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Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

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Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#21

Post by dpweb »

sebastianbk wrote: post #11

As a Microsoft employee I am so happy that we got rid of stack ranking a few years ago. It encourages a bad behavior and goes against helping your coworkers with whom you are essentially competing for compensation. I am surprised to see that a company like Valve, which seems to be held in high regard by many developers in the industry, still operates with this compensation system. It's system of the 80's if you ask m…

Wouldn't it make sense to just pay everyone (in the same type of role) essentially the same amount and then bonus people from time to time on particular outstanding achievements. Nothing is a more powerful inducement than financial incentives and a bonus gives an impact that the ongoing salary doesn't. People don't give a crap about annual reviews unless they think its low enough to get them fired.

My sense is performance evaluations should be banished from the corporate world, for the most part. Usually a waste of time, but that is where managers can be helpful as they are carrying an ongoing assessment of the value of each of their employees at all times.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#22

Post by Karunamon »

AimHere wrote: post #17
sebastianbk wrote: post #11

As a Microsoft employee I am so happy that we got rid of stack ranking a few years ago. It encourages a bad behavior and goes against helping your coworkers with whom you are essentially competing for compensation. I am surprised to see that a company like Valve, which seems to be held in high regard by many developers in the industry, still operates with this compensation system. It's system of the 80's if you ask m…

I suspect it might work differently in Valve's case. I'm led to believe that Microsoft had a fixed, conventional hierarchy, where every little group and person within the group was backstabbing everybody else to keep their jobs. If their handbook is to be believed, Valve has a much more flat management structure, where it's basically Gabe at the top, sortof, and everyone else doing whatever they think is best for the…

Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service.

I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity.

Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a traditional management structure: someone is making sure the shitty-but-necessary work gets done.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#23

Post by AimHere »

Karunamon wrote: post #22
AimHere wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it might work differently in Valve's case. I'm led to believe that Microsoft had a fixed, conventional hierarchy, where every little group and person within the group was backstabbing everybody else to keep their jobs. If their handbook is to be believed, Valve has a much more flat management structure, where it's basically Gabe at the top, sortof, and everyone else doing whatever they think is best for the…

Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a tradi…

I suspect it's much more that Valve is an insanely lightweight company for it's customer base. It has something like 330 employees servicing 100 million customers on the go-to PC gaming platform, and a lot of those employees are working on shiny tech and new games. As a comparison, Rockstar North's facility in Edinburgh has roughly the same employee count (slightly more by Wikipedia's count), and all they do is put out one new game every 5 years or so.

I suspect that if Valve wanted to, it could easily hire lots of people who would be happy to man the customer service helplines and who wouldn't be either able or willing to try to make TF2 levels or whatever.

Maybe the management structure is what limits the size of Valve, though.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#24

Post by [deleted] »

dpweb wrote: post #21
sebastianbk wrote: post #11

As a Microsoft employee I am so happy that we got rid of stack ranking a few years ago. It encourages a bad behavior and goes against helping your coworkers with whom you are essentially competing for compensation. I am surprised to see that a company like Valve, which seems to be held in high regard by many developers in the industry, still operates with this compensation system. It's system of the 80's if you ask m…

Wouldn't it make sense to just pay everyone (in the same type of role) essentially the same amount and then bonus people from time to time on particular outstanding achievements. Nothing is a more powerful inducement than financial incentives and a bonus gives an impact that the ongoing salary doesn't. People don't give a crap about annual reviews unless they think its low enough to get them fired. My sense is perfor…

[deleted]

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#25

Post by tikhonj »

Karunamon wrote: post #22
AimHere wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it might work differently in Valve's case. I'm led to believe that Microsoft had a fixed, conventional hierarchy, where every little group and person within the group was backstabbing everybody else to keep their jobs. If their handbook is to be believed, Valve has a much more flat management structure, where it's basically Gabe at the top, sortof, and everyone else doing whatever they think is best for the…

Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a tradi…

I mean, it's not like traditional companies—from Google to Comcast—consistently provide great customer support either. So you can't really make strong conclusions about why Valve is having issues there without additional insight; there are too many confounding variables to pin it just on its management structure.

This is a common story with people trying something new. If you do the old-fashioned thing—buy IBM, so to speak—and fail, well, these things happen. A lot of factors could have contributed to the problem. But if you try something new, the new thing must be at fault—even though all those other factors apply just as much now as they did in the IBM case.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#26

Post by danso »

AimHere wrote: post #23
Karunamon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a tradi…

I suspect it's much more that Valve is an insanely lightweight company for it's customer base. It has something like 330 employees servicing 100 million customers on the go-to PC gaming platform, and a lot of those employees are working on shiny tech and new games. As a comparison, Rockstar North's facility in Edinburgh has roughly the same employee count (slightly more by Wikipedia's count), and all they do is put o…

[insert obligatory Half-Life 3 joke/reference here]

I've never used Steam's customer support; do they outsource any of it to contractors and/or offshore?

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#27

Post by indeed30 »

oblio wrote: post #20
Thaxll wrote: post #16

From what I heard from ex employee working at Valve it's not what you think it is. i.e: it's very political.

Any group of more than 2 people is always "political" :) There's a reason all Olympic sports where you can interact with your opponents only have 2 teams/opponents facing off at the same time.

Cycling. Although that rather proves your point as politics are most definitely on-show there.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#28

Post by Karunamon »

tikhonj wrote: post #25
Karunamon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me wonders if the Valve management structure isn't almost completely to blame for things like their infamously bad customer service. I could see why - dealing with support tickets from irate people is not a particularly interesting (or judging by Steam's runaway success: particularly value adding) activity. Not that I mean to hijack this to complain about Steam, but you have to admit it's a benefit of a tradi…

I mean, it's not like traditional companies—from Google to Comcast—consistently provide great customer support either. So you can't really make strong conclusions about why Valve is having issues there without additional insight; there are too many confounding variables to pin it just on its management structure. This is a common story with people trying something new. If you do the old-fashioned thing—buy IBM, so to…

That's a fair point, but I'm struggling to think of a way in which it isn't at least partially to blame. The handbook (and Valve insiders) say it's pretty much a do-your-own-thing company. Who'd want to deal with angry users all day?

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#29

Post by maho »

We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline -- the vertical leg of the T).

This is a nice metaphor. I try to be T-shaped, but I wonder how useful I am becoming... My expertise in high-precision mass spectrometry is not something companies are looking for....

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#30

Post by gens »

oblio wrote: post #20
Thaxll wrote: post #16

From what I heard from ex employee working at Valve it's not what you think it is. i.e: it's very political.

Any group of more than 2 people is always "political" :) There's a reason all Olympic sports where you can interact with your opponents only have 2 teams/opponents facing off at the same time.

I'm good with olimpic gold medalists in rowing and i think there isn't much politics there. Especially between teams.

It wouldn't even make sense to involve politics in sports (yes i know football, basketball and such..) as the competition is to find out who is the best and not who is the best connected.

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