavior and goes against helping your coworkers with whom you are essentially competing for compensation. I am surprised to see that a company like Valve, which seems to be held in high regard by many developers in the industry, still operates with this compensation system. It's system of the 80's if you ask me.
- AimHere 10y ago
  I suspect it might work differently in Valve's case. I'm led to believe that Microsoft had a fixed, conventional hierarchy, where every little group and person within the group was backstabbing everybody else to keep their jobs. If their handbook is to be believed, Valve has a much more flat management structure, where it's basically Gabe at the top, sortof, and everyone else doing whatever they think is best for the company, and there's a fluid system where people can move between groups according to their interests and how they perceive they can add value. So, unlike in Microsoft's case, Valve's people have an easy avenue towards putting 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' into practice. Valve has a radically different corporate culture from most other companies in it's space. It doesn't come from the 80s, or indeed almost any other time. Perhaps the stack ranking works a lot better because of it.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a traditional management structure: someone is making sure the shitty-but-necessary work gets done.
    - AimHere 10y ago
      I suspect it's much more that Valve is an insanely lightweight company for it's customer base. It has something like 330 employees servicing 100 million customers on the go-to PC gaming platform, and a lot of those employees are working on shiny tech and new games. As a comparison, Rockstar North's facility in Edinburgh has roughly the same employee count (slightly more by Wikipedia's count), and all they do is put out one new game every 5 years or so. I suspect that if Valve wanted to, it could easily hire lots of people who would be happy to man the customer service helplines and who wouldn't be either able or willing to try to make TF2 levels or whatever. Maybe the management structure is what limits the size of Valve, though.
hochchristoph 10y ago
High-res edition [25MB]: http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHa...
perseusprime11 10y ago
What worries me about this handbook is that it rarely gets updated. For a healthy culture to sustain, rules have to evolve based on all the new employees who join Valve.
- AimHere 10y ago
  Is Valve expanding all that quickly? I suspect it still has well under 1000 employees.
  - swsieber 10y ago
    Somebody cited roughly 330 elsewhere on this page.
    - AimHere 10y ago
      Cough, that was me. Between posting this, and posting that, I went to Wikipedia :)
sboselli 10y ago
Yes, it would be really interesting if someone could get a person from Valve to give us an idea of how this all looks as of today. Can anyone make it happen?
- nkassis 10y ago
  It's from a few years ago but here is Michael Abrash's experience with working at valve http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-w... + some interesting tibits about his past at Id and MS.
roddux 10y ago
Honestly I only skim read this wondering if there was a policy not to talk about Half Life 3! Interesting read, though.
Thaxll 10y ago
From what I heard from ex employee working at Valve it's not what you think it is. i.e: it's very political.
- oblio 10y ago
  Any group of more than 2 people is always "political" :) There's a reason all Olympic sports where you can interact with your opponents only have 2 teams/opponents facing off at the same time.
  - indeed30 10y ago
    Cycling. Although that rather proves your point as politics are most definitely on-show there.
    - tome 10y ago
      Does Olympic cycling have more than two teams against each other at the same time? The Tour de France, on the other hand, like Formula 1, is very political.
      - indeed30 10y ago
        Yeah absolutely it does - the omnium on the track features events, such as the elimination race, with all countries represented at the same time, as does the road race. The road race is particularly interesting as while it is officially national teams that participate, there also sometimes exist looser bonds between riders of the same pro-team.
  - gens 10y ago
    I'm good with olimpic gold medalists in rowing and i think there isn't much politics there. Especially between teams. It wouldn't even make sense to involve politics in sports (yes i know football, basketball and such..) as the competition is to find out who is the best and not who is the best connected.
ebbv 10y ago
This is quite old, and paints an overly rosy picture. After this was published a lot of the SteamBox project people got canned and were less impressed with the reality of Valve: http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
- xigency 10y ago
  "We were having a difficult time recruiting folks. We would interview very talented people but they would be rejected by the old timers at Valve as not fitting the culture." This sounds like a terrible environment to develop in.
  - Bjartr 10y ago
    If done "right" it could also maintain an environment that is excellent to develop in iif you do fit in the culture.
    - xigency 10y ago
      This quote was talking about the Steam Box team, a hardware team that was an enclave inside of a software company. It sounds really hokey for this team developing new hardware to be unable to bring in necessary talent for whatever reason. It might be different if the new hires did have day-to-day work with these old software or video game developing fogies.
  - jhogger 10y ago
