Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by huac » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

AimHere wrote: post #84

frik wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shiny tech and new games You mean Half Life with it's last full iteration from 10 years ago, and the second episode with a cliffhanger from 2009? Or the Source engine (HL2) which evolved from GoldSource (HL1) which was based on Quake 1 engine (with some parts from Quake 2 engine) - even the Call of Duty engine which aged well too is based on the more modern Quake 3 engine, and I wouldn't consider it shiny in 2016.…

It's a bit disingenuous to just mention Half Life, although note that work on Half Life series games was still ongoing as of last year (and they did a fair amount of work on the whole series in ~2012/2013 porting it to other operating systems). Those 'blank' 10 years saw the release of Left 4 Dead 1/2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 1/2 and CSGO, for instance, as well as that 'little' Dota2 (which is clearly a large game by…

the majority of those airbnb/uber numbers are customer support not engineering

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

#92

Post by talmand » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #76

maho wrote: post #29

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 f…

Just wait for upcoming asteroid mining startup bubble.

Why wait? Start it yourself. With a little imagination you can get it started before we even have the capability to achieve asteroid mining.

After all, there's a star naming registry that will name a star of your choice to be recorded in their books for a nominal fee.

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

#93

Post by talmand » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

maho wrote: post #29

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 f…

I've heard this recently and it only seems to me it is too easily used to create a bad mix of people on a team to tackle problems.

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

#94

Post by rsp1984 » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

The problem is in almost every group of people lacking a formal hierarchy, an informal un-official hierarchy will start to emerge with a higher likelihood of manipulators, sociopaths or other political climbers on top. I'd rather not be part of one of those.

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

#95

Post by PascLeRasc » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #78

matthewowen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable comment. But it has basically no relationship to reality: Many track cycling events Road cycling Every track event Marathon Marathon swimming Triathlon Sailing This is a non-exhaustive list off the top of my head. They all involve tactical interaction with a group of opponents.

I'm totally in the dark here. How are you interacting (legally) with other competitors during a marathon?

Run an 800m by yourself and then with your friend who's really into running. You'll do better the second time since you'll push yourself to be as good as he/she.

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

#96

Post by SXX » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

Pretty sure Valve outsure all customer support.

> It has something like 330 employees servicing 100 million customers on the go-to PC gaming platform

Actually there is a lot less people who actually have any connection to userbase at all. Most probably never even publicly known.

Few years ago one producer who visited Valve commented that in office there was one of areas where he was told something like "and here is our Steam department". And back then that was like 20-25 people at most include both partner relations and marketing.

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

#97

Post by draw_down » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #18

This is quite old, and paints an overly rosy picture. After this was published a lot of the SteamBox project people got canned and were less impressed with the reality of Valve: http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/

This sort of outcome is what I find so frustrating about how some in tech just refuse to believe that humans act a certain way in groups and organizations. Like, oh, management structures have failure modes, so let's just not have one. But that's not enough. You just end up with a de facto structure that no one can talk about because it's not written down anywhere, is not beholden to any formal rules, and most likely operates in private, in groups that you're not invited to.

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

#98

Post by Jach » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

ahel wrote: post #72

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…

Slightly off-topic but: why is 9-17? Here I've always seen people working 9-18 with one hour off for lunch. Is this an Italian peculiarity?

It goes back to jobs that give a paid lunch hour, I had that deal when I worked a service job 10 years ago. For salaried employees the lunch hour is also 'paid' and I think especially in tech where so many of us eat at desks while thinking, we're pretty justified in keeping 9-5 or sometimes even less when we know 10+ hour days are looming as teams finish big features and it's integration time.

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

#99

Post by flatpointer23 » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

Corence wrote: post #88

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…

Yes, when I began studying CS I got hit with this pressure really hard. It definitely gave me the feeling that I didn't belong in the field. It is like a cousin to Impostor Syndrome. Instead of feeling like I'm incompetent (though that still happens sometimes), I feel like I shouldn't be in the field since I don't care enough about it to work on it more than 40-45 hours a week. Three years into my job, I'm mostly ove…

Eh, I'm the same as you. We belong in the field. :D

Besides, what are your coworkers doing, playing computer games on Wine? The paltry selection of osx Steam games? Do they have (shudder) _consoles_?

There's definitely people in the field who don't put in unpaid overtime all the time, who don't go home and write Markov Chains in Haskell to make William Burroughs-esque poetry. There's a lot to be said for having some balance, where your entire life isn't devoted to one topic or to your career.

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

#100

Post by oblio » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #95

oblio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally in the dark here. How are you interacting (legally) with other competitors during a marathon?

Run an 800m by yourself and then with your friend who's really into running. You'll do better the second time since you'll push yourself to be as good as he/she.

I'm still kind of in the dark. Are you saying that during a marathon there will be some "sacrificial" runners (I think they're called "rabbits")? That's like playing in a team, they're not really opponents.

You can't interact with the real opponents, as far as I know.