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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 w

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
    - moomin 1y ago
      Unfortunately, no-one’s investment in AR or VR has worked out. Even the “winner” (Oculus/Meta) has found the market to be disappointingly small.
      - ralphc 1y ago
        There's a "Mega Replay" store near where I live, it has second-hand electronics, games and DVDs. The biggest section in electronics is the VR goggles, a lot of people have given up on them.
        cubefox 1y ago
        I tried VR once, with a bunch of short 360° documentaries and video games like Beat Saber and Half Life Alyx. It was incredible, far beyond any immersion one could ever create on a conventional screen, even with the best ray tracing in the world. I don't really understand why VR helmets they aren't more successful. My first guess is that any console needs exclusive high-profile games to be successful, and producing many exclusive high-profile Meta Quest games is probably too expensive for current market adoption. A chicken-egg problem. Or maybe the hardware price isn't low enough currently. The original Game Boy was successful with its low price despite its terrible screen. The Game Boy Color chipset was very underpowered compared to the competition but again more affordable.
        matthewfcarlson 1y ago
        As some with a gaming PC, a few VR headsets, and a steam deck, I find myself reaching for the steam deck most often. It’s a good enough experience and easy to just turn on and play. The friction to getting the VR headset out is surprisingly high so it really only happens when I’m playing with a friend, which only three friends have headsets. So it just ends up not happening.
        cubefox 1y ago
        I don't quite understand this. The friction on ordinary desktop PC gaming is also fairly high. I can't imagine playing on Quest 2 or 3 is significantly more complicated. Also, if you are playing a large RPG (like Asgards Wrath 2), a few minutes of setup won't make much of a difference in playing time. I agree it's a different issue for more casual games. I think the more relevant difference is that there are vastly more (and therefore: better) PC games than VR games.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    side note: Jeri Ellsworth is a rockstar engineer.
    - moomin 1y ago
      I know someone who’s worked with her and yes, “talented” is an understatement.
  - exmadscientist 1y ago
    It seems their hardware teams have a particular problem with this. I'm in the area, know many people in their orbit, and they have a really poor reputation, so I knew to be cautious, but when I interviewed with them a while back I was really surprised at how poorly it was organized. I don't want to say much more publicly, but they sure earned their reputation.
  - mcosta 1y ago
    That article is 12 years old. In those days he had hope for a Half Life 3.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  Also when you have a lot of money you can afford to be inefficient
  - diggan 1y ago
    Also, sometimes you need to first be a bit inefficient and lax in order to later come up with really good ideas and solutions.
    - jodleif 1y ago
      IMO it’s really hard to argue with the quality valve software is putting out. I can’t really name a game that isn’t considered a must play that they’ve made
      - ndriscoll 1y ago
        I too thought Ricochet was a blast and an underrated must play. There are dozens of us!
      - remedan 1y ago
        Artifact flopped really hard.
        duskwuff 1y ago
        Dota Underlords wasn't exactly a success either.
      - account42 1y ago
        It's only hard to argue because that's a purely subjective opinion.
  - holyknight 1y ago
    how do you come up to this conclusion? Valve has by far the most revenue by employee from all the big players. They seem to be the most efficient at what they do.
- asveikau 1y ago
  > (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice I have always been disappointed with people making claims that explicitly imposed bad hierarchy is inevitable, because of a vague complaint about implicit hierarchy. It feels like they are using this to justify imposing a bad hierarchy from the top down, for the benefit of the people at the top of said imposed hierarchy. Like when you have a well-functioning team with a very weak explicit hierarchy, and the people at the top introduce a bunch of bad managers. They will tell you it was inevitable. There's no way the thing you saw working well could continue to work well. Because that lack of bad managers was actually working just as poorly, you see. In fact it was much worse.
  - someguyorother 1y ago
    I don't think that's people who refer to Tyranny of Structurelessness mean. At least I read it more as that you can't just declare 'there be no hierarchy here' and be done. Unless you carefully engineer the system, the implicit hierarchy will reclaim the void and, all else equal, an implicit hierarchy is harder to undo because it isn't supposed to exist. In political terms: if all you do is kick the ruler out, you may get a corrupt patronage network instead of democracy. Actual equality doesn't come from just the absence of strong explicit hierarchy; it requires proper institutional design.
    - asveikau 1y ago
      And that argument is a bad faith smearing of less centralized organization structures. That is 100% how I have seen it used. The results tend to be awful. As a society, we have codified "business douche" structures as inevitable. It is fair to ask who benefits from this. Usually it's about people installing themselves as the top of the hierarchy, hoarding money, power, and status.
- argvc 1y ago
  [dead]
- account42 1y ago
  It wouldn't be a good ad if it was entirely contrary to their company culture. But it's pretty obviously a very idealized view of it.
- egometry 1y ago
  Fascinating! First time seeing/reading Tyranny of Structurelessness Was Pivotal Labs built with this in mind? A lot of their core principals seem to overlap with with seven principals prposed at the end (https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm for the curious)
rendaw 1y ago
Is it meaningfully different if it's not given to employees but given to everyone before they become an employee? I'd agree it's a meaningful distinction if the company wasn't actually as written... but it sounds like everything in there is accurate?
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  Propaganda isn’t false - and wasn’t always pejorative. It’s a selection of true things arranged to tell an appealing story.
  - t-3 1y ago
    The connotation of propaganda as being false or misleading is itself the result of propaganda of the most subtle and sophisticated level.
rjzzleep 1y ago
Valve has hired a bunch of FAANG engineers that brought their own toxic hiring practices to Valve. It's only a matter of time before those people promote their culture in that organization if they haven't done so already.
- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  What culture?
  - donperignon 1y ago
    Corporate bullshit culture. Hell on earth. If you have worked in one big tech organization then you know.
monkeyelite 1y ago
It was not as obvious when it first came out as we were less familiar with stealth marketing. When smart people say ads don’t work on them - this is a counterexample. It’s just that different groups respond to different branding. And this was highly tuned to Reddit interests.
- account42 1y ago
  It was pretty obvious to many of us.
noduerme 1y ago
It's a great pitch. Sounds like a utopia.
- dafelst 1y ago
  I have friends that work there, it is a great place to work, but not without it's problems.
  - AndyNemmity 1y ago
    of course there are problems, there always will be. no solution will ever remove them, but the trade offs seem massively better.
raincole 1y ago
Source? This comment is literally the first search result of "Chet Faliszek Valve employee handbook" for me. I've waded through several pages and haven't found a credible source of him saying that.
- NatKarmios 1y ago
  I don't have the precise link to hand (sorry) but Chet posts frequently on TikTok, I recall seeing him say this.
- LauraMedia 1y ago
  I'm sorry I can't provide you with one right now. Chet talks a lot about various things on his Tiktok, the story how he wrote this handbook as a recruitment marketing tool was one of the hundreds upon hundreds of things and Tiktok's search is utterly useless sadly. That being said, I don't want to say it is a bad thing or entirely wrong. It is of course a brushed up glorified version that certainly took a thing or two from their real experience working at Valve, but it was not used as an onboarding tool until it was published (and to my knowledge, isn't used nowadays as they have since changed their internal team composition since Half-Life Alyx was released).
hnthrowaway_398 1y ago
It was given to employees, but it was created as a recruiting tool. That's why they posted it on their website after it 'leaked' (with some deliberate effort to cause that to happen).
neilv 1y ago
The "Half Life Snacks" video employer advertising was brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEi3U77b6yE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEi3U77b6yE