    totally. what happens if i'm really talented AND come from totally different culture?
- draw_down 10y ago
  This sort of outcome is what I find so frustrating about how some in tech just refuse to believe that humans act a certain way in groups and organizations. Like, oh, management structures have failure modes, so let's just not have one. But that's not enough. You just end up with a de facto structure that no one can talk about because it's not written down anywhere, is not beholden to any formal rules, and most likely operates in private, in groups that you're not invited to.
maho 10y ago
We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline -- the vertical leg of the T). This is a nice metaphor. I try to be T-shaped, but I wonder how useful I am becoming... My expertise in high-precision mass spectrometry is not something companies are looking for....
- trevyn 10y ago
  It is also important to intelligently select where your vertical leg is placed.
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    I feel that to be "among the best in their field within a narrow discipline" (the vertical leg) means you have a natural disposition and interest in that discipline. Not something you can just choose (that would be more about the horizontal).
    - officemonkey 10y ago
      Then the "where are you willing to work?" becomes an important factor. There aren't a lot of "high-precision mass spectrometry" work in a lot of towns.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Am I the only one that finds it hard to believe all of Valve's ~330 employees are among the best in their respective field?
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  Just wait for upcoming asteroid mining startup bubble.
  - talmand 10y ago
    Why wait? Start it yourself. With a little imagination you can get it started before we even have the capability to achieve asteroid mining. After all, there's a star naming registry that will name a star of your choice to be recorded in their books for a nominal fee.
MIKarlsen 10y ago
I find the whole "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"-frame of mind very intimidating. Maybe it's because I'm not american, but even though I like to work with complex issues, I also like a 9-17 job with a decent income, and the ability to go home and relax when I'm not working. And by relax, I don't mean working on side projects, doing volunteer work or earning a second degree in something. But playing board games, working out/running or even just watching mindnumbing TV. I feel like the "100 % dedicated 100 % of the time"-thing has become the only way to really make it in tech-life.
- eddieroger 10y ago
  I am American, but I don't interpret that section to mean that I am working 100% of the time. Actually, I think it means the opposite - as long as core hours are met, I have flexibility to work when the inspiration hits me. I know in my current role, sometimes I get a good idea at 8pm, and I am glad I could sit for an hour or two and knock that out rather than have to save it for 9am the next day. Likewise, if it's 3:30~4:00pm and I'm clearly hitting a rut, I can stop and pick back up a little earlier the next day. Me being the best person I can become means that I have the flexibility to do those other activities as I see fit, because I am not 100% work.
- DasIch 10y ago
  If you genuinely want to be "100% dedicated 100% of the time" for any significant amount of time, you'll have to go home and relax when you're not working. Anything else would just be setting yourself up for burnout and surely that's not the path to be on when your goal is to be "100% dedicated 100% of the time". The problem is that people want to appear to be dedicated but don't actually care about being dedicated. Combine this with lack of education and you have people trying to appear dedicated while being dedicated only to the destruction of their mental health.
- sremani 10y ago
  "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be" The way I interpret it, do you solve the small problems that are all around you. Are you a willing leaner and applier of knowledge on things around you. When you look that way, its less intimidating or honestly much more human. Its more about awareness and doing something about it.
ixtli 10y ago
I think anyone who likes what they see here needs to honestly ask themselves how they believe this applies to their world. Whenever this PDF is posted on HN I am disappointed to see comparisons between how people perceive Valve and their own companies. Does your company have a total equity > 2 billion us dollars? Probably not. Much of this flows from the ability to invest in an incentivize your employees at this level. As another aside I do not think there is causal evidence that Valve became successful because of these ideals. On the contrary they seem like the result of success.
- demonshreder 10y ago
  > As another aside I do not think there is causal evidence that Valve became successful because of these ideals. On the contrary they seem like the result of success. In the following link, Gabe Newell explains some of ideas behind how Valve works. He argues that the way Valve works has been a conscious decision based on his experiences while working at Microsoft and interacting with other companies at that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU
branchless 10y ago
The USA is a cult. You are fine.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Cults focus on "we/us/them" not you doing what you feel is best for you.
  - dlss 10y ago
    In my experience a tremendous amount of religious teaching focuses on self-improvement (avoiding sin, cleansing of past sins, etc, etc). I do agree that the USA isn't a cult though. Too big/diverse.
