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Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

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

#71
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…

"if you don’t have any managers you have politics. and if you do have any managers, you also have politics"

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

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go back in history and apply that logic to any company and claim they weren't monopolies as a result. Standard oil and AT&T had plenty of competitors, none were able to grow beyond extremely small scale.

The key question is whether an antitrust target is engaging in uncompetitive practices. I haven't noticed any claims of Steam/Valve using uncompetitive practices (but I could have simply missed them.)

Whether something is a monopoly and whether they've abused it in such a way that they should be struck with an antitrust suit are two different things. I don't think many would argue that Steam abused its monopoly.

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

#73
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really understood this mentality, especially when on the console side people seem just fine with the idea of buying multiple consoles for exclusives. (not that I am agreeing with that either). There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists. Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox…

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 these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.

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

#74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only explains a couple of the stores but not all of them. Xbox and Epic don't fall in that category. I don't believe EA does either, but not 100% sure. To be clear here. I am referring to the being forced after buying a game. None of these, to my knowledge, you were forced to use after buying the game on Steam. Unlike Ubisoft.

XBox and Epic absolutely do fall in that category. People, myself included, detest using either of those stores, because of their poor implementations. They're slow and unwieldy. The Xbox store on PC is actually so bad. I bought Forza as a chill on the couch and relax kind of game and it is one of the most regrettable purchasing experiences I've ever had. The Epic store is just outright unpleasant software.

The Epic store will only show me prices in Rubles. Never tried to debug it -- who needs it, anyway? -- but always thought that was somewhere between bizarre and hilarious. (US computer, US IP address, no VPN, en-us locale.)

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

#75
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, many of the competitors do what is necessary just fine. There is a strong sentiment with many gamers of just not wanting to use an alternative and it is basically a non starter for many other stores. Many complain about the very idea of not all of their games being in the same place. This isn't necessarily anything monopolistic done on Valve's side. But it would be very hard for another store to make any…

I agree. I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam. Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.

At this point, sunken cost into a Steam library aside, I won't buy a game if it isn't on Steam and at least SteamDeck supported.

Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.

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

#76
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…

The best managers I’ve had provide support- good workspaces, training budgets, protection from layoffs, hiring good coworkers.

Basically making it so no admin work comes to me and everything goes smoothly.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Valve is still the same as described in this handbook, or if it ever truly was. The section on stack ranking is really fascinating ... seeing how that sausage was made would let you know exactly who is in the secret cabals the handbook says don't exist ;-)

If you want some more insight into what working at Valve is actually like, People Make Games released a great video last year [1] where they talked to a bunch of current and former employees. While there are people who can thrive at Valve, their structure doesn't set people up for success. Valve has a many pseudo-managers, people who have a lot of influence at the company, but aren't designated as such. Doing well at…

Is it that video where they spend 3/4 of the runtime talking about how Valve doesn't adhere to woke politics? That one was just a bait and switch

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

#78
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key question is whether an antitrust target is engaging in uncompetitive practices. I haven't noticed any claims of Steam/Valve using uncompetitive practices (but I could have simply missed them.)

Whether something is a monopoly and whether they've abused it in such a way that they should be struck with an antitrust suit are two different things. I don't think many would argue that Steam abused its monopoly.

Except Steam is neither.

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

#80
Humans have a natural tendency towards social hierarchies. If you don't provide structure people will instinctively create it; so attempting to entirely remove structure from an organization is idealistic and inevitably fails. This usually leads to hidden power structures and counter-productive popularity dynamics. A great classic read about this topic is essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

The simplest way to encode a structure is with a basic hierarchal structure where power gets delegated and directions flow down from a single individual at the top, and information gets filtered and flows up to enable decision making. This is one of the most simplest and common structures you see across society. It is a structure great at quick, efficient decision making, but has numerous flaws that make it suboptimal in many cases. Notably, the single-directional flows means it's particularly bad at self-regulating, and therefore it's susceptible to corruption without a significant outside influence.

However you can leverage systems and technology to engineer and enable novel and durable alternative structures and power dynamics. On a societal level, democracy is a hugely successful example of a system like this. Elections create a loop from the bottom to enable accountability for the person at the top, helping solve a number of failure states. You also have techniques like creating multiple structures that operate in tension, structures that operate entirely via democratic consensus, etc. Each structure has different strengths and weaknesses, and combining them well can be used to create high-functioning governments.

At the level of corporations however, you see minimal exploration of optimal structure. The modern corporation has seen some innovation, but this happened almost entirely at the ownership level, with boards and shareholder elections etc. The actual executive functionality of most companies is almost entirely your standard hierarchy. It beggars belief to think that this would be the optimal operational structure across all industries. The reality is it's the structure that maximizes shareholder control (and therefore shareholder value). Other structures might enable an organization to better serve the market, employees, etc ; but these are not the concerns of the people setting up and funding said corporations.

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