24 ms·

Valve's flat management structure 'like high school'

205 points by ot 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago
This person must have gone to a much different high school than I did if the biggest problem was hires being vetoed by old-timers and trouble reaching consensus. "Like high school" to me implies that the place is full of idiots who hassle you because you're actually productive, and you can't really leave. This seems like a nitpick, but it makes it hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously....
- stephencanon 13y ago
  Agreed (at least assuming there aren’t regular fistfights in the hallways at Valve).
Zarkonnen 13y ago
Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes... Seriously - in the absence of formal power structures, informal ones will always form, and they are often less accountable and fair than formal ones.
- msutherl 13y ago
  Almost all of the jobs I've had have been with small "non-hierarchical" groups. In all of them, the founders have insisted that there was no hierarchy where clearly there was. When I've tried to explain this to them, they've been incapable of perceiving it. Even at my current corporate job, it's the same situation, but by now I've learned that you just need to take power. The one source of legitimate power you do have as an employee, especially in our industry, is the power to leave. These days I cultivate a kind "I don't give a shit" attitude that works pretty well.
  - guynamedloren 13y ago
    Interested to hear about how you wield this power. Do you use it as a threat, or are you saying that you just simply leave?
    - msutherl 13y ago
      Well, what is power? In this case it's the ability of somebody to say what you can and cannot do. But there are complexities in a non-hierarchical organization which lacks management structure. Those in power may not think they have power, they may not have much information about what you are doing, they may not have a clear way to tell you what to do. Power is implicit and soft. The rules only exist insofar as you interpret them from the environment and you follow them by your own accord, fearing imagined consequences. Succeeding in this kind of organization requires not only jockeying for position, but more subtly, overcoming the self-imposed coercion. This is where irreverence comes in handy. Once you eradicate fear, you can afford to take the risks required to freely design your relationship with your colleagues such that you have sufficient power. Ultimately you want them to trust you and you want to be able to challenge them on any topic. You want respect, and people respect excellence, confidence, and risk-taking. If for whatever reason you're working with people who are incapable of collaborating, your irreverence will either be taken as a threat that may change their behavior in your favor, or otherwise you can leave and it won't seem out of the blue.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    The problem with non-hierarchical groups is the behind-the-scenes leaders, whom the powers-that-are trust. And therefore automatically unofficially become leaders. It looks like officially he isn't the boss, but for almost all practical purpose he is. The worst thing that happens in such places is, those people using their power to help their buddies, gangs and yes men for their own benefit and political power. If you are not one of them you are screwed.
    - mtrimpe 13y ago
      The thing is that this exists just as well in hierarchical groups though. I've yet to encounter an organization where the hierarchical structure accurately represents the actual power structure. What's happening here is that in flat organizations it's the -only- power structure and thus becomes more pronounced to our brains which are hard-wired to pattern match for the social power structures. Another way of looking at this is to see the hierarchical power structure as an abstraction that evolved to address the discomfort (some) people have with a more fluid power structure like at Valve. The interesting part here is that different people have different tolerance for this though; so much so that it's one of Hofstede's main cultural dimensions called 'Power distance'. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory#Dimensions_of_national_cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimension...
- qznc 13y ago
  Our german Pirate Party is struggling with this as well. They desire to be a democratic party, where the officials just do as voted. Technology [0] is used to make this feasible. Nevertheless it hardly works out in practice and leads to lot of discussions and a high churn rate. [0] https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ note the meaning of the name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    people who don't really understand democracy (in terms of the implicit power structure) trying to institute it never ends well.
    - drawkbox 13y ago
      “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
      - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
        You cannot nudge a rock uphill
        wavefunction 13y ago
        What's the point of nudging a rock uphill, I guess I would ask. Down at the bottom or at the crest, it's still a rock.
- tfgg 13y ago
  Was Valve ever "structureless"? My impression from reading the handbook was that power structures were recognised but not enforced, i.e. if you wanted someone on your project, you had to persuade them. This is not great if you can't get people to work on your pet project, but that doesn't mean the system isn't working. Personally, having seen Jeri's AR project video, I wouldn't have joined it. It seemed like a rather weak and non-transferable technology that didn't solve fundamental problems with AR and that had limited gameplay possibilities.
  - moomin 13y ago
    But... she wasn't short of people who wanted to do the job. She was having trouble with the hiring process rejecting her candidates.
    - tfgg 13y ago
      She was short of people inside the company who wanted to do the job. Of course you can always find people outside the company who want in (it's a job, after all). In the case of hiring people specifically for someone's project, presumably the hiring process has to act as a proxy for the 'is that project worth working on?' or inflexible resources (a machinist isn't going to work on Steam) get tied up in a project no-one else is interested in. Hiring the person as a temporary non-employee contractor would probably solve that, but I see how Valve's resource allocation system might make that difficult.
      - wavefunction 13y ago
        You never know when the machinist might have some interesting insight, especially in an organization lacking a machinist.
        officemonkey 13y ago
        Which is why Valve has an economist, but not a machinist.
- drawkbox 13y ago
  It depends on the scale and the focus as well. For instance the open source groups and projects that form at a macro level are more innovative than just one companies structure and would be impossible with that type of organization. The focus of making useful and fun projects goes back to small groups and individuals really though. There was no formal structure for making new programming languages but individuals (mostly) stepped up to do it to share them because they were free to and the community rewarded that, it also led to many to financial rewards. I think structurelessness is a little messy but individuals and groups (usually small) can shine with the right rewards and outlets. Best organization is small structures within bigger macro ones.
