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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?

#81

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

lifeformed wrote: post #36
loboman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Reminds me of living with roommates. It takes literally 10 seconds to wash (not just rinse, but entirely wash) a bowl and a spoon. Nothing has to stay in the sink - just wash things right when you're done using them.

I generally wash my dishes in large batches because it takes the water about 4 minutes to get hot enough to use for real dish washing

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

#82

Post by PhilRae »

option_greek wrote: post #80
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...

Long ago, my previous company ditched paper cups in favor of ceramic cups for coffee. You should have seen the disruption in everyone's workflow. Since you have to actually wash the cup after you drink from it, there were long queues before the kitchen sinks. People started reducing the number of cups of coffee they drink :) and instead started dozing off (not joking) People started congregating around the pantry or…

Why not just use a cup more than once during the day without washing? I go through at least 7 cups of coffee a day in a single mug; only washing that's done is just before the first of the day.

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

#83

Post by lemming »

Another notable company that does this is Gore & Associates (of GoreTex fame):

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates)

Unlike the traditional management structure that Bill Gore had experienced at DuPont, he proposed a flat, lattice-like organizational structure where everyone shares the same title of “associate.” There are neither chains of command nor predetermined channels of communication. Leaders replace the idea of “bosses.” Associates choose to follow leaders rather than have bosses assigned to them. Associate contribution reviews are based on a peer-level rating system.

I always assumed this sort of org could only function with relatively small companies (e.g. Github, maybe even Valve) but Gore has 9000 employees - pretty impressive.

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

#84

Post by michael_nielsen »

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...

After the first night of the 2008 SciFoo conference at Google, @gnat Torkington's twitter stream contained a gem: "At SciFoo opening session. 300 people standing around networking. Meanwhile, Larry Page is quietly unpacking chairs at the back of the room." (from memory, not exact)

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

#85

Post by Jach »

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...

For those who haven't heard, hammock-driven development is great: http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586 (The short infographic version: http://incanter.org/images/misc/hammock-driven-dev.png ) The mindless job of dishwashing is just another way to think about a problem away from a computer, plus it's useful.

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

#86

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jrockway wrote: post #62
wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if developer time is that valuable, I think Mel Brooks has an innovation for your office that you should look into: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGfXiIXTpE0 More seriously, I think that allegedly financial calculation often ends up covering up for laziness, arrogance, and hierarchies of social class. Make sure the code works? That's QA's job. Make sure it runs well? Oh, that's ops; file a ticket. Wash my own d…

If you have a unique skill, it makes sense to pay you to mostly utilize that skill. If you're great at programming and terrible at system administration, why should you have to administer your servers, especially when there are people that are great at it? Testing is a little different: most professional software engineers consider testing an intrinsic part of software engineering, and so would never say, "that's QA'…

I spend my day building a castle in my head. Sometimes I may go outside and pace around the parking lot, sorting through the rooms in that castle.

I drink 10-15 cups of whatever a day. The cups get tossed in the trash when empty, or left ..somewhere.. when I get an idea.

But stop me every time my cup is empty, make me break my train of thought and go fool with soap and water and a breakable cup? Likely the castle comes crashing down, and 40 minutes to rebuild it.

Might work for some, but definitely not for me. Wash your own cup; but leave me alone.

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

#87

Post by JoeAltmaier »

lemming wrote: post #83

Another notable company that does this is Gore & Associates (of GoreTex fame): (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates ) Unlike the traditional management structure that Bill Gore had experienced at DuPont, he proposed a flat, lattice-like organizational structure where everyone shares the same title of “associate.” There are neither chains of command nor predetermined channels of communication.…

Gore divides the company into business units, each in their own building with their own parking lot and staff. In fact, they know when to divide a growing unit - when people start parking on the grass (the parking lot gets full).

So no not 9000 people; 90 units of 100 people ( or something like that)

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

#88

Post by bdunbar »

appleaintbad wrote: post #34
bdunbar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also the coffee pot at 10:00. If you can reliably find fresh coffee, morale is good. Low or now coffee, things are amiss.

If it isn't a K-cup, it probably isn't fresh enough. Also, the place I just left had awful coffee. It was so bad that once when a coworker cleaned the grime that built up in the coffee pot for the past few years of use, it made the coffee taste worse. When grime is the only thing making the coffee better, you need to get better coffee.

Some of the best coffee I've had was Navy coffee.

The secret (iirc) was a wee bit of salt in the grounds, and regularly cleaning out the works with vinegar.

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

#89

Post by bdunbar »

gauravk92 wrote: post #2

1. How do you handle the logical conclusion of letting your workers do whatever they want, they don't do anything? This may not apply to all employees, but it surely applies to at least one, and I wanted to know specifically how you might handle that situation. 2. What sort of system do you have to address problems with the unconditional hierarchy? For example, if an employee disagrees with Gabe, who wins and how is…

Related

1. How do you handle jobs that suck, but must be done.

Like backups ... nobody really likes the job of 'backup guy'.

It's boring. Tedious. A backwater of a role with no meaningful career progression. Also - the software typically sucks, and is expensive. Also - the hardware typically sucks, and is super-expensive.

But someone must pay attention to backups because stuff happens and you might actually need to recover everything from tape to get the company online.

How does Valve get the tedious, boring, nit-picky, utterly necessary stuff done?

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

#90

Post by threepipeproblm »

I think it's sad that so many commenters genuinely can't seem to fathom anything positive happening without a hierarchical / top-down / command-and-control approach. Especially when a few billion years of evolution has basically never selected that approach (something like a bee colony may seem similar, but is radically different... it's not like there is a manager bee for every 5-7 worker bees). Please don't vote me into oblivion for saying this.
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