6 ms·

That's not correct, nothing about our org structure changed before, during, or after Alyx. We're still totally flat, desks on wheels.

by dag11 4y ago

paulryanrogers 4y ago
If it's totally flat then do folks write their own paychecks? My guess is no and there is still a hierarchy, however obscure.
- klodolph 4y ago
  > My guess is no and there is still a hierarchy, however obscure. This is my suspicion as well, and my experience with "flat" organizations. Hierarchy and power dynamics are phenomena that occur in organizations. If you do not create the power structure on purpose, it will arise spontaneously, as your organization grows. If you try to suppress power structures, the power structures will hide themselves. This isn't some conspiracy theory stuff. It just means that in any organization, some people will have some authority--because they are liked, maybe because they get things done, maybe because they know things, maybe because they've just been around a long time. These people end up getting kept in the loop for decisions, not because anyone is directed to keep them in the loop, but simply because it's the way things are done. If you try to do something outside this power structure, you may encounter organizational resistance--if for no other reason than because you're doing things differently from everyone else. It is more difficult to navigate these kinds of power structures because there's still someone in charge, more or less--but it's not written down. Sometimes you encounter a truly flat organization, but they tend to be very small. I don't think it scales well.
  - the_af 4y ago
    About power structures arising spontaneously: indeed, that's the topic of a very insightful and well known essay about supposedly flat organizations (from the perspective of a feminist author), "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" [1] The gist is that in officially flat organizations, there always exists an unofficial hierarchy that arises organically, and that because it's unofficial it's unaccountable, unlike a formal hierarchy one could theoretically dissent with or challenge. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structureless...
  - brnaftr361 4y ago
    Yeah, but the obverse is equally important. Hierarchy and dynamics will also decay when there isn't a status quo built to support them at least that's how it works out in my noggin. I think the formalized hierarchy tends to ossify individuals, departments, processes and et cetera. Once that's established, it becomes rigid, and rigidity stops being fun and it stops being interesting.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      What is the problem with "not fun" and "not interesting"? Why would I want an org chart to be fun or interesting? Usually, my goal is for anything "fun" and "interesting" to be either a direct responsibility at work, or something I do outside of work for pleasure.
      - brnaftr361 4y ago
        This is non sequitur, but I'll humor you: Don't work somewhere interesting. Walk the maze of the traditional establishment, and enjoy your quiet workday. There are so many opportunities for you to do that. Myself, I don't want to be driveling stupidly many hours a day over whatever apparati I might be charged with the operation of. I want stimulation and novelty. I want to be curious and satisfy it. I want to be confused and amazed. The many, many hours I'll spend at work, I want them to be edifying. Not some sacrifice to a faceless quorum of buzzards that I might live another day. This whole wage labor regime is a fairly new thing, and it hasn't been rightly tested in all its degrees of freedom. Something Hobbesian about the direction and shape it has taken, it's sad and cynical and skeptical but without faith.
        frutiger 4y ago
        That’s a lot of words. But does it generate revenue?
        klodolph 4y ago
        I have to assume that you realize that this is all subjective. What you are describing sounds like the subjective experience of what you feel when you work in the traditional establishment. You feel unstimulated, but that's a product of your personality and your immediate environment. To put it another way... whether an environment is "interesting" depends on whether someone is interested. Choosing to leave a large organization gives you some freedoms and takes away others. It sounds like you value the freedoms that you get outside large organizations, and you have only harsh words for people who feel otherwise. Just to put this in concrete terms... let's say you are curious about compilers, or memory allocators, or network flow control algorithms. It tends to be only large organizations that will pay you to work on those things, and in order to my curiosity about those things, I would want to rub elbows with experts in those subjects. Those opportunities exist at the largest tech companies and in academia (and my experience is that academia is no less bureaucratic). For me, sometimes, navigating broken bureaucracies is a price that I pay to work on some really fascinating problems. The broken bureaucracy itself is a fascinating problem.
  - scifibestfi 4y ago
    It goes beyond human organizations too. Hierarchies are a natural structure and something we share with lobsters. That's how embedded they are and why suppressing them doesn't work. Life finds a way, hierarchies find a way.
    - goldenkey 4y ago
      I heard that lobster fact from Dr Jordan Peterson
      - Applejinx 4y ago
        Lobster bro has not done well, either, so I wonder whether this is a 'fact' worth taking axiomatically. I suspect the reality is more of a dialectic between lobsterism and the intelligent undermining of hierarchy, because systems work better when the system thrives, not when the system is beholden to the biggest lobster in the pot :) the system's goals must surely be on a different level to the lobsters, and the system has to compete in turn with other systems… in a sense it's lobsters all the way up, but in another sense it's always necessary to balance the lobsterism with intelligence.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  The flattest possible would be to have peer review of salary, and peer review of payroll providers and other admin (or some democratic way of electing someone to deal with that).
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > The flattest possible would be to have peer review of salary I've worked in several "flat" companies that tried various democratic things like this. It always turns into the ultimate game of politics. In this case, it would instantly become "I'll vote to raise your salary if you vote to raise my salary".
    - paxys 4y ago
      Or everyone votes to increase everyone's salary, the payroll department says we don't have enough money, and eventually someone (management, but let's not call them that) has to step in and straighten things out.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  They appear to have a peer review policy that adjusts salaries, but probably someone is making the final determination. This is definitely flatter then other companies and about as flat as I can imagine.
easton 4y ago
Have you read the final hours of Half-Life Alyx? Because that’s where I got that impression from, and since it’s wrong, do you know what the heck it was talking about with the organizational changes to get Alyx released? Did I completely misunderstand that part of the book?
- nimchimpsky 4y ago
- hitekker 4y ago
  I think some employees are, to put it nicely, insulated from management changes. Like the ones that came after Gabe Newell realized little “flat” fiefdoms were sabotaging his company’s interests. https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless... At every big tech company, there’s always a few employees who assert nothing has changed and their employer is the same plucky upstart they joined 5 or 10 years ago.
jedberg 4y ago
Hey there, as someone who works at Valve, maybe you can answer this for me (I've asked many times but never gotten an answer). Who sets the salaries? With a flat structure and no "managers", who picks your salary for next year? Who picks how much a new person gets an offer for? How are raises and equity comp determined? That all seems to be missing from (at least this version of) the handbook. The word salary appears once and compensation eight times, but it just says "we try to be the best" but never discusses the mechanics of it. Thanks!
- khmhndbbt 4y ago
  not a valve employee, but when I interviewed there a few years ago, I was told your initial offer is a "reasonable" number you and the hiring team agree on, then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time. the interview process is also kind of interesting -- you'll know if you got an offer or not before you leave the onsite interview. also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    > I was told your initial offer is a "reasonable" number you and the hiring team agree on, That makes sense, having the people who interview attempt to pick a comp that will get you in the door. > then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time. It is the mechanics of this that I am most interested in and no one will answer for me. Do people vote on their peer's salary? How does that not become super political? What happens if they all vote for each other to get 1000% raises, who stops them? > also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office. If I were them the driver would be the beginning and end of the interview process. Were you kind to the driver on the way there? Did you say nasty things on the way back? Or maybe they just got a good deal with a company that only had a few drivers. :)
    - 4y ago
Dracophoenix 4y ago
Seeing as Valve is a private company, is the compensation you receive at Valve all-cash or do you get stock or stock equivalent?

