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

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

#41

Post by ixtli »

I think anyone who likes what they see here needs to honestly ask themselves how they believe this applies to their world. Whenever this PDF is posted on HN I am disappointed to see comparisons between how people perceive Valve and their own companies. Does your company have a total equity > 2 billion us dollars? Probably not. Much of this flows from the ability to invest in an incentivize your employees at this level.

As another aside I do not think there is causal evidence that Valve became successful because of these ideals. On the contrary they seem like the result of success.

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

#43

Post by wishinghand »

danso wrote: post #26
AimHere wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They've tried and they discontinued doing so because they felt it was even worse than being apathetic about it.

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

#44

Post by sdenton4 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #35
oblio wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Any group of more than 2 people is always "political" Agree with your statement on its own. In this context, "political" likely means loyalty is valued over competence.

Politics is the allocation of power. And a synonym for power is the ability to make decisions.

When you've got a limited resource (eg, the time of 300 employees), allocation of that resource is guaranteed to be political, precisely because there will be competing interests which need to be resolved. The question is whether the company comes up with healthy method for making these decisions.

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

#45

Post by sremani »

MIKarlsen wrote: post #37

I find the whole "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"-frame of mind very intimidating. Maybe it's because I'm not american, but even though I like to work with complex issues, I also like a 9-17 job with a decent income, and the ability to go home and relax when I'm not working. And by relax, I don't mean working on side projects, doing volunteer work or…

"You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"

The way I interpret it, do you solve the small problems that are all around you. Are you a willing leaner and applier of knowledge on things around you. When you look that way, its less intimidating or honestly much more human. Its more about awareness and doing something about it.

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

#46

Post by tome »

indeed30 wrote: post #27
oblio wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does Olympic cycling have more than two teams against each other at the same time?

The Tour de France, on the other hand, like Formula 1, is very political.

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

#48

Post by indeed30 »

tome wrote: post #46
indeed30 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does Olympic cycling have more than two teams against each other at the same time? The Tour de France, on the other hand, like Formula 1, is very political.

Yeah absolutely it does - the omnium on the track features events, such as the elimination race, with all countries represented at the same time, as does the road race. The road race is particularly interesting as while it is officially national teams that participate, there also sometimes exist looser bonds between riders of the same pro-team.

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

#49

Post by swanson »

Let me start by saying that I love reading these kind of handbooks from various companies.

One thing that stuck out to me was multiple mentions about "raising the issue" for the tough topics (compensation issues, feeling uncertain) -- who is the issue "raised" to if there is zero hierarchy and I have no manager/adviser/councilor? Does the flat structure only apply to "individual contributors" and is there a more traditional HR/operations structure that is not shown?

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

#50

Post by whatever_dude »

MIKarlsen wrote: post #37

I find the whole "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"-frame of mind very intimidating. Maybe it's because I'm not american, but even though I like to work with complex issues, I also like a 9-17 job with a decent income, and the ability to go home and relax when I'm not working. And by relax, I don't mean working on side projects, doing volunteer work or…

You're right - it's very much an American thing. Maybe not exclusive to the US, and it may vary by state or background, but still very common there from my experience with family and friends.

In American culture, unless you're financially constrained, you grow up with someone hammering down the idea that you have to be doing something productive and getting better 100% of the time. If you're a kid, you have to be involved in clubs or teams for everything. You have to make friends. You have to be good, you have to be popular. You have to get awards. You have to play a couple of sports competitively. On holidays, you have to go to summer camp, shock full of controlled activities. You have to do a lot of "voluntary" work because it will look good in your resume, not because it's helping someone [1].

As a result, your schedule is controlled, you are being judged 100% of the time, and the loudest, more outwardly energetic people are the ones who strive. The idea is that if you're not having Mandatory Fun, you're doing something wrong.

It creates this idealistic culture where everyone is trying to be better all the time, or pretending they are. The reality is that most people live in a constant state of anxiety. For the most part, it's very hard for kids to find what they like, and get better at it by sheer initiative; they never have time to do it. Instead, they do what they do because they're told to.

Little surprise kids have no time for introspection, and that's the way people can actually get better.

Science is just starting to understand that Rest is not Idleness [2]. The idea is not new [3]. But our culture, specially the fast-moving tech culture, is not ready for it.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/college-admissions-...

[2] http://pps.sagepub.com/content/7/4/352

[3] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozio_creativo

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