7 ms·

Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

244 points by Michelangelo11 1y ago

exitb 1y ago
(2012)
simonw 1y ago
It would be interesting to see copies of this from subsequent years (this is the 2012 edition) to understand how Valve's process has evolved over time.
- mepian 1y ago
  I remember reading or hearing somewhere that this was a one-off thing, but I can't remember where. EDIT: Another comment mentioned Chet Faliszek, he was probably the source.
- bira 1y ago
  This was PR prop
  - kotaKat 1y ago
    Not just PR prop, stale rehashed PR prop reposted time and time again over 13+ years.
lambdadelirium 1y ago
Yeah, from 2012, we've seen this ages ago
tstrimple 1y ago
Valve hasn’t released anything of note since this has been published. So I guess we should take these as anti patterns. Valve is more of a hat generation company than a game company so it seems like no one should take any game related advice from them.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  I bet when current management leaves, as usual happens in these cases, those that worship Valve and Steam will see yet another big corporation, this if it doesn't eventually get acquired.
  - scheeseman486 1y ago
    What management? Gabe doesn't have any direct involvement in the running of the company at this point, in spite of being the majority owner. It's an open question what happens if he leaves or dies but it doesn't seem likely that he'd do anything to intentionally sabotage the company, like sell it off. It's more likely that ownership will transfer to a trusted party or to the employees.
    - keyringlight 1y ago
      At this point I think Valve is more likely to be disrupted from an outside influence rather than within, I think a lot of their actions are about keeping the ship steady. If someone does come along as an upstart in a new market as valve did with digital distribution versus retail/physical, the old is unlikely to be instantly irrelevant and obsoleted, and even then you get new markets like mobile appearing over their lifespan where both are healthy side-by-side.
      - HighGoldstein 1y ago
        To disrupt Valve's business you'd need an offering as good if not better than Steam, something several companies already tried and failed, and on top of that you need to convince everyone with buy-in to switch to your business, another monumental task. While people are happy with Steam it'll be impossible to challenge Valve as a digital distributor.
        pjmlp 1y ago
        Assuming everyone at current Valve's management stays there forever, as immortals. People keep forgetting our time is limited and nothing lasts forever.
j1000 1y ago
Anybody working for Valve here? Can somebody confirm how many % percentage of this is BS?
- ailbet 1y ago
  This is a common question from people interviewing at Valve. I was suspect how accurate it was before I joined given how long it's been since it was updated. However, it still 100% represents the culture within Valve. Desks are still on wheels, structure is still completely flat, etc... It's been on my list of "eventual todos" to make a trivial update to help reinforce that it's still relevant.
  - cupofjoakim 1y ago
    Personally I'm interested in this proposed flatness. I understand that it's the aim, but at the end of the day someone approves vacations, manages budgets for projects and is the person that has to have hard conversations with an employee right? Someone will have higher mandate for hard decisions?
  - __turbobrew__ 1y ago
    How is individual performance evaluated?
    - ailbet 1y ago
      Part 3 of the handbook
OuterVale 1y ago
Translated versions are available here: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications Previous discussion: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 (21 April 2012 | 16 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 (31 December 2014 | 17 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 (23 March 2015 | 14 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157993 (25 July 2016 | 197 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17935030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17935030 (7 September 2018 | 31 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33170988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33170988 (12 October 2022 | 165 comments)
- HelloUsername 1y ago
  Some more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 (23 August 2024 | 112 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960473 (27 April 2021 | 7 comments)
piker 1y ago
Surprising amount of discussion on work/life balance and kids/family for a game dev. Is Valve known for this or is it just relative?
- scrollaway 1y ago
  Valve is not an ordinary company. They make a ton of money, have no outside investment, reinvest everything internally on R&D and keep very small. On top of that, they run completely flat management. They're the idealized version of what a small company making a shitton of cash would be. They can afford plenty in terms of work-life balance.
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    Even at the start they were unusual as they were funded by Microsoft millionaires, and presumably had little pressure to release before "when it's done", and HL1 being a huge hit started the ball rolling allowing them to acquire the team fortress and counter-strike mod teams, picking up even more momentum.
- Hamuko 1y ago
  Arguably by 2012, Valve was already transitioning out of the game development business and into the services business. Team Fortress 2 was already out, Left 4 Dead 2 was already out, Portal 2 was already out, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive came out in the same year, and Dota 2 came out the next year. Really the only things that have been made since that period are Half-Life: Alyx (2020), Counter-Strike 2 (2023) and Deadlock (TBA).
  - Strom 1y ago
    They didn't transition out of game development. Dota 2 was under heavy development all these years after it "came out". It was only when Deadlock started heavy development that Dota 2 was winding down.
  - nvarsj 1y ago
    Everyone forgets about Artifact :).
fullsend 1y ago
"We are the priests who maintain the holy money printer called Steam for our lordship, first of his name Gabe Newell, so that he may purchase fleets of yachts. Don't rock the boat by hiring someone who doesn't get it." They could have said it like this with a lot less bullshit. And Silicon Valley could learn a lot from this company.
LauraMedia 1y ago
Chet Faliszek, writer for games like Half-Life and the lead writer for Portal/Portal 2 has since confirmed that this handbook was never given to employees. It was created and released as part of advertising them as an employer.
- supriyo-biswas 1y ago
  It's hard to believe that the principles outlined here weren't at least briefly followed when it's featured on their website too: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications, but I'd be an open to a source which substantiates your claim. However, non-hierarchical structures are often open to manipulation and land-grabbing (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice.