    - nxzero 10y ago
      In the example you've given the group is defining what is best and what is not; you doing what is best for you is defined by only you. Here's a better explanation of the concept: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
    - tassl 10y ago
      "Avoid sin" and "cleansing" does not always goes together with self-improvement, but it usually goes tight with regret. I would have agreed with you if you used self-control as self-improvement. Plus... the concept of sin depends on the religion.
    - calibraxis 10y ago
      US expats sometimes sound a bit like recovering cult members. (Probably generalizes to other countries, don't know.) "Oh my god, did they make you 'pledge allegiance' to that fucking flag too!? [1] That was so fucked up! And over 4 in 10 of us believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago??? [2] We're gonna kill the Earth, aren't we?" [1] http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pledge-of-allegiance-statutes-state-by-state http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pledge-of-allegiance-sta... [2] http://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html http://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists...
swanson 10y ago
Let me start by saying that I love reading these kind of handbooks from various companies. One thing that stuck out to me was multiple mentions about "raising the issue" for the tough topics (compensation issues, feeling uncertain) -- who is the issue "raised" to if there is zero hierarchy and I have no manager/adviser/councilor? Does the flat structure only apply to "individual contributors" and is there a more traditional HR/operations structure that is not shown?
rsp1984 10y ago
The problem is in almost every group of people lacking a formal hierarchy, an informal un-official hierarchy will start to emerge with a higher likelihood of manipulators, sociopaths or other political climbers on top. I'd rather not be part of one of those.
- gedrap 10y ago
  Totally agree. Humans are social, and in social settings leadership emerges naturally, no matter what your management vision is. Sometimes the natural leaders are the same as the official ones, sometimes not. Although I am curious why do you think that this setting is more likely to attract manipulative personalities, since there is no recognition, status, etc?
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  This is, tangentially, my objection to my friend's dream of anarchy. Maybe the world would be better off without government- but the power vacuum will always be filled, so it's almost certainly better to fill it deliberately.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Another way to look at anarchism is just favoring the smallest possible power structures. So maybe there is someone who runs the oven, and everyone knows they're in charge. But you don't have someone in an office 1000 miles away making decisions about 1000 ovens. Another way of thinking about it is that any and all power structures are allowed, they just have to be opt-in. If you want to be a 4th tier worker in a 6 tier command-and-control structure, that's fine. You just have to be there by choice.
    - sliverstorm 10y ago
      The power vacuum which is filled by government today is, I think, fundamentally not a power structure you can opt out of. Aside from moving, which is already how it works today.
stevebmark 10y ago
This is a wonderful read, thank you for sharing it. I'm genuinely curious about this, if any Valve insiders have insights: > That’s why Valve is flat...You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products. Is this really the case? On paper this sounds great. I've worked at companies that have a similar motto. Power to the employees, power to the developers. But it usually just means the hierarchy is unspoken and assumed. No structure means no one to go to with disputes about your job, problems with co-workers, etc. It can be worse than a traditional hierarchy because everyone sells the "flat" motto to newcomers, but as soon as you join you learn the hidden politics. The cognitive dissonance can be soul crushing. So is Valve truly flat? Are there any examples of relatively new employees spinning up teams and shipping unique ideas? If it works, how do you handle inter-personal employee issues?
- akiselev 10y ago
  You're absolutely spot on. You have to remember that this is an employee manual and, as such, is more like marketing and recruiting material than a precise description of reality. While Valves heirarchy is officially flat and very different from the norm, the usual office politics muddy the waters. A few years ago there was a lot of news articles coming out about a shakeup at Valve where a lot of people were fired, allegedly due to internal power struggles. I'm having trouble with finding them on Google due to Valves name but the gist of it is that Valves culture resembles that of a high school with distinct social "elites" and their cliques [1][2]. There is also a wealth of HN comments that provide some insight [3][4][5]. [1] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/valve-management-jeri-ellsworth http://www.wired.co.uk/article/valve-management-jeri-ellswor... [2] http://kotaku.com/weird-paranoia-at-valve-says-former-employee-700121951 http://kotaku.com/weird-paranoia-at-valve-says-former-employ... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6036385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6036385 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215891 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182