- lsiebert 13y ago
  You got to this before me, but thank you for posting it. I remember reading that paper in college. It was the first thing I thought of when I read this. While rooted in the experience of liberal and women's groups, it really has lessons for anybody working in any organization that tries to eschew formality, including startups. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm "the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones ... Thus structurelessness ... is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware."
- DalekBaldwin 13y ago
  Or more generally, the iron law of oligarchy.
- bane 13y ago
  What's really interesting is that even in highly organized and structured work environments (e.g. the military), similar ad hoc power structures emerge, usually along the same lines. The formal power structure then usually ends up seeming like it just gets in the way of the informal one that appears to be getting things done.
- speeder 13y ago
  I have a friend that commonly says the phrase that "nature abhors power vacuums" I think he is quoting someone else, but I dunno who (also the quote might be inacurate, since I translated it from portuguese). He usually uses this quote when discussing the politics of feminist, to point out that power equality will never be reached, someone always lead, those who step down, will only open positions for others to step up.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    This is very true. If there is no structure, there is no company, just a bunch of contractors doing business with each other. People need to know what's been decided and what to do, and what others are doing. Whether it's via influence, or via force, people need power.
  - ryanklee 13y ago
    The translation is correct and -- you may already know this, it's tough to tell from your comment -- is a play on the Latin phrase "horror vacui," which is usually parsed back into English as "nature abhors a vacuum." It relates to some early (BC) physical theories which proposed that voids are impossible. Also called plenism. Edit: Good overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)
- walshemj 13y ago
  Which is why Charity's often have Horrific HR "issues" with bullying.
wowoc 13y ago
Take a look at this quote: Let's say you and I have a chat in the corridor or the conference room and the result of this chat is that we converge to the view that we need an additional software engineer or animator or artist or hardware person. The people dealing with software were called "engineers", and the ones dealing with hardware "persons". Huh.
- _rknLA 13y ago
  Not really relevant or helpful to focus on in the context of the overall message. Having been in both hardware and software, I've seen hardware technician positions (filled by "hardware people") that don't actually formally involve any engineering design in the job description. Soldering, assembly, and testing come to mind as tasks. It's also likely that she was using the term to be more specific. For example, I have a degree in Computer Engineering, and have held positions in hardware (as a Firmware and Electrical Engineer), but now I write software (as a Software Engineer). I used to be a hardware person, but now I am a software person. I have been an engineer throughout.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Well, she's a rather accomplished hardware "person" and she's self-taught (dropped out of high school). Maybe that's why she's reticent to use the word engineer for herself.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  -shrug- As far as I'm aware, it's generally considered bad style to use the same words twice in a sentence.
  - officemonkey 13y ago
    >As far as
    - pizza 13y ago
      as and far are barely words; just redundant filler
kamaal 13y ago
The problem isn't the structure. The problem is the size of the company. And one should not live in the delusion that office politics is the result of a structure. Rather its a result of size. In any case a structure, though not official always exists. Somebody on the top is always going to ask his trusted lieutenant when it comes to doing reviews, 1-1, appraisals, deciding hikes and promotions etc. Your best bet is to keep yourself to a small company. Nothing you are likely to do to a large company can bring about genuine change.
- brazzy 13y ago
  > Nothing you are likely to do to a large company can bring about genuine change. Unless, of course, you're near enough to the top of its structure, formal or informal...
  - kamaal 13y ago
    Even that will not help much. To bring about change in any large company, you need some partner in the high-mid level management who can assist you in bringing about that change. Now this is the problem, if the system is rotten to the core, simply firing the low level solves no problems. You really need to clean the mid level management, and you will never get a true picture of what is going on. All you will see is numbers that will those guys look fabulous. One of the reasons why Jack Welch got tremendous success with stack ranking was because the managers were subjected to same kind of measurements some one at the bottom was. There fore he was able to clean up a good deal of crap in the management layers. Unfortunately this is not possible to implement in most companies as either they lack a 'real' leader or the ones implementing, make the process such that they exempted to be judged as a part of it.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      I think your definition of "genuine change" is much wider-reaching than what I thought was meant.
- pjmorris 13y ago
  I've got a friend who has a rule; no companies with more than 150 people (ref Dunbar's number, 'The Tipping Point').
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egor83 13y ago
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182
DanBC 13y ago
Jeri Ellsworth, for people who don't know, does really interesting hardware stuff. "TSA body imaging at home" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDyo_OQFdAc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDyo_OQFdAc) "Home made EL wire" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKBGxJJmwg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKBGxJJmwg) "Recording Audio onto floppy discs" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4) "Home made transistor" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qph8BNrnLY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qph8BNrnLY) "Homebrew NMOS transistor" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE)
- wavefunction 13y ago
  I stay in my parent's basement so I don't have to be subjected to TSA body imaging, why would I want to do it at home? j/k it's more of a tin-foil covered shed, but there may be some evidence that tHz radiation causes "resonance effects" resulting in DNA depolymerization: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-waves-tear-apart-dna/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-wa... http://www.biomedproofreading.com/Hintzsche.pdf http://www.biomedproofreading.com/Hintzsche.pdf So get the pat down folks, your genes will thank you!