  - moomin 1y ago
    At least one former employee has confirmed that exactly the problems you are describing were a problem at Valve. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
    - rvnx 1y ago
      It is easy to imagine that Gabe is a talented tyrant like Steve Jobs used to be.
    - 99094 1y ago
      https://archive.ph/Od674 https://archive.ph/Od674
    - FatalLogic 1y ago
      >"they pretty much killed off our project.” That project was CastAR — augmented reality glasses which Jeri Ellsworth is now working on as a separate project, having been handed the legal rights to do so by Valve. But how many billion-dollar companies would do that? Just give the rights to the ex-employees? I think most other companies would have not. So, in that sense, Valve is unusual, even if it's not the oranizational utopia that was promised. After she left Valve, she and partners did get at least $15 million funding from outside investors to develop the AR technology, but after several years of trying, it didn't work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR
bob1029 1y ago
Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access to. It is a lot easier to pay that kind of fee when you don't feel like your technology partners actively hate the fact that you merely exist. Steam is still like what Netflix used to be. You have pretty much everything you care about in one place. Even big monster AAA developers like EA have given up and put their content on the platform. If I had to pick between having HL3 and a coherent gaming ecosystem, I'd pick the latter.
- andyferris 1y ago
  It interests me that it needs to be an "or". A HL3 team could essentially function as an independent studio using the Steam platform, with some funding thrown from Valve. Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    > Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? Absurd expectations.
  - Lanolderen 1y ago
    They want it to be good? Throwing it at a third party sounds like a good way to get a meh game and then have to release it since you've already spent X$ on it.
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    > Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? The Google problem where every project that is not Search has a much worse ROI.
    - jsheard 1y ago
nvarsj 1y ago
> spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value. Well that hits close to home. I wonder why every other mega successful company thinks the opposite.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  Because being smart and talented is not the same skill as being self managing. Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. And because self managing people do not automatically organize to achieve the same goals.
  - jajko 1y ago
    > Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. That's extremely rare and even in overall success stories you will find plenty of unhappy folks. But as a general excuse for some micro-management-obsessed middle manager with 0 trust into anybody else its good enough excuse I suppose.
    - monkeyelite 1y ago
      Your management is so effective you are not even aware of the structure around you! there is a place you come to ready with goals and tasks, and those tasks are prepared for you to apply your engineering skill (other departments will apply their skills separately and be added to yours). And there are ways to communicate if you need resources or support. Think about how common it is for someone to be effective at work and totally confused and aimless in their personal life. They might have trouble sticking to projects, or not know what goals are worthwhile, or make bad decisions - all while performing great at work. I am an IC at the lowest rung of any org chart with no aspirations to change that.
  - tikhonj 1y ago
    I mean, you can provide support and structure without imposing it or telling people what to do. People who need the structure can rely on it; people who don't can work their own way. Top-down, controlling management vs unstructured chaos is a completely false dichotomy.
intellix 1y ago
I think it's funny that this is passed around as a great example of how to run a company, but I really don't think Valve are producing much.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  I use Proton every day, but I'll also shoutout Deadlock - first MOBA since the original DOTA that feels fresh and fun to play.
- fnordpiglet 1y ago
  I can play any PC game I want and I don’t have a single windows install anywhere in my life. They made, beyond all the other contributions, Linux gaming a reality.
  - account42 1y ago
    Wine existed before Valve even if you weren't paying attention.
    - scheeseman486 1y ago
      I've been messing around with Linux for games for over a decade. Proton was a revelation, but in addition to that the Linux desktop system stack has had Valve money pumped into it, seeing a huge amount of improvement. Video drivers, KDE, SDL2 additions to the kernel and much more. Even Proton is technically managed by Codeweavers under contract by Valve, who are the primary contributors to Wine.
    - fnordpiglet 1y ago
      I’ve used wine since its first releases but it was never able to handle most games, Proton really changed things significantly and Valve has dumped megatons of effort into quality and completeness of experience. It’s fairly disingenuous to assert pre-Valve’s investment wine as meaningful comparable to post Proton wine let alone Proton itself.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
kryogen1c 1y ago
>Valve is flat. It’s our shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management > Team leads Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re keeping the whole project in their head at once so that people can use them as a resource to check decisions against. The leads serve the team, while acting like as centers for the teams I appreciate the out-of-the-box-thinking+creativity foundation theyre trying to lay here, but... this is what management is. I understand management has other emergent properties and misaligned incentives, but those are literally the core (technical) value-adds of managers.
- isleyaardvark 1y ago
  The main criticism of flat organizational structure is that management will develop as an emergent property anyway, but it will do so poorly. "The Tyranny of Structurelessness is the classic essay on the subject: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
  - thaneross 1y ago
    A poor manager in a structureless org is only going to have as much influence as their popularity allows. While this may cause damage, it pales in comparison to a bad manager in a traditional hierarchy who has the power to force their decisions.
- tobinc 1y ago
  They are rebuilding management from first principles lol
bnj 1y ago
I've been looking for good examples of handbooks and staff materials that do the job well, this one seems a little heavy on the philosophy - I can see why it's been discussed as more of a recruitment tool. Anyone who has favorite examples of handbooks to link, I'd love to check them out.