esaym 10y ago
I'm going to assume they don't have any remote software dev positions?
Pinatubo 10y ago
The "flat structure" at Valve reminds me of the"unlimited vacation" policy at Netflix. It sounds liberating, but also offers the potential for employees to be judged by rules that are no longer clearly spelled out.
- aphextron 10y ago
  "Unlimited PTO" Is a hallmark of most tech companies. And yeah, it's total bullshit. Give me my 4 weeks a year and let me take them without any judgement, thank you.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Heh. Unlimited PTO is unlimited in the same way ISPs provide unlimited data - it's unlimited for people who don't use it.
- gozur88 10y ago
  It may not be spelled out in the handbook, but it's not that hard to figure out the rules in a company like this. Office politics make or break your career. It's a great place to work for three or four years if they're doing something you want to learn. You wouldn't want to stay too long, though.
Det_Jacobian 10y ago
So Valve is definitely idealized by people outside (and inside) the game industry, but definitely much less so by people who have worked there. The flat structure is sort of a pipe dream that leaves nobody actually in charge of important decisions, while hiding a de facto power structure that certainly exists despite being non-explicit. The company has transitioned to being the company that owns Steam as a platform (including and subsuming Vive), and not much else. People that have joined Valve expecting to develop games there end up fired in less than a year, which surely is destructive but also serves a real purpose of perpetuating the Valve culture. A major shakeup is unlikely to happen; Gabe seems to be unable to decide whether he wants to be a super-public figure that is the face and decision body behind the whole company, or if he wants to shrink into a hole and rub shoulders with tech legends hoping to determine the future of everything. The company will make money for a while, but they are open to platform disruption, even in their VR space where they have (more than Oculus) tried to be the open platform. Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server. If this view is right right, Steam is about to find out that the PC world wants to be even more open than they are offering. Of course, the board of investors will certainly find a way to use Valve's intellectual capital regardless of whether they stay on top.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server That's overly negative and pretty disingenuous. App developers for Android can sell their APKs directly and save 30%, but they don't because of the convenience of the market. Similarly, I rarely buy games outside of Steam (or GOG) except in the cases of very indie developers who provide a steam key when I buy directly from them. The Steam service is a good one. When I build a new computer, I just need to install steam and my entire library is ready to install. Valve have rightfully found a gold mine from a service that they made that is a net value to consumers. And even if Steam didn't exist, a non-publisher-specific store is still needed. I'd go to GOG (for similar reasons as I use Steam).
  - Det_Jacobian 10y ago
gavanwoolery 10y ago
I researched Valve quite a bit before applying there (I did not get in, but one of their senior team members wrote me a nice message). Some interesting bits I found: - The average engineer there makes at least $400k/year with bonuses, although it could be much more (or less, if they somehow wind up in a bad project). IIRC Valve makes around $2m of profit for every head in the company (they only have ~300 employees or so). - In spite of the seemingly ideal flat organization, many people find themselves unhappy there. One former employee hints at some reasons here: http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-cabal-rooms-suck.html http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-c... From other employees, I have heard that the flat organization and bonus structure leads to unnecessary drama/rivalry, poor communication (or even fear of communication), lack of innovation (creating your own project is discouraged, and teams have financial incentive to stick with projects that pay the highest bonus), etc. This is not to say Valve is a "bad" place to work at, I am sure it beats the hell out of many other job environments, even ignoring the excellent pay. - If you do want to work there, you will probably have had to shipped multiple titles AND be recommended by an existing team member (alternately, writing a popular mod is equally lucrative). Typically, applying through their website will not get you a job - they usually hire by actively looking through a pool of candidates that they already know of. They also look for candidates who are good at producing high amounts of customer value - they care more about this than technical ability.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > In spite of the seemingly ideal flat organization, Why does this seem ideal? A flatter hierarchy is almost always preferable, but taken to an extreme it seems like inevitable chaos.
  - gavanwoolery 10y ago
    I suppose I am just going off the completely non-scientific vibe I got when I first heard people describing the organization many years ago. I think how ideal it seems (or actually is) is in the eye of the beholder :)
  - mwfunk 10y ago
Xyik 10y ago
How is pay handled if there is no hierarchy? Who decides how to spend the company's money? This type of recruiting-marketing is almost as bad as Google's.
edpichler 10y ago
Anyone knows what software is good for doing a beautiful styled book like this one?