  - widdershins 13y ago
    She did that as a protest against airport scanners, I believe.
    - at-fates-hands 13y ago
      You are correct. It was to demonstrate they were wasting absurd amounts of money paying for these when they can be built fairly easily for quite a bit less.
      - wavefunction 13y ago
        I guess my point, from the links provided, is that we shouldn't be bombarding ourselves with the radiation these devices produce.
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xedarius 13y ago
I'd heard similar stories about Valve. Unlike many games studios they have a continuous revenue stream in the form of Steam. Would be interesting to see how this 'you have no boss' mentality works during the difficult times. It also largely explains why we haven't seen HL3 (which I don't really mind as long as there's another Portals soon).
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
It's all starting to make a bit more sense. Democracy tends to weed out bad ideas but moves at a snails pace. Tyranny is the opposite. It moves at blazing speed but the mistakes are massive. This explains so much about Valve. It's products are high quality but it's a slow company. They're release games very slowly for a company with their money, their source engine is inferior to modern ones, and (not that it matters to me but for some it does) their graphics aren't exact top notch. I think that's why Half Life Episode 3 is delayed for so long, they're working on a new engine to compete with EA's Frostbite 3. Before EA came out with Origin and Valve starting hauling ass to add features to Steam, Valve didn't look like it was really pushing any new steam features. There was the redesign and that was all. Then as Steam had more competition they starting added Screenshots manager, greenlight, software, source filmmaker, community hub, walkthroughs, big picture mode, linux support, etc... It feels like the company is trying to stay small and stay the same despite desperately needing to be restructured in order to keep up with competition. Maybe "staying a startup forever" doesn't work as good as we thought.
- thezilch 13y ago
  Uh, the Source engine is very well acclaimed. Valve may not market it like Epic or Crytek, but it has stood up well to time and has received numerous updates. The guys at Respawn, with Titanfall, seem to be doing just fine with such "old" tech.
- nemof 13y ago
  Valve is really not a slow company. I've heard this expressed before and never really seen it. Please see this list of IP developed by valve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games That's not an insubstantial amount of games for one company. This doesn't even take into consideration that they currently run the biggest online games store in the world which is a huge undertaking, and all the moonshot developments they have running that might not even see the light of day. Valve are not a slow company. They're a savvy company. It's hardly surprising that they don't really have a flat power-structure, but they do seem to have some kind of structure that allows them to continue to innovate in a variety of areas.
brongondwana 13y ago
Article is 1/3 advertisement for naked women with nipples artfully tucked away behind arms. Stay classy wired.
- Tobani 13y ago
  Targeted ads? What other pages have you been visiting?
  - JackpotDen 13y ago
    Sandwiches! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/20 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/20
uchi 13y ago
It's very disingenuous to say that Valve backstabbed you when they willingly handed over all the legal rights to your project when you left. http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusions-valve-augmented-reality-glasses-jeri-ellsworth-rick-johnson http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusion... Granted, a firing is never a graceful affair, but Valve could've done much worse if they wanted to. It seems to me that Valve was cutting some losses and her project wasn't showing much promise compared to other things they had going on, so they let her go.
k__ 13y ago
She said it herself: "...There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company ... I was struggling in the company to make a difference" There IS a always a hierarchy and she failed climbing it.
- Angostura 13y ago
  The article effectively uses 'popular' as a pejorative but doesn't really explore is the extent to which the 'popular kids' have achieved power through merit. If someone is popular because they are a good manager, with good ideas, able to listen and adopt better ideas from talented team members, then I have no problem with this form of hierarchy - it's a meritocracy.
  - k__ 13y ago
    I think the same way about this. But life is not fair. You see systems and you exploit them. If you gain fame by merit when interacting with one of those systems, that's nice. But not all systems work like that.
Ygg2 13y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to create temporary hierarchy, like you have on video sets. You have cast/directors/animation, etc. They form only for purpose of making the film after which they are dissolved. Or is this how Valve already works?
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Video sets are really projects, with a different set of lingo that a "PMI-style" project. So they have to have something like that, otherwise nothing would ever get done. People don't just magically do things.
antninja 13y ago
Dudes, the word for "non hierarchical" or "structureless" is "anarchist". Either a social organization is a hierarchy or it's an anarchy (or a mix of both). A corporate culture is certainly defined by its political structure: some companies are monarchies if not tyrannies, some are democracies and some like Valve are closer to anarchies. This is decided by the founder's preferences.
pjc50 13y ago
It's also worth observing that "culture" tends to mean "people similar to myself", unless more explicitly defined. So it's no suprise that the people who declared not to "fit" are a woman and a skilled manual worker (machinist). The totally uniform power distribution idea only works if you have totally uniform employees. As soon as you have signifigantly different skillsets and workflows - which you need to do different kinds of work - then employees become uncomparable and shortly afterwards unequal. The size of Valve is also over Dunbar's number, so they're beyond the range of what can be organised with informal social operations anyway.
- tfgg 13y ago
  It seems a bit unfair to claim that it's because she's a woman -- how many women work for Valve? Also, Valve, being a game company, has always had a diverse set of skills with artists and software engineers being the most obviously different. Their success has been a lot to do with efficiently integrating these together.
  - pjc50 13y ago
    I don't know, how many women work for Valve? It's not public or easily googlable information.
    - papsosouid 13y ago
      You should definitely assume it is none then and blame sexism for her project being rejected. That makes perfect sense.
jaimebuelta 13y ago
