At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by newobj » Mon, May 02, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

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.

Well I have several friends who have worked there and no one has had anything positive to say about the culture.

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

#192

Post by SEJeff » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:48 AM UTC

hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #55

SEJeff wrote: post #37

Big end of year bonuses are par for the course (in addition to a nice salary) in finance. I've worked as an engineer in the industry for close to 15 years.

Finance (I'm thinking prop trading) seems different from Valve. You eat what you kill - if you're sabotaging team members you're not making money. If you're at Valve, you can count on your monopoly still printing money while you carve out pieces of the pie for yourself. Any negative effects from your work will be felt years later when you're long gone.

I in fact work in prop trading. Our owner was once asked about more people joining the team as we grew making the bonus pool smaller. He (rightfully) said that the team member should focus on making the pie bigger than getting a bigger slice of a small pie. It’s worked out very well for us.

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

#193

Post by Handytinge » Tue, May 03, 2022, 3:47 AM UTC

naikrovek wrote: post #178

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.

> he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there false. wrong, wrong, wrong. he's the only one you know about, is all. he's not even the only one that has spoken publicly about it.

Can you provide substance to your claim that other Valve employees have talked about a sabotaging culture due to bonuses?

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

#194

Post by eternityforest » Tue, May 03, 2022, 7:17 AM UTC

alar44 wrote: post #166

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.

All the beginning programmers were.

I don't think it was just about money for the average lay programmer. Everything everywhere is always about money for the business guys, but a lot of people got into coding with no real thought to money besides just wanting a normal comfortable living.