4 ms·

There is a serious flaw with this model. The flaw is that no one wants to fix anything because fixing things is boring and usually results in lower peer reviews

by codexon 14y ago

There is a serious flaw with this model. The flaw is that no one wants to fix anything because fixing things is boring and usually results in lower peer reviews than building a new feature or game. Anyone who has daily exposure to Valve's infrastructure will notice the flaws. - Credit card breach http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/13/steam_confirms_credit_card_database_attacked/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/13/steam_confirms_credi... ending up in foolish security measures like encrypting your password with RSA in javascript on top of SSL. - Power outage of a single datacenter leads to Steam going down. http://kotaku.com/5884430/power-outage-knocked-out-valve-steam-all-services-being-restored-%5Bupdate%5D http://kotaku.com/5884430/power-outage-knocked-out-valve-ste... - Weekly unplanned outages of Steam Community and the Valve master server. - Crashes and game breaking updates in nearly every TF2 patch. http://www.mail-archive.com/hlds@list.valvesoftware.com/index.html http://www.mail-archive.com/hlds@list.valvesoftware.com/inde... This interview from Gabe shows that he knows there is a problem with this, but he doesn't realize how bad it is: Newell: A lot of times people will want to complain. The first time somebody complains, you say, “Okay, fix it.” You just say, “I don’t know what you expect to happen now, but you’ve just given yourself a job.” Fries: Does that train them to complain less or to fix things more? Newell: If you hired the right person, it trains them to fix stuff. If you hired the wrong person, they’ll say, “Oh, this is mean.”

kvnn 14y ago
"This interview from Gabe shows that he knows there is a problem with this, but he doesn't realize how bad it is" That is an incredibly arrogant statement.
pfraze 14y ago
Maybe there could be a rotation of the sacrificial fixer. Every month, one dev is given perks (private office, free food, a really big chair, ...) while they handle the back-log. They work under the guidance of the last fixer, to make the transition smooth.
- halter73 14y ago
  When I toured Valve last summer, there were quite a lot of large empty offices. Everyone's desks were on wheels, and the workstations were set up to make them extremely easy to move. Naturally, with no management structure, anyone was free to take up an office, but hardly anyone wanted to. The receptionist who was giving the tour, indicated that Valve had constructed more offices than people actually wanted to use, so they were considering tearing many of them down. Most employees preferred working in more open areas in the midst of the rest of their "cabal". As far as other perks go, Valve employees already have a nice selection of free snacks, drinks, in-office massage sessions, etc... I'm sure there are ways to incentivize Valve employees to do less appealing work, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that they already do this on an ad hoc basis, but they would have to go a little bit beyond your traditional office perks.
  - zem 14y ago
    i'll bet something as simple as putting up a list of important if not very glamorous tasks somewhere prominently and continuously visible (e.g. large whiteboard on one wall), and then inviting people to choose a task and cross it off the list, would be motivating enough. note that the kind of self-motivated employee valve hires for usually wants to both make better things and make things better.
hammersend 14y ago
"The flaw is that no one wants to fix anything because fixing things is boring" I've always thought this was the funniest thing as I relish digging into a piece of open source software that I love to use and fixing little flaws. Just this morning I wrote a patch for guake the drop down terminal that allows the width to be resized on the fly as it was broken on Unity in Ubuntu 12.04. The sense of accomplishment at taking a piece of broken software and making it "right" is phenomenal for me. I guess different strokes for different folks.
- codexon 14y ago
  When your job is on the line due to stack ranking your opinion may change.
  - technomancy 14y ago
    From what I've read Valve's use of stack ranking is for compensation bonuses only, not about who to fire.
    - codexon 14y ago
      That's what they say, but what do you think really happens when you are consistently rated lower than your peers?
      - Evbn 14y ago
        You get paid less than you deserve but still more than you would get in most other less profitable firms? No one wants to fire the guy who takes out the garbage every day, literally or metaphorically.
        codexon 14y ago
        When times are tough the guy who does the most menial tasks gets fired first and replaced with someone cheaper. The thing about being the guy who fixes software, is that no one will hear about it if you are doing a good job at it.
furyofantares 14y ago
Can you explain what you feel is foolish about encrypting passwords on top of SSL?
- codexon 14y ago
  If your SSL is compromised, the attacker can insert javascript to send the unencrypted password somewhere else. That is why security experts like tpacek have repeatedly said js encryption schemes aren't secure.
  - furyofantares 14y ago
    Why do you say an SSL compromise necessarily means the attacker can manipulate the connection? And what about a promise between the SSL endpoint and the database?
njharman 14y ago
> no one wants to fix anything Is patently false. I like to fix things. I get way more satisfaction from cleaning up a mess, improving X, etc. Than I do from creating iteration 1 of something that may or may not be used. I am not the only person in existence with this quality.