(2012)

It would be interesting to see copies of this from subsequent years (this is the 2012 edition) to understand how Valve's process has evolved over time.

mepian 1y ago
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that this was a one-off thing, but I can't remember where. EDIT: Another comment mentioned Chet Faliszek, he was probably the source.
bira 1y ago
This was PR prop
- kotaKat 1y ago
  Not just PR prop, stale rehashed PR prop reposted time and time again over 13+ years.

lambdadelirium 1y ago

Yeah, from 2012, we've seen this ages ago

tstrimple 1y ago

Valve hasn’t released anything of note since this has been published. So I guess we should take these as anti patterns. Valve is more of a hat generation company than a game company so it seems like no one should take any game related advice from them.

pjmlp 1y ago
I bet when current management leaves, as usual happens in these cases, those that worship Valve and Steam will see yet another big corporation, this if it doesn't eventually get acquired.
- scheeseman486 1y ago
  What management? Gabe doesn't have any direct involvement in the running of the company at this point, in spite of being the majority owner. It's an open question what happens if he leaves or dies but it doesn't seem likely that he'd do anything to intentionally sabotage the company, like sell it off. It's more likely that ownership will transfer to a trusted party or to the employees.
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    At this point I think Valve is more likely to be disrupted from an outside influence rather than within, I think a lot of their actions are about keeping the ship steady. If someone does come along as an upstart in a new market as valve did with digital distribution versus retail/physical, the old is unlikely to be instantly irrelevant and obsoleted, and even then you get new markets like mobile appearing over their lifespan where both are healthy side-by-side.
    - HighGoldstein 1y ago
      To disrupt Valve's business you'd need an offering as good if not better than Steam, something several companies already tried and failed, and on top of that you need to convince everyone with buy-in to switch to your business, another monumental task. While people are happy with Steam it'll be impossible to challenge Valve as a digital distributor.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Assuming everyone at current Valve's management stays there forever, as immortals. People keep forgetting our time is limited and nothing lasts forever.

j1000 1y ago

Anybody working for Valve here? Can somebody confirm how many % percentage of this is BS?