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
  - moomin 1y ago
    Unfortunately, no-one’s investment in AR or VR has worked out. Even the “winner” (Oculus/Meta) has found the market to be disappointingly small.
    - ralphc 1y ago
      There's a "Mega Replay" store near where I live, it has second-hand electronics, games and DVDs. The biggest section in electronics is the VR goggles, a lot of people have given up on them.
      - cubefox 1y ago
        I tried VR once, with a bunch of short 360° documentaries and video games like Beat Saber and Half Life Alyx. It was incredible, far beyond any immersion one could ever create on a conventional screen, even with the best ray tracing in the world. I don't really understand why VR helmets they aren't more successful. My first guess is that any console needs exclusive high-profile games to be successful, and producing many exclusive high-profile Meta Quest games is probably too expensive for current market adoption. A chicken-egg problem. Or maybe the hardware price isn't low enough currently. The original Game Boy was successful with its low price despite its terrible screen. The Game Boy Color chipset was very underpowered compared to the competition but again more affordable.
        matthewfcarlson 1y ago
        As some with a gaming PC, a few VR headsets, and a steam deck, I find myself reaching for the steam deck most often. It’s a good enough experience and easy to just turn on and play. The friction to getting the VR headset out is surprisingly high so it really only happens when I’m playing with a friend, which only three friends have headsets. So it just ends up not happening.
        cubefox 1y ago
        I don't quite understand this. The friction on ordinary desktop PC gaming is also fairly high. I can't imagine playing on Quest 2 or 3 is significantly more complicated. Also, if you are playing a large RPG (like Asgards Wrath 2), a few minutes of setup won't make much of a difference in playing time. I agree it's a different issue for more casual games. I think the more relevant difference is that there are vastly more (and therefore: better) PC games than VR games.
- pstuart 1y ago
  side note: Jeri Ellsworth is a rockstar engineer.
  - moomin 1y ago
    I know someone who’s worked with her and yes, “talented” is an understatement.
- exmadscientist 1y ago
  It seems their hardware teams have a particular problem with this. I'm in the area, know many people in their orbit, and they have a really poor reputation, so I knew to be cautious, but when I interviewed with them a while back I was really surprised at how poorly it was organized. I don't want to say much more publicly, but they sure earned their reputation.
- mcosta 1y ago
  That article is 12 years old. In those days he had hope for a Half Life 3.
monkeyelite 1y ago
Also when you have a lot of money you can afford to be inefficient
- diggan 1y ago
  Also, sometimes you need to first be a bit inefficient and lax in order to later come up with really good ideas and solutions.
  - jodleif 1y ago
    IMO it’s really hard to argue with the quality valve software is putting out. I can’t really name a game that isn’t considered a must play that they’ve made
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      I too thought Ricochet was a blast and an underrated must play. There are dozens of us!
    - remedan 1y ago
      Artifact flopped really hard.
      - duskwuff 1y ago
        Dota Underlords wasn't exactly a success either.
    - account42 1y ago
      It's only hard to argue because that's a purely subjective opinion.
- holyknight 1y ago
  how do you come up to this conclusion? Valve has by far the most revenue by employee from all the big players. They seem to be the most efficient at what they do.
asveikau 1y ago
> (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice I have always been disappointed with people making claims that explicitly imposed bad hierarchy is inevitable, because of a vague complaint about implicit hierarchy. It feels like they are using this to justify imposing a bad hierarchy from the top down, for the benefit of the people at the top of said imposed hierarchy. Like when you have a well-functioning team with a very weak explicit hierarchy, and the people at the top introduce a bunch of bad managers. They will tell you it was inevitable. There's no way the thing you saw working well could continue to work well. Because that lack of bad managers was actually working just as poorly, you see. In fact it was much worse.
- someguyorother 1y ago
  I don't think that's people who refer to Tyranny of Structurelessness mean. At least I read it more as that you can't just declare 'there be no hierarchy here' and be done. Unless you carefully engineer the system, the implicit hierarchy will reclaim the void and, all else equal, an implicit hierarchy is harder to undo because it isn't supposed to exist. In political terms: if all you do is kick the ruler out, you may get a corrupt patronage network instead of democracy. Actual equality doesn't come from just the absence of strong explicit hierarchy; it requires proper institutional design.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    And that argument is a bad faith smearing of less centralized organization structures. That is 100% how I have seen it used. The results tend to be awful. As a society, we have codified "business douche" structures as inevitable. It is fair to ask who benefits from this. Usually it's about people installing themselves as the top of the hierarchy, hoarding money, power, and status.
argvc 1y ago
[dead]
account42 1y ago
It wouldn't be a good ad if it was entirely contrary to their company culture. But it's pretty obviously a very idealized view of it.
egometry 1y ago
Fascinating! First time seeing/reading Tyranny of Structurelessness Was Pivotal Labs built with this in mind? A lot of their core principals seem to overlap with with seven principals prposed at the end (https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm for the curious)

