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> Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet. It might just be me, but that actually seems

> Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet. It might just be me, but that actually seems pretty reasonable. What I've seen a lot is companies, during growth, accepting less-than-ideal candidates, maybe without a good onboarding, which then end up as deadweight in the worst case, and underperformers in the best case. This, combined with a tendency to keep people around who have been there a long time, and the people themselves knowing they're not going to be let go, could result in massive companies and hundreds of people per product. Yes steam is big, but it's not a product so complex you'd need over 100 people to maintain it. I assume other companies need so many people because tasks don't get done, and the logical step is to add people, not remove people. Staying lean means staying agile (in some definition of the word), and that can speed you up.

Log_out_ 2y ago
Valve tried to avoid the biggest cause of bloat, hierarchys and silo chieftains.
shpx 2y ago
I've been joking that Steam on macOS is so bad that there must be no one at Valve who has used it because there's no way you ship such brazenly slow software knowingly, but with 79 people this is actually probably true.
- rasz 2y ago
  Apple screwing you over twice will do that to your products targeting Apple users.
  - bathtub365 2y ago
    How did Apple screw them over twice?
    - rasz 2y ago
      https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2024/06/25/half-life-for-the-mac-canceled-and-revived.html https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2024/06/25/half-life-for-the...
ryandrake 2y ago
I've never seen these companies (that are supposedly everywhere) that have all this "deadweight". Every company I've worked at has had 4X to 10X more work than enough staff to do the work. We beg for headcount to hire more so we can actually do what we set out to do, but we never have enough. I guess these places exist, but I've never really seen it myself.
- xingped 2y ago
  Clearly you haven't worked in any particularly big companies. The whole ship is deadweight.
c-hendricks 2y ago
> steam is big, but it's not a product so complex you'd need over 100 people to maintain it I dunno, I think Steam is pretty complex: - The steam store (credit card processing, optimizing search, review bombs, gift buying, features around various ways to hide games you've purchased, marketplace) - Workshop (Uploading, managing people's subscriptions, SDKs) - Cloud Saves - Remote Play, works remotely without any port mapping (so they're running a service for that) (clients for macOS, Windows, iOS/iPadOS/tvOS, Android) - Controller Mapping (DualShock 4, Dual Sense, various Nintendo Controllers, Xbox controllers, pretty intense UI) - New Video Recording with SDK for games to integrate with - Friends / Chat - Broadcasting games - The client itself, for Windows, macOS, Linux) And a whole lot more (forums, profile customization, guides)
- csande17 2y ago
  According to the article, Valve is in fact currently maintaining all those features with a team of ~80 people. So this is a good opportunity to improve your understanding of the number of people it takes to maintain software. One thing Valve seems to understand better than most big tech companies is that once a product/feature is done, you don't need the same size team to maintain it. A lot of parts of Steam have been functionally unchanged for the last few years and just... keep working. The people who worked on Cloud Saves have presumably moved on to something else, instead of entering a Google-esque cycle of pointless Cloud Saves feature launches and deprecations.
  - c-hendricks 2y ago
    Oh, at my day job we are about 5 engineers maintaining and adding features to support thousands of users, I'm aware of how few people are actually needed to maintain and build software. My objection was to the phrase "Steam is not complex", which I guess wasn't the posters point.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  I think the real trick is to not hire twitter engineers.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Compare it to Uber, which employs 30k people and they "just" mediate transport contracts and still thousands of those are engineers. Or Airbnb which is 5k+ employees I believe. Steam is another data point that convinces me that public ownership of companies leads to quick and ruthless enshitification and that growth is only a good metric in specific contexts.
- lionkor 2y ago
  30k is insane.

Log_out_ 2y ago

Valve tried to avoid the biggest cause of bloat, hierarchys and silo chieftains.

shpx 2y ago

I've been joking that Steam on macOS is so bad that there must be no one at Valve who has used it because there's no way you ship such brazenly slow software knowingly, but with 79 people this is actually probably true.

rasz 2y ago
Apple screwing you over twice will do that to your products targeting Apple users.
- bathtub365 2y ago
  How did Apple screw them over twice?
  - rasz 2y ago
    https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2024/06/25/half-life-for-the-mac-canceled-and-revived.html https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2024/06/25/half-life-for-the...

ryandrake 2y ago

I've never seen these companies (that are supposedly everywhere) that have all this "deadweight". Every company I've worked at has had 4X to 10X more work than enough staff to do the work. We beg for headcount to hire more so we can actually do what we set out to do, but we never have enough. I guess these places exist, but I've never really seen it myself.

xingped 2y ago
Clearly you haven't worked in any particularly big companies. The whole ship is deadweight.

c-hendricks 2y ago

> steam is big, but it's not a product so complex you'd need over 100 people to maintain it I dunno, I think Steam is pretty complex: - The steam store (credit card processing, optimizing search, review bombs, gift buying, features around various ways to hide games you've purchased, marketplace) - Workshop (Uploading, managing people's subscriptions, SDKs) - Cloud Saves - Remote Play, works remotely without any port mapping (so they're running a service for that) (clients for macOS, Windows, iOS/iPadOS/tvOS, Android) - Controller Mapping (DualShock 4, Dual Sense, various Nintendo Controllers, Xbox controllers, pretty intense UI) - New Video Recording with SDK for games to integrate with - Friends / Chat - Broadcasting games - The client itself, for Windows, macOS, Linux) And a whole lot more (forums, profile customization, guides)

csande17 2y ago
According to the article, Valve is in fact currently maintaining all those features with a team of ~80 people. So this is a good opportunity to improve your understanding of the number of people it takes to maintain software. One thing Valve seems to understand better than most big tech companies is that once a product/feature is done, you don't need the same size team to maintain it. A lot of parts of Steam have been functionally unchanged for the last few years and just... keep working. The people who worked on Cloud Saves have presumably moved on to something else, instead of entering a Google-esque cycle of pointless Cloud Saves feature launches and deprecations.
- c-hendricks 2y ago
  Oh, at my day job we are about 5 engineers maintaining and adding features to support thousands of users, I'm aware of how few people are actually needed to maintain and build software. My objection was to the phrase "Steam is not complex", which I guess wasn't the posters point.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
I think the real trick is to not hire twitter engineers.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

Compare it to Uber, which employs 30k people and they "just" mediate transport contracts and still thousands of those are engineers. Or Airbnb which is 5k+ employees I believe. Steam is another data point that convinces me that public ownership of companies leads to quick and ruthless enshitification and that growth is only a good metric in specific contexts.

lionkor 2y ago
30k is insane.