That's not correct, nothing about our org structure changed before, during, or after Alyx. We're still totally flat, desks on wheels.

by dag11 4y ago

That's not correct, nothing about our org structure changed before, during, or after Alyx. We're still totally flat, desks on wheels.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

If it's totally flat then do folks write their own paychecks? My guess is no and there is still a hierarchy, however obscure.

klodolph 4y ago
> My guess is no and there is still a hierarchy, however obscure. This is my suspicion as well, and my experience with "flat" organizations. Hierarchy and power dynamics are phenomena that occur in organizations. If you do not create the power structure on purpose, it will arise spontaneously, as your organization grows. If you try to suppress power structures, the power structures will hide themselves. This isn't some conspiracy theory stuff. It just means that in any organization, some people will have some authority--because they are liked, maybe because they get things done, maybe because they know things, maybe because they've just been around a long time. These people end up getting kept in the loop for decisions, not because anyone is directed to keep them in the loop, but simply because it's the way things are done. If you try to do something outside this power structure, you may encounter organizational resistance--if for no other reason than because you're doing things differently from everyone else. It is more difficult to navigate these kinds of power structures because there's still someone in charge, more or less--but it's not written down. Sometimes you encounter a truly flat organization, but they tend to be very small. I don't think it scales well.
- the_af 4y ago
  About power structures arising spontaneously: indeed, that's the topic of a very insightful and well known essay about supposedly flat organizations (from the perspective of a feminist author), "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" [1] The gist is that in officially flat organizations, there always exists an unofficial hierarchy that arises organically, and that because it's unofficial it's unaccountable, unlike a formal hierarchy one could theoretically dissent with or challenge. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structureless...
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  Yeah, but the obverse is equally important. Hierarchy and dynamics will also decay when there isn't a status quo built to support them at least that's how it works out in my noggin. I think the formalized hierarchy tends to ossify individuals, departments, processes and et cetera. Once that's established, it becomes rigid, and rigidity stops being fun and it stops being interesting.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    What is the problem with "not fun" and "not interesting"? Why would I want an org chart to be fun or interesting? Usually, my goal is for anything "fun" and "interesting" to be either a direct responsibility at work, or something I do outside of work for pleasure.
    - brnaftr361 4y ago
      This is non sequitur, but I'll humor you: Don't work somewhere interesting. Walk the maze of the traditional establishment, and enjoy your quiet workday. There are so many opportunities for you to do that. Myself, I don't want to be driveling stupidly many hours a day over whatever apparati I might be charged with the operation of. I want stimulation and novelty. I want to be curious and satisfy it. I want to be confused and amazed. The many, many hours I'll spend at work, I want them to be edifying. Not some sacrifice to a faceless quorum of buzzards that I might live another day. This whole wage labor regime is a fairly new thing, and it hasn't been rightly tested in all its degrees of freedom. Something Hobbesian about the direction and shape it has taken, it's sad and cynical and skeptical but without faith.
      - frutiger 4y ago
        That’s a lot of words. But does it generate revenue?
      - klodolph 4y ago
        I have to assume that you realize that this is all subjective. What you are describing sounds like the subjective experience of what you feel when you work in the traditional establishment. You feel unstimulated, but that's a product of your personality and your immediate environment. To put it another way... whether an environment is "interesting" depends on whether someone is interested. Choosing to leave a large organization gives you some freedoms and takes away others. It sounds like you value the freedoms that you get outside large organizations, and you have only harsh words for people who feel otherwise. Just to put this in concrete terms... let's say you are curious about compilers, or memory allocators, or network flow control algorithms. It tends to be only large organizations that will pay you to work on those things, and in order to my curiosity about those things, I would want to rub elbows with experts in those subjects. Those opportunities exist at the largest tech companies and in academia (and my experience is that academia is no less bureaucratic). For me, sometimes, navigating broken bureaucracies is a price that I pay to work on some really fascinating problems. The broken bureaucracy itself is a fascinating problem.
