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Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

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Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#41

Post by lifeformed »

wpietri wrote: post #9
strager wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't do anything I don't know about you, but not doing anything is boring to me. Working is so often much more fun than doing nothing.

100% this. To herd cats, you open tuna cans. Real management isn't telling people what to do. It's helping people find the intersection between what they want to do and what customers need, and then supporting them. That strikes me as especially easy at Valve, where the whole point is to create something that other people enjoy. If you can't find fun somewhere in the vast space of "create something fun," you're dead…

Well, "creating something fun" is not an easy thing to do. When you get down to pure game design there can be wildly divergent viewpoints of what to do. Should we make this new game more interesting for hardcore players, or for casuals? Is increasing accessibility of the game worth the decrease in depth?

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#42

Post by wpietri »

How do you settle disputes?

In hierarchical organizations, people often look to authority figures to decide between competing alternatives. How does Valve avoid or deal with deadlock, forking, cliques, cabals, butthurt sulking, and other common group dysfunctions?

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#43

Post by Paul_Morgan »

sycr wrote: post #30
Paul_Morgan wrote: post #24

Best Buy has something similar called ROWE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE The business measures performance instead of hours. At Valve the performance appears to be measured as 'shipped'. I'd also guess that Gabe is practicing his own version of servant leadership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

How's that working out for Best Buy?

I couldn't say. But it's implemented at the company headquarters and they are experimenting with it in the stores. They haven't gone back on their commitment to it. It's also been implemented at The Gap:

http://www.gorowe.com/2009/09/14/gap-goes-rowe/

FYI, this is just my opinion and doesn't represent the views of my employer.

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#44

Post by wpietri »

kabdib wrote: post #39
RegEx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cue the Agile coaches switching over to teaching "Valve". "Refinery" meetings are held in a format called the "Engine room".

And they're all going to say, "We're just like Valve's flat organization, except here we do it a little differently because we have managers, and a CEO and a few VPs, and ..." (A cow-orker of mine went to Valve last year; he's incredibly, insufferably happy).

And after that, you'll see the inevitable HN posts about how the "Valve" adoption at their company didn't work, which proves the whole idea was bankrupt to begin with, and probably a conspiracy to increase book sales, consulting rates, and the amount of underpants collected by the gnomes.

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#45

Post by connor »

teach wrote: post #3

Is it known that Valve employees frequent HN? I'm not sure why this story is here.

This seemed like a curious enough question I had that followed from the original Valve Flat Org HN post. I imagined others might share my curiosity.

It's possible no Valve employee reads HN (unlikely), but at the very least someone might point us towards a Valve employee answer elsewhere.

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#46

Post by wpietri »

How many hours a day does the average Valve person spend in meetings? How are they organized?

I've looked into some co-ops, including San Francisco's venerable (and very profitable) Rainbow Grocery. One of the biggest complaints is the amount and/or difficulty of meetings, but they see them as necessary to settle issues with sufficient buy-in from all stakeholders. How does Valve minimize that pain?

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#47

Post by zachrose »

loboman wrote: post #19
wpietri wrote: post #11

Do the dishes in the office sink get washed? If so, by whom? And how clean is the kitchen area? This may seem like a joke, but the answer says a lot about an organization. For example, last time I was at the Wikimedia Foundation offices, this sign was above the sink: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:These_dishes_may_requ...

Does this assume that developers should wash the dishes? If so, why is that a good idea? I would assume that developer time is too expensive for that...

Barack Obama on his dog: "Sometimes I have to scoop up his poop, because I don't want to just leave it in the lawn!"

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-501370_162-7160351.html

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#48

Post by irollboozers »

This is actually great, I had the same idea last week coming across that handbook, so hopefully someone at Valve can shed some light.

I was mostly curious about project management. It seemed like everyone could be very fluid going from one project to another, or even proposing one on the spot and going on to execute it. There has to some sort of enforcement for this though. Are there expectations, do the self-selected leaders lay out milestones or goals, what happens when those aren't met?

Valve doesn't necessarily seem to have a reputation for having too many product delays vs. always shipping on time. They definitely seem to have constant flow of different products getting out the door though.

Hopefully someone answers, otherwise I might just hitchhike across the lake into Bellevue and see if I can meet with someone there. Very curious to learn what makes their system actually work well.

Re: Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

#50

Post by mtodd »

sycr wrote: post #30
Paul_Morgan wrote: post #24

Best Buy has something similar called ROWE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE The business measures performance instead of hours. At Valve the performance appears to be measured as 'shipped'. I'd also guess that Gabe is practicing his own version of servant leadership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

How's that working out for Best Buy?

A Rails consultancy (I used to work for) in Atlanta called Highgroove also implements ROWE, going so far as to incorporate it into the way they deliver to the customer. It was a great way to work and operate as a business.

http://highgroove.com/

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