6 ms·

Valve new-employee handbook (2012) [pdf]

50 points by dsco 8y ago

hesdeadjim 8y ago
I think this is an appropriate counterpoint from a former employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_employee_tweets_his_experience_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_...
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  That was quite a long rollercoaster read. I had heard about the exvalve employees twitter but this is nicely formatted in one reddit post
grenoire 8y ago
Very fine difference between new-employee handbook and new employee-handbook. I assumed the latter, knowing that it's from 2012...
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Hyphen placement makes all the difference.[0] [0]https://xkcd.com/37/ https://xkcd.com/37/
- ma2rten 8y ago
  Also when you click on the link it says "handbook for new employees".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jbob2000 8y ago
I would be hesitant to take this as a manifesto of how to run a company. Valve was great 10 years ago, but they are now facing competition from GoG, Discord, independent distribution, bigger gaming companies, mobile gaming, etc. > How does Valve decide what to work on? > The same way we make other decisions: by waiting for someone to decide that it’s the right thing to do, and then letting them recruit other people to work on it with them. Is this why Valve hasn't released anything but mediocre hardware and steam updates? Where's the vision? What are they actually trying to do as a company? Are they just a place where people come and go and do whatever they want? Don't get me wrong, I do most of my gaming through Steam. But I don't play Valve games. And I sometimes chat on steam, but mostly Discord. And my favorite games, Factorio and Rimworld, can all be purchased independently (minus Steam's cut I might add!). With cloud computing in full swing, indie developers don't need a store to distribute with.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  my understanding is that because valve's org chart is explicitly flat, the hierarchy becomes implicit and subject to internal politics. See this article for example: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ If the total flexibility is theoretically there but in practice it isn't, I can imagine you'd end up with a lot of people self-suppressing so they don't break the unofficial rules.
  - ab_c 8y ago
    I've worked in a place with a "high school" office culture and it was horrific. At the time, the company had no structured way of determining your work performance so it was all based on people's opinion. If your manager thinks you're amazing and tells others, then that information gets passed up amongst the ranks. Social value (popularity) meant more for your career than actually doing good work. A former coworker once saw my email inbox and commented that I had a lot of unread emails (over 3000). A few weeks later, I got brought into an office by my manager where he kept stating how vital it was that emails need to be read. I do read emails -- I just don't read Github notification emails. Any office culture that revolves around rumors and reputations will likely be a dysfunctional one.
- norswap 8y ago
  Amen. And more importantly, still no Half-Life 3.
- cloakandswagger 8y ago
  I suspect there is quite a bit of turmoil inside the walls of Valve right now due to a series of large, failed bets that will eventually threaten their cash-cow platform. > Steam controller/Steam Link Huge flop. These are being practically given away now as Valve looks to get rid of their excess inventory. This being hardware, it had to be an expensive venture that failed to penetrate the living room. > Steam machines Another stinker, though Valve was able to successfully offload most of the risk onto OEMs with this one. Opportunity cost still bites. > VR I commend Valve for putting all their chips in on this, but it looks like the VR industry had yet another cold start. This will go down as an almost total loss. All the while Valve has been neglecting game development which, while admittedly much more expensive and less rewarding than running a sales platform, ensures that there's a sufficient amount of first party titles to keep users on Steam. With the advent of Fortnite and competing platforms from other triple-A studios, it's not so farfetched to imagine a complete fracturing of the games platform market over the next 5-10 years. Valve needs a return-to-roots moment to prevent this from happening
jesseryoung 8y ago
I remember reading this back when it was "leaked" onto the internet a number of years back. I remember being blown away by the fact that they were running an organization like this and actually succeeding and doing some amazing innovation. This was back in 2012, when it actually looked like they innovated. Now it seems like their directionless. They still patch their old games adding one-off features, but I don't know if I've really seen a roadmap from them in a long time. I could be completely wrong though, they aren't exactly a talkative company.
- dx87 8y ago
  The big public thing they have coming up is a new online card game with a Dota 2 theme, it was initially booed when it was announced, but after they showed gameplay and announced that the creator of Magic the Gathering is one of the lead designers, it's getting glowing reviews from fans and proffesional players in other card games. The only behind the scenes thing I've seen is a lot of work on VR, such as pressure sensitive controllers that translate your grip strength into effects in game, like crushing a small rock if you squeeze the controller hard enough.
DizzyDoo 8y ago
A very good bit of marketing from Valve, I remember reading this when it was originally leaked (or 'leaked', depending on how cynical you want to be) and being quite impressed with what seemed like a developer paradise. Because in the writing it _does_ sound like a wonderful company, but the fairly recent reporting on internal politics and power struggles at Valve (https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...) raise questions about how much the handbook truly represents what goes on, since the time period that Rich Geldreich talks about is from before this version of the handbook. (Previous HN discussion on that article is also very worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17584563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17584563)
- SXX 8y ago
  It's still important to note that even with all disadvantages and problems listed Rich think that flat structure is superior to usual hierarchical one. PC Gamer article does mention it, but not to the degree you'll see on his twitter. https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018729819243143173 https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018729819243143173 PS: And yeah I strongly recommend to read whole post history since he's really smart guy.
zerr 8y ago
Oh, they use stack ranking (page 27).
ihuman 8y ago
Can this get a [2012] in the title?