353 points by taigeair 10y ago

elthran 10y ago

Is there any change here, or is this just the fairly common repost of this?

Waterluvian 10y ago
Also, is it still accurate? I heard its way off now.
- DasIch 10y ago
  I doubt that there are many, if any, organisations capable of creating such a handbook and have it be accurate.
casperb 10y ago
This is still the first issue published in 2012. edit: And I can confirm this with my backed up version from 22 april 2012. This is the same PDF.

kuharich 10y ago

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527

beyti 10y ago
yeah, too old for me but maybe useful for new comers on hn, IDK.
chriswwweb 10y ago
Year over year over year somebody posts a link to this PDF since 2012 ... source: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Valve%20Handbook&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Valve%20Handbook&sort=byPopula...
thinkt4nk 10y ago
hn becoming reddit

denzell 10y ago

Keen to know how they are different now.

cdevs 10y ago

I wish my company was this organized

bishops_move 10y ago

Even if it's not accurate to Valve of today, it's a helluva reach goal for most dev-oriented companies.

sebastianbk 10y ago

As a Microsoft employee I am so happy that we got rid of stack ranking a few years ago. It encourages a bad behavior and goes against helping your coworkers with whom you are essentially competing for compensation. I am surprised to see that a company like Valve, which seems to be held in high regard by many developers in the industry, still operates with this compensation system. It's system of the 80's if you ask me.

AimHere 10y ago
I suspect it might work differently in Valve's case. I'm led to believe that Microsoft had a fixed, conventional hierarchy, where every little group and person within the group was backstabbing everybody else to keep their jobs. If their handbook is to be believed, Valve has a much more flat management structure, where it's basically Gabe at the top, sortof, and everyone else doing whatever they think is best for the company, and there's a fluid system where people can move between groups according to their interests and how they perceive they can add value. So, unlike in Microsoft's case, Valve's people have an easy avenue towards putting 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' into practice. Valve has a radically different corporate culture from most other companies in it's space. It doesn't come from the 80s, or indeed almost any other time. Perhaps the stack ranking works a lot better because of it.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a traditional management structure: someone is making sure the shitty-but-necessary work gets done.
  - AimHere 10y ago
    I suspect it's much more that Valve is an insanely lightweight company for it's customer base. It has something like 330 employees servicing 100 million customers on the go-to PC gaming platform, and a lot of those employees are working on shiny tech and new games. As a comparison, Rockstar North's facility in Edinburgh has roughly the same employee count (slightly more by Wikipedia's count), and all they do is put out one new game every 5 years or so. I suspect that if Valve wanted to, it could easily hire lots of people who would be happy to man the customer service helplines and who wouldn't be either able or willing to try to make TF2 levels or whatever. Maybe the management structure is what limits the size of Valve, though.

hochchristoph 10y ago

High-res edition [25MB]: http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHa...

perseusprime11 10y ago

What worries me about this handbook is that it rarely gets updated. For a healthy culture to sustain, rules have to evolve based on all the new employees who join Valve.

AimHere 10y ago
Is Valve expanding all that quickly? I suspect it still has well under 1000 employees.
- swsieber 10y ago
  Somebody cited roughly 330 elsewhere on this page.
  - AimHere 10y ago
    Cough, that was me. Between posting this, and posting that, I went to Wikipedia :)

sboselli 10y ago

Yes, it would be really interesting if someone could get a person from Valve to give us an idea of how this all looks as of today. Can anyone make it happen?

nkassis 10y ago
It's from a few years ago but here is Michael Abrash's experience with working at valve http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-w... + some interesting tibits about his past at Id and MS.

roddux 10y ago

Honestly I only skim read this wondering if there was a policy not to talk about Half Life 3! Interesting read, though.

Thaxll 10y ago

From what I heard from ex employee working at Valve it's not what you think it is. i.e: it's very political.

oblio 10y ago
Any group of more than 2 people is always "political" :) There's a reason all Olympic sports where you can interact with your opponents only have 2 teams/opponents facing off at the same time.
- indeed30 10y ago
  Cycling. Although that rather proves your point as politics are most definitely on-show there.
  - tome 10y ago
    Does Olympic cycling have more than two teams against each other at the same time? The Tour de France, on the other hand, like Formula 1, is very political.
    - indeed30 10y ago
      Yeah absolutely it does - the omnium on the track features events, such as the elimination race, with all countries represented at the same time, as does the road race. The road race is particularly interesting as while it is officially national teams that participate, there also sometimes exist looser bonds between riders of the same pro-team.
- gens 10y ago
  I'm good with olimpic gold medalists in rowing and i think there isn't much politics there. Especially between teams. It wouldn't even make sense to involve politics in sports (yes i know football, basketball and such..) as the competition is to find out who is the best and not who is the best connected.