I guess that we talk a lot about how a leader is not the same as a boss, and how people should lead and not command. It seems that Valve have created an environment that make leaders, well, to lead and to make decisions... Does any of this remembers "Lord of the Flies"? (Of course, without all much drama, and being able to leave it) Of course, the risk of that kind of approach is that there's no really a way of make external decisions, as there is no way of disrupting the spontaneous organisation (because there's always going to be some organisation), so consensus with "the group" (meaning basically the leaders) needs to be reached. And that can be very difficult.
kabdib 13y ago
Any time you have more than a handful of primates in a room, you're going to have politics and hierarchy. Valve does appear to try very hard to avoid enshrining hierarchy. No org charts. What people work on can be very fluid. Doesn't mean it's nirvana.
mathattack 13y ago
It sounds like the informal style of a small company didn't scale. I've heard various #s between 50 and 160 batted around as optimal sizes of organizations, after which you need more structure. The challenge is that interpersonal relationships grow n^2 with organization size. This is in part why the Mythical Man Month tells us to not add bodies. A high level summary of some the research is here -> http://jstrande.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/optimum_organiz.html http://jstrande.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/optimum_organiz.htm... Intuitively this makes a lot of sense. At some point you have to say, "You do your part, and I'll own mine, here's the deal we're setting up to get each of our parts done, but we each have some autonomy in how to do it."
spikels 13y ago
Why is Jeri still whining that her job at Valve didn't work out? As best I can tell she was treated fairly but she was just not a good fit in this rather unique company. Maybe this was news in February when she was fired but now it is either a childish grudge or a cynical PR move or both. Listen to the Grey Area podcast if you think this is wrong.
- kyrra 13y ago
  Exactly. There were a number of comments on Slashdot[1] that pointed out that Valve may not be the problem here, but that Jeri did not fit into Valve's culture. If you read here Wikipedia[2] page, you'll see she dropped out of both highschool and later college (college due to "cultural mismatch"). Reading her wikipedia page reads like someone that may not play well as part of a team (I haven't fully listened to the Grey Area podcast yet, so I could be totally wrong here). Jeri couldn't get buy-in for her projects at Valve so they failed. For a project at Valve to succeed you need to convince a number of other people at the company that your project is a good idea and that they should help you work on it. It sounds like she wasn't able to convince others at the company to come help her on her ideas (maybe because she didn't put forth the effort, she wasn't good at selling it, or no one thought her ideas were worth it). Valve has a very specific culture and you have to really have a certain personality to fit in. Sounds like maybe she wasn't a good fit. [1] http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/09/0214225/former-valve-hardware-designer-recounts-management-difficulties http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/09/0214225/former-v... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth
  - nutmeg 13y ago
    "A very specific culture and you have to really have a certain personality to fit in." Sounds a lot like high school to me :-)
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Except they make you attend high school whether you fit in or not.
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patmcguire 13y ago
Reminds me of CS Lewis's The Inner Ring - mostly the quote from War and Peace: "When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood—what he had already guessed—that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system." http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php
ssw1n 13y ago
It is fully expected, and Gabe probably did not intended this to happen. It is only human nature: to strive for authority, to build little exclusive clubs around it, and to suck up to such authoritative group of people for a sense of security if one not part of such a group. Decades and decades (centuries and centuries?) of human society has trained people in this mechanism regardless of race, gender or religion. So ValveSoftware, even with good intentions, is fighting against a trait that is part of being human. Regardless of how flat Gabe wants it to be, some people will become more and more important on the part of the company they are working on as their time goes by at Valve. And they will form old-timers club who will feel like they are on the next level, and start to form the barrier from the rest. Only viable solution towards truly flat structure would be to not give anyone a chance to become an old-timer, a.k.a., one too important/authoritative: recycle people to different parts of the company as soon as arguments like this one arises: "OK group, what you all are suggesting for this product's next phase is really great and all, but we will need to ask Mr. X because he had been working on the product since the first iteration, and he knows about it all, so he knows what is best for the product."
generalpf 13y ago
One thing that always bugs me about the video game areas of Reddit is their universal love of Valve, and their belief that Valve's management structure and corporate policies is the CAUSE of their success. I think Valve succeeds DESPITE their structure since they can stay afloat merely from Steam revenues. I would like to know (and never will) if Valve's game development arm balances out financially, or if it's just a loss leader to get people onto Steam, which will provide them with more distribution revenues down the road. Also, I didn't think Half-Life 1 or 2 were that good, so sue me. :)
MortenK 13y ago
Seems like a case of misaligned ideas of what constitutes an environment like Valve. Of course there will be a hierarchy any time humans are involved. The idea of Valve's workplace, is that the hierarchy will establish itself naturally and hopefully merit based, rather than imposed from above like in "normal" companies. Lots of projects in such a company will die. But I don't believe for one second that it's due to some elite clique trying to hold everybody else down. The much more obvious reason is that the concept was mediocre, hence why it couldn't get any backing internally. It's of course always easier to claim conspiracy and unfairness, than it is to realize that whatever concept you thought up was no good. There's a lesson in this situation about facing facts early, not being blinded by your own perceived brilliance and not brushing off criticism too easily.
robert-wallis 13y ago
interview video http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/c/2488434 http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/c/2488434
cpeterso 13y ago
GitHub also claims to be a flat "no bosses" organization. Can anyone here who works at GitHub, or knows people who do, describe how this actually works? Can this scale to a large multi site combating?
jes5199 13y ago
Does anyone know if the other companies emulating the Valve corporate structure - particularly I'm thinking of Github - also have cliquish dynamics? The only company I've seen in-person that was trying it is Basho, and while I got a really bad impression of their culture, I think that had more to do with their "Topgrading" cargo-cult hiring practices than with their structurelessness