rendaw 1y ago

Is it meaningfully different if it's not given to employees but given to everyone before they become an employee? I'd agree it's a meaningful distinction if the company wasn't actually as written... but it sounds like everything in there is accurate?

monkeyelite 1y ago
Propaganda isn’t false - and wasn’t always pejorative. It’s a selection of true things arranged to tell an appealing story.
- t-3 1y ago
  The connotation of propaganda as being false or misleading is itself the result of propaganda of the most subtle and sophisticated level.

rjzzleep 1y ago

Valve has hired a bunch of FAANG engineers that brought their own toxic hiring practices to Valve. It's only a matter of time before those people promote their culture in that organization if they haven't done so already.

pixxel 1y ago
[dead]
ChocolateGod 1y ago
What culture?
- donperignon 1y ago
  Corporate bullshit culture. Hell on earth. If you have worked in one big tech organization then you know.

monkeyelite 1y ago

It was not as obvious when it first came out as we were less familiar with stealth marketing. When smart people say ads don’t work on them - this is a counterexample. It’s just that different groups respond to different branding. And this was highly tuned to Reddit interests.

account42 1y ago
It was pretty obvious to many of us.

noduerme 1y ago

It's a great pitch. Sounds like a utopia.

dafelst 1y ago
I have friends that work there, it is a great place to work, but not without it's problems.
- AndyNemmity 1y ago
  of course there are problems, there always will be. no solution will ever remove them, but the trade offs seem massively better.

raincole 1y ago

Source? This comment is literally the first search result of "Chet Faliszek Valve employee handbook" for me. I've waded through several pages and haven't found a credible source of him saying that.

NatKarmios 1y ago
I don't have the precise link to hand (sorry) but Chet posts frequently on TikTok, I recall seeing him say this.
LauraMedia 1y ago
I'm sorry I can't provide you with one right now. Chet talks a lot about various things on his Tiktok, the story how he wrote this handbook as a recruitment marketing tool was one of the hundreds upon hundreds of things and Tiktok's search is utterly useless sadly. That being said, I don't want to say it is a bad thing or entirely wrong. It is of course a brushed up glorified version that certainly took a thing or two from their real experience working at Valve, but it was not used as an onboarding tool until it was published (and to my knowledge, isn't used nowadays as they have since changed their internal team composition since Half-Life Alyx was released).

hnthrowaway_398 1y ago

It was given to employees, but it was created as a recruiting tool. That's why they posted it on their website after it 'leaked' (with some deliberate effort to cause that to happen).

neilv 1y ago

The "Half Life Snacks" video employer advertising was brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEi3U77b6yE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEi3U77b6yE