ebbv 10y ago

This is quite old, and paints an overly rosy picture. After this was published a lot of the SteamBox project people got canned and were less impressed with the reality of Valve: http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/

xigency 10y ago
"We were having a difficult time recruiting folks. We would interview very talented people but they would be rejected by the old timers at Valve as not fitting the culture." This sounds like a terrible environment to develop in.
- Bjartr 10y ago
  If done "right" it could also maintain an environment that is excellent to develop in iif you do fit in the culture.
  - xigency 10y ago
    This quote was talking about the Steam Box team, a hardware team that was an enclave inside of a software company. It sounds really hokey for this team developing new hardware to be unable to bring in necessary talent for whatever reason. It might be different if the new hires did have day-to-day work with these old software or video game developing fogies.
- jhogger 10y ago
  totally. what happens if i'm really talented AND come from totally different culture?
draw_down 10y ago
This sort of outcome is what I find so frustrating about how some in tech just refuse to believe that humans act a certain way in groups and organizations. Like, oh, management structures have failure modes, so let's just not have one. But that's not enough. You just end up with a de facto structure that no one can talk about because it's not written down anywhere, is not beholden to any formal rules, and most likely operates in private, in groups that you're not invited to.

maho 10y ago

We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline -- the vertical leg of the T). This is a nice metaphor. I try to be T-shaped, but I wonder how useful I am becoming... My expertise in high-precision mass spectrometry is not something companies are looking for....

trevyn 10y ago
It is also important to intelligently select where your vertical leg is placed.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  I feel that to be "among the best in their field within a narrow discipline" (the vertical leg) means you have a natural disposition and interest in that discipline. Not something you can just choose (that would be more about the horizontal).
  - officemonkey 10y ago
    Then the "where are you willing to work?" becomes an important factor. There aren't a lot of "high-precision mass spectrometry" work in a lot of towns.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Am I the only one that finds it hard to believe all of Valve's ~330 employees are among the best in their respective field?
ComodoHacker 10y ago
Just wait for upcoming asteroid mining startup bubble.
- talmand 10y ago
  Why wait? Start it yourself. With a little imagination you can get it started before we even have the capability to achieve asteroid mining. After all, there's a star naming registry that will name a star of your choice to be recorded in their books for a nominal fee.

MIKarlsen 10y ago

I find the whole "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"-frame of mind very intimidating. Maybe it's because I'm not american, but even though I like to work with complex issues, I also like a 9-17 job with a decent income, and the ability to go home and relax when I'm not working. And by relax, I don't mean working on side projects, doing volunteer work or earning a second degree in something. But playing board games, working out/running or even just watching mindnumbing TV. I feel like the "100 % dedicated 100 % of the time"-thing has become the only way to really make it in tech-life.

eddieroger 10y ago
I am American, but I don't interpret that section to mean that I am working 100% of the time. Actually, I think it means the opposite - as long as core hours are met, I have flexibility to work when the inspiration hits me. I know in my current role, sometimes I get a good idea at 8pm, and I am glad I could sit for an hour or two and knock that out rather than have to save it for 9am the next day. Likewise, if it's 3:30~4:00pm and I'm clearly hitting a rut, I can stop and pick back up a little earlier the next day. Me being the best person I can become means that I have the flexibility to do those other activities as I see fit, because I am not 100% work.
DasIch 10y ago
If you genuinely want to be "100% dedicated 100% of the time" for any significant amount of time, you'll have to go home and relax when you're not working. Anything else would just be setting yourself up for burnout and surely that's not the path to be on when your goal is to be "100% dedicated 100% of the time". The problem is that people want to appear to be dedicated but don't actually care about being dedicated. Combine this with lack of education and you have people trying to appear dedicated while being dedicated only to the destruction of their mental health.
sremani 10y ago
"You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be" The way I interpret it, do you solve the small problems that are all around you. Are you a willing leaner and applier of knowledge on things around you. When you look that way, its less intimidating or honestly much more human. Its more about awareness and doing something about it.

ixtli 10y ago

I think anyone who likes what they see here needs to honestly ask themselves how they believe this applies to their world. Whenever this PDF is posted on HN I am disappointed to see comparisons between how people perceive Valve and their own companies. Does your company have a total equity > 2 billion us dollars? Probably not. Much of this flows from the ability to invest in an incentivize your employees at this level. As another aside I do not think there is causal evidence that Valve became successful because of these ideals. On the contrary they seem like the result of success.

demonshreder 10y ago
> As another aside I do not think there is causal evidence that Valve became successful because of these ideals. On the contrary they seem like the result of success. In the following link, Gabe Newell explains some of ideas behind how Valve works. He argues that the way Valve works has been a conscious decision based on his experiences while working at Microsoft and interacting with other companies at that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU

branchless 10y ago

The USA is a cult. You are fine.