50 points by dsco 8y ago

I think this is an appropriate counterpoint from a former employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_employee_tweets_his_experience_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_...

Kagerjay 8y ago
That was quite a long rollercoaster read. I had heard about the exvalve employees twitter but this is nicely formatted in one reddit post

grenoire 8y ago

Very fine difference between new-employee handbook and new employee-handbook. I assumed the latter, knowing that it's from 2012...

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Hyphen placement makes all the difference.[0] [0]https://xkcd.com/37/ https://xkcd.com/37/
ma2rten 8y ago
Also when you click on the link it says "handbook for new employees".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jbob2000 8y ago

I would be hesitant to take this as a manifesto of how to run a company. Valve was great 10 years ago, but they are now facing competition from GoG, Discord, independent distribution, bigger gaming companies, mobile gaming, etc. > How does Valve decide what to work on? > The same way we make other decisions: by waiting for someone to decide that it’s the right thing to do, and then letting them recruit other people to work on it with them. Is this why Valve hasn't released anything but mediocre hardware and steam updates? Where's the vision? What are they actually trying to do as a company? Are they just a place where people come and go and do whatever they want? Don't get me wrong, I do most of my gaming through Steam. But I don't play Valve games. And I sometimes chat on steam, but mostly Discord. And my favorite games, Factorio and Rimworld, can all be purchased independently (minus Steam's cut I might add!). With cloud computing in full swing, indie developers don't need a store to distribute with.

beaconstudios 8y ago
my understanding is that because valve's org chart is explicitly flat, the hierarchy becomes implicit and subject to internal politics. See this article for example: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ If the total flexibility is theoretically there but in practice it isn't, I can imagine you'd end up with a lot of people self-suppressing so they don't break the unofficial rules.
- ab_c 8y ago
  I've worked in a place with a "high school" office culture and it was horrific. At the time, the company had no structured way of determining your work performance so it was all based on people's opinion. If your manager thinks you're amazing and tells others, then that information gets passed up amongst the ranks. Social value (popularity) meant more for your career than actually doing good work. A former coworker once saw my email inbox and commented that I had a lot of unread emails (over 3000). A few weeks later, I got brought into an office by my manager where he kept stating how vital it was that emails need to be read. I do read emails -- I just don't read Github notification emails. Any office culture that revolves around rumors and reputations will likely be a dysfunctional one.
norswap 8y ago
Amen. And more importantly, still no Half-Life 3.
cloakandswagger 8y ago
I suspect there is quite a bit of turmoil inside the walls of Valve right now due to a series of large, failed bets that will eventually threaten their cash-cow platform. > Steam controller/Steam Link Huge flop. These are being practically given away now as Valve looks to get rid of their excess inventory. This being hardware, it had to be an expensive venture that failed to penetrate the living room. > Steam machines Another stinker, though Valve was able to successfully offload most of the risk onto OEMs with this one. Opportunity cost still bites. > VR I commend Valve for putting all their chips in on this, but it looks like the VR industry had yet another cold start. This will go down as an almost total loss. All the while Valve has been neglecting game development which, while admittedly much more expensive and less rewarding than running a sales platform, ensures that there's a sufficient amount of first party titles to keep users on Steam. With the advent of Fortnite and competing platforms from other triple-A studios, it's not so farfetched to imagine a complete fracturing of the games platform market over the next 5-10 years. Valve needs a return-to-roots moment to prevent this from happening

jesseryoung 8y ago

I remember reading this back when it was "leaked" onto the internet a number of years back. I remember being blown away by the fact that they were running an organization like this and actually succeeding and doing some amazing innovation. This was back in 2012, when it actually looked like they innovated. Now it seems like their directionless. They still patch their old games adding one-off features, but I don't know if I've really seen a roadmap from them in a long time. I could be completely wrong though, they aren't exactly a talkative company.

dx87 8y ago
The big public thing they have coming up is a new online card game with a Dota 2 theme, it was initially booed when it was announced, but after they showed gameplay and announced that the creator of Magic the Gathering is one of the lead designers, it's getting glowing reviews from fans and proffesional players in other card games. The only behind the scenes thing I've seen is a lot of work on VR, such as pressure sensitive controllers that translate your grip strength into effects in game, like crushing a small rock if you squeeze the controller hard enough.

DizzyDoo 8y ago

A very good bit of marketing from Valve, I remember reading this when it was originally leaked (or 'leaked', depending on how cynical you want to be) and being quite impressed with what seemed like a developer paradise. Because in the writing it _does_ sound like a wonderful company, but the fairly recent reporting on internal politics and power struggles at Valve (https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...) raise questions about how much the handbook truly represents what goes on, since the time period that Rich Geldreich talks about is from before this version of the handbook. (Previous HN discussion on that article is also very worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17584563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17584563)

SXX 8y ago
It's still important to note that even with all disadvantages and problems listed Rich think that flat structure is superior to usual hierarchical one. PC Gamer article does mention it, but not to the degree you'll see on his twitter. https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018729819243143173 https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018729819243143173 PS: And yeah I strongly recommend to read whole post history since he's really smart guy.

zerr 8y ago

Oh, they use stack ranking (page 27).

ihuman 8y ago

Can this get a [2012] in the title?