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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 hav

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

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