nxzero 10y ago
Cults focus on "we/us/them" not you doing what you feel is best for you.
- dlss 10y ago
  In my experience a tremendous amount of religious teaching focuses on self-improvement (avoiding sin, cleansing of past sins, etc, etc). I do agree that the USA isn't a cult though. Too big/diverse.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    In the example you've given the group is defining what is best and what is not; you doing what is best for you is defined by only you. Here's a better explanation of the concept: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
  - tassl 10y ago
    "Avoid sin" and "cleansing" does not always goes together with self-improvement, but it usually goes tight with regret. I would have agreed with you if you used self-control as self-improvement. Plus... the concept of sin depends on the religion.
  - calibraxis 10y ago
    US expats sometimes sound a bit like recovering cult members. (Probably generalizes to other countries, don't know.) "Oh my god, did they make you 'pledge allegiance' to that fucking flag too!? [1] That was so fucked up! And over 4 in 10 of us believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago??? [2] We're gonna kill the Earth, aren't we?" [1] http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pledge-of-allegiance-statutes-state-by-state http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pledge-of-allegiance-sta... [2] http://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html http://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists...

swanson 10y ago

Let me start by saying that I love reading these kind of handbooks from various companies. One thing that stuck out to me was multiple mentions about "raising the issue" for the tough topics (compensation issues, feeling uncertain) -- who is the issue "raised" to if there is zero hierarchy and I have no manager/adviser/councilor? Does the flat structure only apply to "individual contributors" and is there a more traditional HR/operations structure that is not shown?

rsp1984 10y ago

The problem is in almost every group of people lacking a formal hierarchy, an informal un-official hierarchy will start to emerge with a higher likelihood of manipulators, sociopaths or other political climbers on top. I'd rather not be part of one of those.

gedrap 10y ago
Totally agree. Humans are social, and in social settings leadership emerges naturally, no matter what your management vision is. Sometimes the natural leaders are the same as the official ones, sometimes not. Although I am curious why do you think that this setting is more likely to attract manipulative personalities, since there is no recognition, status, etc?
sliverstorm 10y ago
This is, tangentially, my objection to my friend's dream of anarchy. Maybe the world would be better off without government- but the power vacuum will always be filled, so it's almost certainly better to fill it deliberately.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Another way to look at anarchism is just favoring the smallest possible power structures. So maybe there is someone who runs the oven, and everyone knows they're in charge. But you don't have someone in an office 1000 miles away making decisions about 1000 ovens. Another way of thinking about it is that any and all power structures are allowed, they just have to be opt-in. If you want to be a 4th tier worker in a 6 tier command-and-control structure, that's fine. You just have to be there by choice.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    The power vacuum which is filled by government today is, I think, fundamentally not a power structure you can opt out of. Aside from moving, which is already how it works today.

stevebmark 10y ago

This is a wonderful read, thank you for sharing it. I'm genuinely curious about this, if any Valve insiders have insights: > That’s why Valve is flat...You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products. Is this really the case? On paper this sounds great. I've worked at companies that have a similar motto. Power to the employees, power to the developers. But it usually just means the hierarchy is unspoken and assumed. No structure means no one to go to with disputes about your job, problems with co-workers, etc. It can be worse than a traditional hierarchy because everyone sells the "flat" motto to newcomers, but as soon as you join you learn the hidden politics. The cognitive dissonance can be soul crushing. So is Valve truly flat? Are there any examples of relatively new employees spinning up teams and shipping unique ideas? If it works, how do you handle inter-personal employee issues?

akiselev 10y ago
You're absolutely spot on. You have to remember that this is an employee manual and, as such, is more like marketing and recruiting material than a precise description of reality. While Valves heirarchy is officially flat and very different from the norm, the usual office politics muddy the waters. A few years ago there was a lot of news articles coming out about a shakeup at Valve where a lot of people were fired, allegedly due to internal power struggles. I'm having trouble with finding them on Google due to Valves name but the gist of it is that Valves culture resembles that of a high school with distinct social "elites" and their cliques [1][2]. There is also a wealth of HN comments that provide some insight [3][4][5]. [1] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/valve-management-jeri-ellsworth http://www.wired.co.uk/article/valve-management-jeri-ellswor... [2] http://kotaku.com/weird-paranoia-at-valve-says-former-employee-700121951 http://kotaku.com/weird-paranoia-at-valve-says-former-employ... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6036385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6036385 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215891 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182

esaym 10y ago

I'm going to assume they don't have any remote software dev positions?