by codexon 14y ago

kvnn 14y ago

"This interview from Gabe shows that he knows there is a problem with this, but he doesn't realize how bad it is" That is an incredibly arrogant statement.

pfraze 14y ago

Maybe there could be a rotation of the sacrificial fixer. Every month, one dev is given perks (private office, free food, a really big chair, ...) while they handle the back-log. They work under the guidance of the last fixer, to make the transition smooth.

halter73 14y ago
When I toured Valve last summer, there were quite a lot of large empty offices. Everyone's desks were on wheels, and the workstations were set up to make them extremely easy to move. Naturally, with no management structure, anyone was free to take up an office, but hardly anyone wanted to. The receptionist who was giving the tour, indicated that Valve had constructed more offices than people actually wanted to use, so they were considering tearing many of them down. Most employees preferred working in more open areas in the midst of the rest of their "cabal". As far as other perks go, Valve employees already have a nice selection of free snacks, drinks, in-office massage sessions, etc... I'm sure there are ways to incentivize Valve employees to do less appealing work, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that they already do this on an ad hoc basis, but they would have to go a little bit beyond your traditional office perks.
- zem 14y ago
  i'll bet something as simple as putting up a list of important if not very glamorous tasks somewhere prominently and continuously visible (e.g. large whiteboard on one wall), and then inviting people to choose a task and cross it off the list, would be motivating enough. note that the kind of self-motivated employee valve hires for usually wants to both make better things and make things better.

hammersend 14y ago

"The flaw is that no one wants to fix anything because fixing things is boring" I've always thought this was the funniest thing as I relish digging into a piece of open source software that I love to use and fixing little flaws. Just this morning I wrote a patch for guake the drop down terminal that allows the width to be resized on the fly as it was broken on Unity in Ubuntu 12.04. The sense of accomplishment at taking a piece of broken software and making it "right" is phenomenal for me. I guess different strokes for different folks.

codexon 14y ago
When your job is on the line due to stack ranking your opinion may change.
- technomancy 14y ago
  From what I've read Valve's use of stack ranking is for compensation bonuses only, not about who to fire.
  - codexon 14y ago
    That's what they say, but what do you think really happens when you are consistently rated lower than your peers?
    - Evbn 14y ago
      You get paid less than you deserve but still more than you would get in most other less profitable firms? No one wants to fire the guy who takes out the garbage every day, literally or metaphorically.
      - codexon 14y ago
        When times are tough the guy who does the most menial tasks gets fired first and replaced with someone cheaper. The thing about being the guy who fixes software, is that no one will hear about it if you are doing a good job at it.

furyofantares 14y ago

Can you explain what you feel is foolish about encrypting passwords on top of SSL?

codexon 14y ago
If your SSL is compromised, the attacker can insert javascript to send the unencrypted password somewhere else. That is why security experts like tpacek have repeatedly said js encryption schemes aren't secure.
- furyofantares 14y ago
  Why do you say an SSL compromise necessarily means the attacker can manipulate the connection? And what about a promise between the SSL endpoint and the database?

njharman 14y ago

> no one wants to fix anything Is patently false. I like to fix things. I get way more satisfaction from cleaning up a mess, improving X, etc. Than I do from creating iteration 1 of something that may or may not be used. I am not the only person in existence with this quality.