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Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

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Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#101

Post by Balinares »

thih9 wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

> Google tried this, notoriously dense grating and then firing basically all the managers at an all-hands. That didn’t work out well at all... When did this happen? Sounds absurd. I’d love to read more if anyone has a postmortem or other sources.

It wasn't "Google", it was Larry, apparently on a whim of the moment. It wasn't managers in general, it was project managers. And as I understand it, the project managers were called right back in, so Google was actually never run without them.

That happened in 2001, and is arguably the reason Eric stepped up to take the reins from him.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#102

Post by romanows »

nerdjon wrote: post #73
philipov wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "people do this" and "people also do that contradictory thing" you're making the mistake assuming that the word refers to the same people.

I didn’t mean to imply they were the same people. But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers. One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox). One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost. Why do…

Software, especially if installed on my Windows PC, always has a risk of causing security problems, running spyware, agents that slow things down, taking up HD space, weird new DRM, screwing with the registry, etc.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#103

Post by lovethevoid »

ric2b wrote: post #18
jsheard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Ste…

Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.

Both of these can be true, and it’s far more likely to be self reinforcing. Because it’s such an unimpeachable monopoly, the competition that doesn’t put forth billions are doomed to fail.

People talk about feature parity, but that’s irrelevant when slashing Valves cut by 1% is enough to get the vast majority of publishers and developers to stay on board.

They are such an unimpeachable monopoly that Microsoft, makers of the OS that Steam predominantly relies on for consumer spend, also bows to them. After all they’re large enough to get a new cut from the normal distribution terms.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#104

Post by gaws »

larsiusprime wrote: post #20

The thing everyone misses about Valve in all the endless back and forth whenever this handbook is listed is that it is, at its core, a lifestyle company . It is optimizing for a certain lifestyle. It has pros and cons and tradeoffs and ways reality is different from imagined utopia, but in general it succeeds very well at this goal. It does not succeed at a number of other goals that people attribute to valve (or ima…

> It is optimizing for a certain lifestyle.

What kind of lifestyle?

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#105

Post by jcranmer »

j_maffe wrote: post #70
daemoens wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could get away with it because there was no competitor like Steam.

Yes, that's the effect a monopoly has on the market.

Not really. When Steam was the only digital distribution marketplace in existence, it didn't have to be better than any other digital distribution marketplace to convince users to switch to it, by virtue of being first. The followers who look at Steam's profits and want to capture that for themselves have to do so. It just happens that it seems every marketplace since has attempted to compete for developers (particularly in the vein of trying to achieve exclusive games) and generally ignored competition for users except as a byproduct of developer competition.

And the result is that users overwhelmingly prefer to use Steam, with alternatives largely relegated to at best grudging acceptance for those games that require alternative launchers. Since companies are reluctant to post numbers, it's hard to tell what the exact situation other than "Steam is well over 50% of the market", but the next largest is probably GoG, especially if you exclude self-publishing from statistics (if you include it, the popularity of Fortnite might push Epic Game Store into second place). And note that GoG is pretty much the only store that offers users a specific value proposition to use them over Steam: GoG is DRM-free (better publisher/distributor split is a value proposition for developers, not users).

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#106

Post by jcranmer »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #41
gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of som…

One of the best roles of a good manager is insulating their employees from the political bullshit that goes on above them. One example that happened to a coworker of mine is that something happened in an open source project they were the maintainer of that caused VP-level executives to blow up at him, so the manager told them to take they day off and let him deal with angry executives instead.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#107

Post by HappySweeney »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #41
gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of som…

In government, good managers ensure the myriad roadblocks that inevitably surface are properly dealt with before their direct reports even know it existed.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#108

Post by gigatexal »

alephnerd wrote: post #97
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controversial take, but it’s not that good anyway. I remember someone at Valve, maybe Gabe Newell himself saying something along the lines of, “We are still capable of making a Half-Life game.” I’m butchering the quote. Anyway, it’s just not true. If you compare the length and meaningfulness of Half-Life 2, and the following episodes, Half-Life: Alyx feels more like it belongs in the same category as Half-Life 2: Los…

Valve is transitioning into a mini-Apple, ie a consumer hardware company with a cash cow marketplace. HL: Alyx was more of a tech demo for Valve's work in VR R&D. I'd be curious what Valve ends up releasing in the next 5 years, given how heavily they've been hiring in the CV, Hardware, and Spatial Computing space for the past few years now. Once Valve "solves" VR Gaming, I wouldn't be surprised that a HL3 would be re…

if HL3 was a VR exclusive I'd buy a headset to play it ... I just want the loop closed, and the story finished or continued.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#109

Post by akamia »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #41
gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of som…

Some of the most important work that a good manager does goes unseen by their team. I've been a manager and now I'm an IC so I've seen both sides. There is a lot of shielding and pushing back that managers do to protect their teams. Unless the manager tells their team about everything they've been doing behind the scenes, the team has no idea.

You say that you've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did but you've probably had managers that were working preventing interference, saying no to last minute requirement changes, pushing back on deadline changes, etc.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#110

Post by kibibu »

jsheard wrote: post #13
gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Ste…

They had this structure before Steam
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