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  It goes beyond human organizations too. Hierarchies are a natural structure and something we share with lobsters. That's how embedded they are and why suppressing them doesn't work. Life finds a way, hierarchies find a way.
  - goldenkey 4y ago
    I heard that lobster fact from Dr Jordan Peterson
    - Applejinx 4y ago
      Lobster bro has not done well, either, so I wonder whether this is a 'fact' worth taking axiomatically. I suspect the reality is more of a dialectic between lobsterism and the intelligent undermining of hierarchy, because systems work better when the system thrives, not when the system is beholden to the biggest lobster in the pot :) the system's goals must surely be on a different level to the lobsters, and the system has to compete in turn with other systems… in a sense it's lobsters all the way up, but in another sense it's always necessary to balance the lobsterism with intelligence.
quickthrower2 4y ago
The flattest possible would be to have peer review of salary, and peer review of payroll providers and other admin (or some democratic way of electing someone to deal with that).
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > The flattest possible would be to have peer review of salary I've worked in several "flat" companies that tried various democratic things like this. It always turns into the ultimate game of politics. In this case, it would instantly become "I'll vote to raise your salary if you vote to raise my salary".
  - paxys 4y ago
    Or everyone votes to increase everyone's salary, the payroll department says we don't have enough money, and eventually someone (management, but let's not call them that) has to step in and straighten things out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
flippinburgers 4y ago
They appear to have a peer review policy that adjusts salaries, but probably someone is making the final determination. This is definitely flatter then other companies and about as flat as I can imagine.

easton 4y ago

Have you read the final hours of Half-Life Alyx? Because that’s where I got that impression from, and since it’s wrong, do you know what the heck it was talking about with the organizational changes to get Alyx released? Did I completely misunderstand that part of the book?

nimchimpsky 4y ago
hitekker 4y ago
I think some employees are, to put it nicely, insulated from management changes. Like the ones that came after Gabe Newell realized little “flat” fiefdoms were sabotaging his company’s interests. https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless... At every big tech company, there’s always a few employees who assert nothing has changed and their employer is the same plucky upstart they joined 5 or 10 years ago.

jedberg 4y ago

Hey there, as someone who works at Valve, maybe you can answer this for me (I've asked many times but never gotten an answer). Who sets the salaries? With a flat structure and no "managers", who picks your salary for next year? Who picks how much a new person gets an offer for? How are raises and equity comp determined? That all seems to be missing from (at least this version of) the handbook. The word salary appears once and compensation eight times, but it just says "we try to be the best" but never discusses the mechanics of it. Thanks!

khmhndbbt 4y ago
not a valve employee, but when I interviewed there a few years ago, I was told your initial offer is a "reasonable" number you and the hiring team agree on, then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time. the interview process is also kind of interesting -- you'll know if you got an offer or not before you leave the onsite interview. also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office.
- jedberg 4y ago
  > I was told your initial offer is a "reasonable" number you and the hiring team agree on, That makes sense, having the people who interview attempt to pick a comp that will get you in the door. > then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time. It is the mechanics of this that I am most interested in and no one will answer for me. Do people vote on their peer's salary? How does that not become super political? What happens if they all vote for each other to get 1000% raises, who stops them? > also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office. If I were them the driver would be the beginning and end of the interview process. Were you kind to the driver on the way there? Did you say nasty things on the way back? Or maybe they just got a good deal with a company that only had a few drivers. :)
  - 4y ago

Dracophoenix 4y ago

Seeing as Valve is a private company, is the compensation you receive at Valve all-cash or do you get stock or stock equivalent?