205 points by ot 13y ago

This person must have gone to a much different high school than I did if the biggest problem was hires being vetoed by old-timers and trouble reaching consensus. "Like high school" to me implies that the place is full of idiots who hassle you because you're actually productive, and you can't really leave. This seems like a nitpick, but it makes it hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously....

stephencanon 13y ago
Agreed (at least assuming there aren’t regular fistfights in the hallways at Valve).

Zarkonnen 13y ago

Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes... Seriously - in the absence of formal power structures, informal ones will always form, and they are often less accountable and fair than formal ones.

msutherl 13y ago
Almost all of the jobs I've had have been with small "non-hierarchical" groups. In all of them, the founders have insisted that there was no hierarchy where clearly there was. When I've tried to explain this to them, they've been incapable of perceiving it. Even at my current corporate job, it's the same situation, but by now I've learned that you just need to take power. The one source of legitimate power you do have as an employee, especially in our industry, is the power to leave. These days I cultivate a kind "I don't give a shit" attitude that works pretty well.
- guynamedloren 13y ago
  Interested to hear about how you wield this power. Do you use it as a threat, or are you saying that you just simply leave?
  - msutherl 13y ago
    Well, what is power? In this case it's the ability of somebody to say what you can and cannot do. But there are complexities in a non-hierarchical organization which lacks management structure. Those in power may not think they have power, they may not have much information about what you are doing, they may not have a clear way to tell you what to do. Power is implicit and soft. The rules only exist insofar as you interpret them from the environment and you follow them by your own accord, fearing imagined consequences. Succeeding in this kind of organization requires not only jockeying for position, but more subtly, overcoming the self-imposed coercion. This is where irreverence comes in handy. Once you eradicate fear, you can afford to take the risks required to freely design your relationship with your colleagues such that you have sufficient power. Ultimately you want them to trust you and you want to be able to challenge them on any topic. You want respect, and people respect excellence, confidence, and risk-taking. If for whatever reason you're working with people who are incapable of collaborating, your irreverence will either be taken as a threat that may change their behavior in your favor, or otherwise you can leave and it won't seem out of the blue.
- kamaal 13y ago
  The problem with non-hierarchical groups is the behind-the-scenes leaders, whom the powers-that-are trust. And therefore automatically unofficially become leaders. It looks like officially he isn't the boss, but for almost all practical purpose he is. The worst thing that happens in such places is, those people using their power to help their buddies, gangs and yes men for their own benefit and political power. If you are not one of them you are screwed.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    The thing is that this exists just as well in hierarchical groups though. I've yet to encounter an organization where the hierarchical structure accurately represents the actual power structure. What's happening here is that in flat organizations it's the -only- power structure and thus becomes more pronounced to our brains which are hard-wired to pattern match for the social power structures. Another way of looking at this is to see the hierarchical power structure as an abstraction that evolved to address the discomfort (some) people have with a more fluid power structure like at Valve. The interesting part here is that different people have different tolerance for this though; so much so that it's one of Hofstede's main cultural dimensions called 'Power distance'. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory#Dimensions_of_national_cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimension...
qznc 13y ago
Our german Pirate Party is struggling with this as well. They desire to be a democratic party, where the officials just do as voted. Technology [0] is used to make this feasible. Nevertheless it hardly works out in practice and leads to lot of discussions and a high churn rate. [0] https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ note the meaning of the name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  people who don't really understand democracy (in terms of the implicit power structure) trying to institute it never ends well.
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
    - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
      You cannot nudge a rock uphill
      - wavefunction 13y ago
        What's the point of nudging a rock uphill, I guess I would ask. Down at the bottom or at the crest, it's still a rock.
tfgg 13y ago
Was Valve ever "structureless"? My impression from reading the handbook was that power structures were recognised but not enforced, i.e. if you wanted someone on your project, you had to persuade them. This is not great if you can't get people to work on your pet project, but that doesn't mean the system isn't working. Personally, having seen Jeri's AR project video, I wouldn't have joined it. It seemed like a rather weak and non-transferable technology that didn't solve fundamental problems with AR and that had limited gameplay possibilities.
- moomin 13y ago
  But... she wasn't short of people who wanted to do the job. She was having trouble with the hiring process rejecting her candidates.
  - tfgg 13y ago
    She was short of people inside the company who wanted to do the job. Of course you can always find people outside the company who want in (it's a job, after all). In the case of hiring people specifically for someone's project, presumably the hiring process has to act as a proxy for the 'is that project worth working on?' or inflexible resources (a machinist isn't going to work on Steam) get tied up in a project no-one else is interested in. Hiring the person as a temporary non-employee contractor would probably solve that, but I see how Valve's resource allocation system might make that difficult.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      You never know when the machinist might have some interesting insight, especially in an organization lacking a machinist.
      - officemonkey 13y ago
        Which is why Valve has an economist, but not a machinist.
drawkbox 13y ago
It depends on the scale and the focus as well. For instance the open source groups and projects that form at a macro level are more innovative than just one companies structure and would be impossible with that type of organization. The focus of making useful and fun projects goes back to small groups and individuals really though. There was no formal structure for making new programming languages but individuals (mostly) stepped up to do it to share them because they were free to and the community rewarded that, it also led to many to financial rewards. I think structurelessness is a little messy but individuals and groups (usually small) can shine with the right rewards and outlets. Best organization is small structures within bigger macro ones.
lsiebert 13y ago
You got to this before me, but thank you for posting it. I remember reading that paper in college. It was the first thing I thought of when I read this. While rooted in the experience of liberal and women's groups, it really has lessons for anybody working in any organization that tries to eschew formality, including startups. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm "the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones ... Thus structurelessness ... is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware."
DalekBaldwin 13y ago
Or more generally, the iron law of oligarchy.
bane 13y ago
What's really interesting is that even in highly organized and structured work environments (e.g. the military), similar ad hoc power structures emerge, usually along the same lines. The formal power structure then usually ends up seeming like it just gets in the way of the informal one that appears to be getting things done.
speeder 13y ago
I have a friend that commonly says the phrase that "nature abhors power vacuums" I think he is quoting someone else, but I dunno who (also the quote might be inacurate, since I translated it from portuguese). He usually uses this quote when discussing the politics of feminist, to point out that power equality will never be reached, someone always lead, those who step down, will only open positions for others to step up.
- mathattack 13y ago
  This is very true. If there is no structure, there is no company, just a bunch of contractors doing business with each other. People need to know what's been decided and what to do, and what others are doing. Whether it's via influence, or via force, people need power.
- ryanklee 13y ago
  The translation is correct and -- you may already know this, it's tough to tell from your comment -- is a play on the Latin phrase "horror vacui," which is usually parsed back into English as "nature abhors a vacuum." It relates to some early (BC) physical theories which proposed that voids are impossible. Also called plenism. Edit: Good overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)
walshemj 13y ago
Which is why Charity's often have Horrific HR "issues" with bullying.

