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At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

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Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#161

Post by stickfigure »

ensan wrote: post #142
lol_what wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

keep in mind that he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there (many, many have left for various reasons since). I also can't help but not overlook that he's an UFO nut. can't trust info from someone who can warp reality in a way to see only what fits his own preconceived notions even if they fly in the face of basic facts.

“I also can't help but not overlook that he's an UFO nut.” Well, that’s your personal opinion but I’m not sure how his thoughts on UFOs discredits his view of the work culture at Valve. One can have metaphysical and spiritual beliefs and be an extraordinary scientist as well for example. Many have left Valve but usually people in the relatively constrained game dev industry tend to be conservative in voicing their op…

> One can have metaphysical and spiritual beliefs and be an extraordinary scientist as well

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but that's how you bet.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#162

Post by nindalf »

filoleg wrote: post #118
nindalf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Valve really going to file a lawsuit against him and argue in court whether this actually happened or not? They're not. Do they even have grounds to file a lawsuit? Likely not, American courts aren't that sympathetic to libel claims. But let's assume for a minute that what you're saying has some merit. Maybe Valve does have grounds to sue. And maybe they're interested in suing. In that case, is this lousy attempt…

> Is Valve really going to file a lawsuit against him and argue in court whether this actually happened or not? They most likely won't, you are correct. But it just simply doesn't seem to be worth the trouble on the off-chance that they will decide to do it. The whole thing is just a situation where you risk a lot (even if the chance of that risk materializing is very small), but you aren't really gaining anything by…

> if you can tell the entire story just as fine without naming them and reducing the risk to zero?

That’s my point. He’s not reducing shit. We all know exactly who he’s talking about. All he’s done is curiosity baited us into reading this.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#163

Post by cpeterso »

solveit wrote: post #97
drexlspivey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an internal service, you don’t treat your co-workers as hostile actors.

At a large enough company you kind of have to... as this situation shows.

I read a tongue-in-cheek blog post, maybe ten years ago, about “blame-oriented software development”: how to deflect blame from your code. The framing was amusing but the advice was good: extensive validation of input parameters and data, lots out logging, etc. Unfortunately, the blog post seems to have disappeared.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#164

Post by rasz »

lol_what wrote: post #104
razh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, he posted a similar set of tweets back in 2018: https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...

keep in mind that he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there (many, many have left for various reasons since). I also can't help but not overlook that he's an UFO nut. can't trust info from someone who can warp reality in a way to see only what fits his own preconceived notions even if they fly in the face of basic facts.

Nah, many people spoke out about ruthless insider politic cliques and how they were at a mercy of invisible forces with "totally democratic" decisions about their work being made for them.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#165

Post by eternityforest »

That's amazing. Paying people more than I've made lifetime total... to actively sabotage things....

When I was just starting out, I probably wouldn't have thought of tech as a money-focused business, or that there would be any real competition.

I just kind of thought once you were successful, as long as you still had a job, you were effectively way too rich to bother actively seeking higher pay, and that nobody would ever want to do something like this kind of sabotage.

I also thought that people would be generally excited about the future of tech and everyone on all levels would want to do what they can to keep innovation going....

But as it turns out, programming is in fact just a job, most people seem to be largely in it for the money, they don't think Tiles and AirTags are as cool as I do, and game dev especially seems to be very businessy and DLC driven and even NFTful and not exactly managed by artists.

What happened to the dot com era vision of what tech should be?

I would have thought management at the billion dollar places really would run things well, but it seems like there's plenty of dysfunction even at the top companies.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#166

Post by alar44 »

eternityforest wrote: post #165

That's amazing. Paying people more than I've made lifetime total... to actively sabotage things.... When I was just starting out, I probably wouldn't have thought of tech as a money-focused business, or that there would be any real competition. I just kind of thought once you were successful, as long as you still had a job, you were effectively way too rich to bother actively seeking higher pay, and that nobody would…

The 80s and on into the .com boom was all about money. For the first time, the world saw that programmers and software could generate insane amounts of money.

Nothing has changed, you were just young and naive.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#167

Post by doktorhladnjak »

toast0 wrote: post #92
ido wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe what you are describing is called stack ranking and has fallen out of favor with tech companies. Microsoft at least used to do that (I think they don’t anymore).

It was kind of a mix of stack ranking, fire X% on a periodic schedule, and up or out, you've got X years to get promoted or you'll be fired. Microsoft says they stopped stack ranking, but it's not clear if they did. Facebook says they don't force a ratings curve, but they did while I was there. Just because something has fallen out of favor and companies acknowledge that it's fallen out favor doesn't mean they don't…

I worked at Microsoft when stack ranking was “eliminated”. Groups still stack ranked (at least mine did) but they had more local control over the process and distribution rather than having to follow one company wide system. Old habits die hard.

Maybe it’s different now, but I doubt it. Any place that pays for performance has to differentiate rewards in some way.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#168

Post by doktorhladnjak »

daenz wrote: post #33

Many people are highlighting the zero-sum nature of bonuses. I wonder how much of this problem goes away if bonuses are no longer zero-sum. In theory, it shouldn't even cost the business more money, because everyone who meets the bonus requirements should get a bonus, in either system.

At the end of the day, there’s a bonus budget which makes bonuses more or less zero sum.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#169

Post by hedora »

uncomputation wrote: post #36

> Programmers will purposely subtly sabotage key utility functions, methods, or systems to prevent their bonus competitors This seems like a potentially self-destructive way to accomplish this. Not sure what company he is referring to, but at all I have worked at, this would be filed as a bug report and a quick git blame tells you all you need to know. Over time, if your name keeps coming up in that commit log, you'l…

By the time that happens, Bob has been promoted out of the team, or transferred somewhere where people don't read his code.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#170

Post by 0xy »

lawl wrote: post #144
mattalex wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keep in mind that he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there (many, many have left for various reasons since). That's not true. There's been lots of criticism coming at Valve's management style over the years: There are many people who _hate_ it, but also many people who love it. It really depends on the type of person you are. If you really really dislik…

> There's been lots of criticism coming at Valve's management style over the years: There are many people who _hate_ it, but also many people who love it. Looking at it as a consumer, Valve didn't get anything released for many years, which imo would point at there in fact being a problem. Not necessarily what this guy is claming, but there did seem to be issues. They have shipped HL:A and Steam Deck now, so maybe th…

The measure of success for a corporation isn't number of products released, it's revenue/profit. Valve has higher revenue per employee than any other gaming company.

They have first mover advantage on a platform that's true, but even when competitors significantly undercut them they can't take any notable percentage of Steam market share. Epic is literally giving away free content every month and can't compete.

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