ailbet 1y ago
This is a common question from people interviewing at Valve. I was suspect how accurate it was before I joined given how long it's been since it was updated. However, it still 100% represents the culture within Valve. Desks are still on wheels, structure is still completely flat, etc... It's been on my list of "eventual todos" to make a trivial update to help reinforce that it's still relevant.
- cupofjoakim 1y ago
  Personally I'm interested in this proposed flatness. I understand that it's the aim, but at the end of the day someone approves vacations, manages budgets for projects and is the person that has to have hard conversations with an employee right? Someone will have higher mandate for hard decisions?
- __turbobrew__ 1y ago
  How is individual performance evaluated?
  - ailbet 1y ago
    Part 3 of the handbook

OuterVale 1y ago

Translated versions are available here: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications Previous discussion: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 (21 April 2012 | 16 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818893 (31 December 2014 | 17 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 (23 March 2015 | 14 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157993 (25 July 2016 | 197 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17935030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17935030 (7 September 2018 | 31 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33170988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33170988 (12 October 2022 | 165 comments)

HelloUsername 1y ago
Some more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 (23 August 2024 | 112 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960473 (27 April 2021 | 7 comments)

piker 1y ago

Surprising amount of discussion on work/life balance and kids/family for a game dev. Is Valve known for this or is it just relative?

scrollaway 1y ago
Valve is not an ordinary company. They make a ton of money, have no outside investment, reinvest everything internally on R&D and keep very small. On top of that, they run completely flat management. They're the idealized version of what a small company making a shitton of cash would be. They can afford plenty in terms of work-life balance.
- keyringlight 1y ago
  Even at the start they were unusual as they were funded by Microsoft millionaires, and presumably had little pressure to release before "when it's done", and HL1 being a huge hit started the ball rolling allowing them to acquire the team fortress and counter-strike mod teams, picking up even more momentum.
Hamuko 1y ago
Arguably by 2012, Valve was already transitioning out of the game development business and into the services business. Team Fortress 2 was already out, Left 4 Dead 2 was already out, Portal 2 was already out, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive came out in the same year, and Dota 2 came out the next year. Really the only things that have been made since that period are Half-Life: Alyx (2020), Counter-Strike 2 (2023) and Deadlock (TBA).
- Strom 1y ago
  They didn't transition out of game development. Dota 2 was under heavy development all these years after it "came out". It was only when Deadlock started heavy development that Dota 2 was winding down.
- nvarsj 1y ago
  Everyone forgets about Artifact :).

fullsend 1y ago

"We are the priests who maintain the holy money printer called Steam for our lordship, first of his name Gabe Newell, so that he may purchase fleets of yachts. Don't rock the boat by hiring someone who doesn't get it." They could have said it like this with a lot less bullshit. And Silicon Valley could learn a lot from this company.

LauraMedia 1y ago

Chet Faliszek, writer for games like Half-Life and the lead writer for Portal/Portal 2 has since confirmed that this handbook was never given to employees. It was created and released as part of advertising them as an employer.

supriyo-biswas 1y ago
It's hard to believe that the principles outlined here weren't at least briefly followed when it's featured on their website too: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications, but I'd be an open to a source which substantiates your claim. However, non-hierarchical structures are often open to manipulation and land-grabbing (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice.
- moomin 1y ago
  At least one former employee has confirmed that exactly the problems you are describing were a problem at Valve. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
  - rvnx 1y ago
    It is easy to imagine that Gabe is a talented tyrant like Steve Jobs used to be.
  - 99094 1y ago
    https://archive.ph/Od674 https://archive.ph/Od674
  - FatalLogic 1y ago
    >"they pretty much killed off our project.” That project was CastAR — augmented reality glasses which Jeri Ellsworth is now working on as a separate project, having been handed the legal rights to do so by Valve. But how many billion-dollar companies would do that? Just give the rights to the ex-employees? I think most other companies would have not. So, in that sense, Valve is unusual, even if it's not the oranizational utopia that was promised. After she left Valve, she and partners did get at least $15 million funding from outside investors to develop the AR technology, but after several years of trying, it didn't work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR

bob1029 1y ago

Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access to. It is a lot easier to pay that kind of fee when you don't feel like your technology partners actively hate the fact that you merely exist. Steam is still like what Netflix used to be. You have pretty much everything you care about in one place. Even big monster AAA developers like EA have given up and put their content on the platform. If I had to pick between having HL3 and a coherent gaming ecosystem, I'd pick the latter.