wowoc 13y ago

Take a look at this quote: Let's say you and I have a chat in the corridor or the conference room and the result of this chat is that we converge to the view that we need an additional software engineer or animator or artist or hardware person. The people dealing with software were called "engineers", and the ones dealing with hardware "persons". Huh.

_rknLA 13y ago
Not really relevant or helpful to focus on in the context of the overall message. Having been in both hardware and software, I've seen hardware technician positions (filled by "hardware people") that don't actually formally involve any engineering design in the job description. Soldering, assembly, and testing come to mind as tasks. It's also likely that she was using the term to be more specific. For example, I have a degree in Computer Engineering, and have held positions in hardware (as a Firmware and Electrical Engineer), but now I write software (as a Software Engineer). I used to be a hardware person, but now I am a software person. I have been an engineer throughout.
muyuu 13y ago
Well, she's a rather accomplished hardware "person" and she's self-taught (dropped out of high school). Maybe that's why she's reticent to use the word engineer for herself.
6d0debc071 13y ago
-shrug- As far as I'm aware, it's generally considered bad style to use the same words twice in a sentence.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  >As far as
  - pizza 13y ago
    as and far are barely words; just redundant filler

kamaal 13y ago

The problem isn't the structure. The problem is the size of the company. And one should not live in the delusion that office politics is the result of a structure. Rather its a result of size. In any case a structure, though not official always exists. Somebody on the top is always going to ask his trusted lieutenant when it comes to doing reviews, 1-1, appraisals, deciding hikes and promotions etc. Your best bet is to keep yourself to a small company. Nothing you are likely to do to a large company can bring about genuine change.

brazzy 13y ago
> Nothing you are likely to do to a large company can bring about genuine change. Unless, of course, you're near enough to the top of its structure, formal or informal...
- kamaal 13y ago
  Even that will not help much. To bring about change in any large company, you need some partner in the high-mid level management who can assist you in bringing about that change. Now this is the problem, if the system is rotten to the core, simply firing the low level solves no problems. You really need to clean the mid level management, and you will never get a true picture of what is going on. All you will see is numbers that will those guys look fabulous. One of the reasons why Jack Welch got tremendous success with stack ranking was because the managers were subjected to same kind of measurements some one at the bottom was. There fore he was able to clean up a good deal of crap in the management layers. Unfortunately this is not possible to implement in most companies as either they lack a 'real' leader or the ones implementing, make the process such that they exempted to be judged as a part of it.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    I think your definition of "genuine change" is much wider-reaching than what I thought was meant.
pjmorris 13y ago
I've got a friend who has a rule; no companies with more than 150 people (ref Dunbar's number, 'The Tipping Point').

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egor83 13y ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015182

DanBC 13y ago

Jeri Ellsworth, for people who don't know, does really interesting hardware stuff. "TSA body imaging at home" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDyo_OQFdAc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDyo_OQFdAc) "Home made EL wire" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKBGxJJmwg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKBGxJJmwg) "Recording Audio onto floppy discs" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4) "Home made transistor" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qph8BNrnLY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qph8BNrnLY) "Homebrew NMOS transistor" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE)

wavefunction 13y ago
I stay in my parent's basement so I don't have to be subjected to TSA body imaging, why would I want to do it at home? j/k it's more of a tin-foil covered shed, but there may be some evidence that tHz radiation causes "resonance effects" resulting in DNA depolymerization: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-waves-tear-apart-dna/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-wa... http://www.biomedproofreading.com/Hintzsche.pdf http://www.biomedproofreading.com/Hintzsche.pdf So get the pat down folks, your genes will thank you!
- widdershins 13y ago
  She did that as a protest against airport scanners, I believe.
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    You are correct. It was to demonstrate they were wasting absurd amounts of money paying for these when they can be built fairly easily for quite a bit less.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      I guess my point, from the links provided, is that we shouldn't be bombarding ourselves with the radiation these devices produce.