Pinatubo 10y ago

The "flat structure" at Valve reminds me of the"unlimited vacation" policy at Netflix. It sounds liberating, but also offers the potential for employees to be judged by rules that are no longer clearly spelled out.

aphextron 10y ago
"Unlimited PTO" Is a hallmark of most tech companies. And yeah, it's total bullshit. Give me my 4 weeks a year and let me take them without any judgement, thank you.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Heh. Unlimited PTO is unlimited in the same way ISPs provide unlimited data - it's unlimited for people who don't use it.
gozur88 10y ago
It may not be spelled out in the handbook, but it's not that hard to figure out the rules in a company like this. Office politics make or break your career. It's a great place to work for three or four years if they're doing something you want to learn. You wouldn't want to stay too long, though.

Det_Jacobian 10y ago

So Valve is definitely idealized by people outside (and inside) the game industry, but definitely much less so by people who have worked there. The flat structure is sort of a pipe dream that leaves nobody actually in charge of important decisions, while hiding a de facto power structure that certainly exists despite being non-explicit. The company has transitioned to being the company that owns Steam as a platform (including and subsuming Vive), and not much else. People that have joined Valve expecting to develop games there end up fired in less than a year, which surely is destructive but also serves a real purpose of perpetuating the Valve culture. A major shakeup is unlikely to happen; Gabe seems to be unable to decide whether he wants to be a super-public figure that is the face and decision body behind the whole company, or if he wants to shrink into a hole and rub shoulders with tech legends hoping to determine the future of everything. The company will make money for a while, but they are open to platform disruption, even in their VR space where they have (more than Oculus) tried to be the open platform. Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server. If this view is right right, Steam is about to find out that the PC world wants to be even more open than they are offering. Of course, the board of investors will certainly find a way to use Valve's intellectual capital regardless of whether they stay on top.

mmanfrin 10y ago
Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server That's overly negative and pretty disingenuous. App developers for Android can sell their APKs directly and save 30%, but they don't because of the convenience of the market. Similarly, I rarely buy games outside of Steam (or GOG) except in the cases of very indie developers who provide a steam key when I buy directly from them. The Steam service is a good one. When I build a new computer, I just need to install steam and my entire library is ready to install. Valve have rightfully found a gold mine from a service that they made that is a net value to consumers. And even if Steam didn't exist, a non-publisher-specific store is still needed. I'd go to GOG (for similar reasons as I use Steam).
- Det_Jacobian 10y ago

gavanwoolery 10y ago

I researched Valve quite a bit before applying there (I did not get in, but one of their senior team members wrote me a nice message). Some interesting bits I found: - The average engineer there makes at least $400k/year with bonuses, although it could be much more (or less, if they somehow wind up in a bad project). IIRC Valve makes around $2m of profit for every head in the company (they only have ~300 employees or so). - In spite of the seemingly ideal flat organization, many people find themselves unhappy there. One former employee hints at some reasons here: http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-cabal-rooms-suck.html http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-c... From other employees, I have heard that the flat organization and bonus structure leads to unnecessary drama/rivalry, poor communication (or even fear of communication), lack of innovation (creating your own project is discouraged, and teams have financial incentive to stick with projects that pay the highest bonus), etc. This is not to say Valve is a "bad" place to work at, I am sure it beats the hell out of many other job environments, even ignoring the excellent pay. - If you do want to work there, you will probably have had to shipped multiple titles AND be recommended by an existing team member (alternately, writing a popular mod is equally lucrative). Typically, applying through their website will not get you a job - they usually hire by actively looking through a pool of candidates that they already know of. They also look for candidates who are good at producing high amounts of customer value - they care more about this than technical ability.

serge2k 10y ago
> In spite of the seemingly ideal flat organization, Why does this seem ideal? A flatter hierarchy is almost always preferable, but taken to an extreme it seems like inevitable chaos.
- gavanwoolery 10y ago
  I suppose I am just going off the completely non-scientific vibe I got when I first heard people describing the organization many years ago. I think how ideal it seems (or actually is) is in the eye of the beholder :)
- mwfunk 10y ago

Xyik 10y ago

How is pay handled if there is no hierarchy? Who decides how to spend the company's money? This type of recruiting-marketing is almost as bad as Google's.

edpichler 10y ago

Anyone knows what software is good for doing a beautiful styled book like this one?