andyferris 1y ago
It interests me that it needs to be an "or". A HL3 team could essentially function as an independent studio using the Steam platform, with some funding thrown from Valve. Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? Absurd expectations.
- Lanolderen 1y ago
  They want it to be good? Throwing it at a third party sounds like a good way to get a meh game and then have to release it since you've already spent X$ on it.
- ekianjo 1y ago
  > Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? The Google problem where every project that is not Search has a much worse ROI.
  - jsheard 1y ago

nvarsj 1y ago

> spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value. Well that hits close to home. I wonder why every other mega successful company thinks the opposite.

monkeyelite 1y ago
Because being smart and talented is not the same skill as being self managing. Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. And because self managing people do not automatically organize to achieve the same goals.
- jajko 1y ago
  > Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. That's extremely rare and even in overall success stories you will find plenty of unhappy folks. But as a general excuse for some micro-management-obsessed middle manager with 0 trust into anybody else its good enough excuse I suppose.
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    Your management is so effective you are not even aware of the structure around you! there is a place you come to ready with goals and tasks, and those tasks are prepared for you to apply your engineering skill (other departments will apply their skills separately and be added to yours). And there are ways to communicate if you need resources or support. Think about how common it is for someone to be effective at work and totally confused and aimless in their personal life. They might have trouble sticking to projects, or not know what goals are worthwhile, or make bad decisions - all while performing great at work. I am an IC at the lowest rung of any org chart with no aspirations to change that.
- tikhonj 1y ago
  I mean, you can provide support and structure without imposing it or telling people what to do. People who need the structure can rely on it; people who don't can work their own way. Top-down, controlling management vs unstructured chaos is a completely false dichotomy.

intellix 1y ago

I think it's funny that this is passed around as a great example of how to run a company, but I really don't think Valve are producing much.

bigyabai 1y ago
I use Proton every day, but I'll also shoutout Deadlock - first MOBA since the original DOTA that feels fresh and fun to play.
fnordpiglet 1y ago
I can play any PC game I want and I don’t have a single windows install anywhere in my life. They made, beyond all the other contributions, Linux gaming a reality.
- account42 1y ago
  Wine existed before Valve even if you weren't paying attention.
  - scheeseman486 1y ago
    I've been messing around with Linux for games for over a decade. Proton was a revelation, but in addition to that the Linux desktop system stack has had Valve money pumped into it, seeing a huge amount of improvement. Video drivers, KDE, SDL2 additions to the kernel and much more. Even Proton is technically managed by Codeweavers under contract by Valve, who are the primary contributors to Wine.
  - fnordpiglet 1y ago
    I’ve used wine since its first releases but it was never able to handle most games, Proton really changed things significantly and Valve has dumped megatons of effort into quality and completeness of experience. It’s fairly disingenuous to assert pre-Valve’s investment wine as meaningful comparable to post Proton wine let alone Proton itself.
3eb7988a1663 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

kryogen1c 1y ago

>Valve is flat. It’s our shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management > Team leads Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re keeping the whole project in their head at once so that people can use them as a resource to check decisions against. The leads serve the team, while acting like as centers for the teams I appreciate the out-of-the-box-thinking+creativity foundation theyre trying to lay here, but... this is what management is. I understand management has other emergent properties and misaligned incentives, but those are literally the core (technical) value-adds of managers.

isleyaardvark 1y ago
The main criticism of flat organizational structure is that management will develop as an emergent property anyway, but it will do so poorly. "The Tyranny of Structurelessness is the classic essay on the subject: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
- thaneross 1y ago
  A poor manager in a structureless org is only going to have as much influence as their popularity allows. While this may cause damage, it pales in comparison to a bad manager in a traditional hierarchy who has the power to force their decisions.
tobinc 1y ago
They are rebuilding management from first principles lol

bnj 1y ago

I've been looking for good examples of handbooks and staff materials that do the job well, this one seems a little heavy on the philosophy - I can see why it's been discussed as more of a recruitment tool. Anyone who has favorite examples of handbooks to link, I'd love to check them out.