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xedarius 13y ago

I'd heard similar stories about Valve. Unlike many games studios they have a continuous revenue stream in the form of Steam. Would be interesting to see how this 'you have no boss' mentality works during the difficult times. It also largely explains why we haven't seen HL3 (which I don't really mind as long as there's another Portals soon).

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

It's all starting to make a bit more sense. Democracy tends to weed out bad ideas but moves at a snails pace. Tyranny is the opposite. It moves at blazing speed but the mistakes are massive. This explains so much about Valve. It's products are high quality but it's a slow company. They're release games very slowly for a company with their money, their source engine is inferior to modern ones, and (not that it matters to me but for some it does) their graphics aren't exact top notch. I think that's why Half Life Episode 3 is delayed for so long, they're working on a new engine to compete with EA's Frostbite 3. Before EA came out with Origin and Valve starting hauling ass to add features to Steam, Valve didn't look like it was really pushing any new steam features. There was the redesign and that was all. Then as Steam had more competition they starting added Screenshots manager, greenlight, software, source filmmaker, community hub, walkthroughs, big picture mode, linux support, etc... It feels like the company is trying to stay small and stay the same despite desperately needing to be restructured in order to keep up with competition. Maybe "staying a startup forever" doesn't work as good as we thought.

thezilch 13y ago
Uh, the Source engine is very well acclaimed. Valve may not market it like Epic or Crytek, but it has stood up well to time and has received numerous updates. The guys at Respawn, with Titanfall, seem to be doing just fine with such "old" tech.
nemof 13y ago
Valve is really not a slow company. I've heard this expressed before and never really seen it. Please see this list of IP developed by valve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games That's not an insubstantial amount of games for one company. This doesn't even take into consideration that they currently run the biggest online games store in the world which is a huge undertaking, and all the moonshot developments they have running that might not even see the light of day. Valve are not a slow company. They're a savvy company. It's hardly surprising that they don't really have a flat power-structure, but they do seem to have some kind of structure that allows them to continue to innovate in a variety of areas.

brongondwana 13y ago

Article is 1/3 advertisement for naked women with nipples artfully tucked away behind arms. Stay classy wired.

Tobani 13y ago
Targeted ads? What other pages have you been visiting?
- JackpotDen 13y ago
  Sandwiches! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/20 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/20

uchi 13y ago

It's very disingenuous to say that Valve backstabbed you when they willingly handed over all the legal rights to your project when you left. http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusions-valve-augmented-reality-glasses-jeri-ellsworth-rick-johnson http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusion... Granted, a firing is never a graceful affair, but Valve could've done much worse if they wanted to. It seems to me that Valve was cutting some losses and her project wasn't showing much promise compared to other things they had going on, so they let her go.

k__ 13y ago

She said it herself: "...There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company ... I was struggling in the company to make a difference" There IS a always a hierarchy and she failed climbing it.

Angostura 13y ago
The article effectively uses 'popular' as a pejorative but doesn't really explore is the extent to which the 'popular kids' have achieved power through merit. If someone is popular because they are a good manager, with good ideas, able to listen and adopt better ideas from talented team members, then I have no problem with this form of hierarchy - it's a meritocracy.
- k__ 13y ago
  I think the same way about this. But life is not fair. You see systems and you exploit them. If you gain fame by merit when interacting with one of those systems, that's nice. But not all systems work like that.

Ygg2 13y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to create temporary hierarchy, like you have on video sets. You have cast/directors/animation, etc. They form only for purpose of making the film after which they are dissolved. Or is this how Valve already works?

Spooky23 13y ago
Video sets are really projects, with a different set of lingo that a "PMI-style" project. So they have to have something like that, otherwise nothing would ever get done. People don't just magically do things.

antninja 13y ago

Dudes, the word for "non hierarchical" or "structureless" is "anarchist". Either a social organization is a hierarchy or it's an anarchy (or a mix of both). A corporate culture is certainly defined by its political structure: some companies are monarchies if not tyrannies, some are democracies and some like Valve are closer to anarchies. This is decided by the founder's preferences.

pjc50 13y ago

It's also worth observing that "culture" tends to mean "people similar to myself", unless more explicitly defined. So it's no suprise that the people who declared not to "fit" are a woman and a skilled manual worker (machinist). The totally uniform power distribution idea only works if you have totally uniform employees. As soon as you have signifigantly different skillsets and workflows - which you need to do different kinds of work - then employees become uncomparable and shortly afterwards unequal. The size of Valve is also over Dunbar's number, so they're beyond the range of what can be organised with informal social operations anyway.

tfgg 13y ago
It seems a bit unfair to claim that it's because she's a woman -- how many women work for Valve? Also, Valve, being a game company, has always had a diverse set of skills with artists and software engineers being the most obviously different. Their success has been a lot to do with efficiently integrating these together.
- pjc50 13y ago
  I don't know, how many women work for Valve? It's not public or easily googlable information.
  - papsosouid 13y ago
    You should definitely assume it is none then and blame sexism for her project being rejected. That makes perfect sense.

jaimebuelta 13y ago

I guess that we talk a lot about how a leader is not the same as a boss, and how people should lead and not command. It seems that Valve have created an environment that make leaders, well, to lead and to make decisions... Does any of this remembers "Lord of the Flies"? (Of course, without all much drama, and being able to leave it) Of course, the risk of that kind of approach is that there's no really a way of make external decisions, as there is no way of disrupting the spontaneous organisation (because there's always going to be some organisation), so consensus with "the group" (meaning basically the leaders) needs to be reached. And that can be very difficult.

kabdib 13y ago

Any time you have more than a handful of primates in a room, you're going to have politics and hierarchy. Valve does appear to try very hard to avoid enshrining hierarchy. No org charts. What people work on can be very fluid. Doesn't mean it's nirvana.

mathattack 13y ago

It sounds like the informal style of a small company didn't scale. I've heard various #s between 50 and 160 batted around as optimal sizes of organizations, after which you need more structure. The challenge is that interpersonal relationships grow n^2 with organization size. This is in part why the Mythical Man Month tells us to not add bodies. A high level summary of some the research is here -> http://jstrande.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/optimum_organiz.html http://jstrande.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/optimum_organiz.htm... Intuitively this makes a lot of sense. At some point you have to say, "You do your part, and I'll own mine, here's the deal we're setting up to get each of our parts done, but we each have some autonomy in how to do it."

spikels 13y ago

Why is Jeri still whining that her job at Valve didn't work out? As best I can tell she was treated fairly but she was just not a good fit in this rather unique company. Maybe this was news in February when she was fired but now it is either a childish grudge or a cynical PR move or both. Listen to the Grey Area podcast if you think this is wrong.

kyrra 13y ago
Exactly. There were a number of comments on Slashdot[1] that pointed out that Valve may not be the problem here, but that Jeri did not fit into Valve's culture. If you read here Wikipedia[2] page, you'll see she dropped out of both highschool and later college (college due to "cultural mismatch"). Reading her wikipedia page reads like someone that may not play well as part of a team (I haven't fully listened to the Grey Area podcast yet, so I could be totally wrong here). Jeri couldn't get buy-in for her projects at Valve so they failed. For a project at Valve to succeed you need to convince a number of other people at the company that your project is a good idea and that they should help you work on it. It sounds like she wasn't able to convince others at the company to come help her on her ideas (maybe because she didn't put forth the effort, she wasn't good at selling it, or no one thought her ideas were worth it). Valve has a very specific culture and you have to really have a certain personality to fit in. Sounds like maybe she wasn't a good fit. [1] http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/09/0214225/former-valve-hardware-designer-recounts-management-difficulties http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/09/0214225/former-v... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth
- nutmeg 13y ago
  "A very specific culture and you have to really have a certain personality to fit in." Sounds a lot like high school to me :-)
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Except they make you attend high school whether you fit in or not.

deleted 13y ago

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patmcguire 13y ago

Reminds me of CS Lewis's The Inner Ring - mostly the quote from War and Peace: "When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood—what he had already guessed—that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system." http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php

ssw1n 13y ago

It is fully expected, and Gabe probably did not intended this to happen. It is only human nature: to strive for authority, to build little exclusive clubs around it, and to suck up to such authoritative group of people for a sense of security if one not part of such a group. Decades and decades (centuries and centuries?) of human society has trained people in this mechanism regardless of race, gender or religion. So ValveSoftware, even with good intentions, is fighting against a trait that is part of being human. Regardless of how flat Gabe wants it to be, some people will become more and more important on the part of the company they are working on as their time goes by at Valve. And they will form old-timers club who will feel like they are on the next level, and start to form the barrier from the rest. Only viable solution towards truly flat structure would be to not give anyone a chance to become an old-timer, a.k.a., one too important/authoritative: recycle people to different parts of the company as soon as arguments like this one arises: "OK group, what you all are suggesting for this product's next phase is really great and all, but we will need to ask Mr. X because he had been working on the product since the first iteration, and he knows about it all, so he knows what is best for the product."

generalpf 13y ago

One thing that always bugs me about the video game areas of Reddit is their universal love of Valve, and their belief that Valve's management structure and corporate policies is the CAUSE of their success. I think Valve succeeds DESPITE their structure since they can stay afloat merely from Steam revenues. I would like to know (and never will) if Valve's game development arm balances out financially, or if it's just a loss leader to get people onto Steam, which will provide them with more distribution revenues down the road. Also, I didn't think Half-Life 1 or 2 were that good, so sue me. :)

MortenK 13y ago

Seems like a case of misaligned ideas of what constitutes an environment like Valve. Of course there will be a hierarchy any time humans are involved. The idea of Valve's workplace, is that the hierarchy will establish itself naturally and hopefully merit based, rather than imposed from above like in "normal" companies. Lots of projects in such a company will die. But I don't believe for one second that it's due to some elite clique trying to hold everybody else down. The much more obvious reason is that the concept was mediocre, hence why it couldn't get any backing internally. It's of course always easier to claim conspiracy and unfairness, than it is to realize that whatever concept you thought up was no good. There's a lesson in this situation about facing facts early, not being blinded by your own perceived brilliance and not brushing off criticism too easily.

robert-wallis 13y ago

interview video http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/c/2488434 http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/c/2488434

cpeterso 13y ago

GitHub also claims to be a flat "no bosses" organization. Can anyone here who works at GitHub, or knows people who do, describe how this actually works? Can this scale to a large multi site combating?

jes5199 13y ago

Does anyone know if the other companies emulating the Valve corporate structure - particularly I'm thinking of Github - also have cliquish dynamics? The only company I've seen in-person that was trying it is Basho, and while I got a really bad impression of their culture, I think that had more to do with their "Topgrading" cargo-cult hiring practices than with their structurelessness