Comments on: Valve employee manual describes the greatest workplace I've ever heard of

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:10:00 +0000

Hmm, does anyone still earn money proofreading?

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:09:00 +0000

Sweet!

By: Open Game Labs

Open Game Labs — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:05:00 +0000

Book publishing seems to have a lot of them: AK Press, PM Press, South End Press come to mind.

By: Al Billings

Al Billings — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:44:00 +0000

You say this like this bad. Not everyone wants to build a giant corporation.

By: John Maple

John Maple — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Koreans traditionally place great importance on upon authority by seniority (top down style of management) and this sort of way of working would be down right subversive in many organizations.
If you really want more insight to my comment, try reading Michael Breen’s book “The Koreans”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Koreans-Where-Their-Future/dp/0312326092

By: Dael Morris

Dael Morris — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:52:00 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:48:00 +0000

Now if they’re talking about a worker-owned cooperative situation, and if the founders of the company really had equal decision-making power, equivalent pay and do the equivalent work of any of the rest, if the decisions of how much to pay each other is agreed on by the workers, then I guess there’d be no “surplus value.” There would just be the fair value distributed back to all the workers. But I suspect they would have played up those details a little more if that’s how it worked.

And it would make no sense to say something like “Valve does not win if you’re paid less than the value you create,” unless Valve is one group of people (owners, investors?) and “you” (new workers? all Valve employees?) is another circle in the Venn diagram that may or may not overlap with the first.

By: Dan Hibiki

Dan Hibiki — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:22:00 +0000

Were you intending to reply to someone else? Because that made no sense at all.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:16:00 +0000

We have much more job security here in the UK than in the US, so I happily send emails to my bosses when they are acting like inhuman dickheads and point out their procedural failures. It helps a bit even if it does fuck all to change organisational culture. Everybody should have that right. They are all wankers who have only got where they are because of their refusal to stand up for themselves to their own bosses.

By: bibulb

bibulb — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:30:00 +0000

Brought peace?

By: eerd

eerd — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:05:00 +0000

Right, where’s the surplus value? It just seems rather disingenuous.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:45:00 +0000

You’ve been answered already but there’s something else, too: Valve makes some of the absolute best – and most popular – games there are these days, and have been since the original Half-Life. And the games make lots of money for the company.

And they do it without the impossible deadlines, long hours, and crap working conditions that every other game studio has.

You’d think the other companies would take the hint!

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:51:00 +0000

Yes. But it is not quite a question of first do no harm then do what thou wilt. You cannot disturb another’s sense of self without harming your own sense of self and you and your magic will get all fucked up as Crowley and his followers clearly demonstrate. (And I have known quite a few.) Hey it’s karma, man. I don’t see what else love means theologically.

By: dragsterhund

dragsterhund — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Half Life 2: Episode Three, anyone?

By: John_Wilmot

John_Wilmot — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:30:00 +0000

I like the philosophy of the place, and I am even considering borrowing the the employee manual to explain self-motivated research and collaboration in my composition class. The rhetoric of risk-taking and creativity is especially useful, and it hits exactly the notes I try to emphasize in my syllabus. However, upon reading the section about the importance of hiring, I realized a potential flaw of the system. By placing such emphasis upon hiring only people who seem likely to shine in those circumstances, hiring practices that rely upon homogeneity are to be expected. People hire people like themselves. I wondered how difficult it is for women to find jobs there. Sure enough, in a company with about 117 employees (give or take one–I have had a bit of celebratory cava) there were only 7 women (same caveat). I’m not sure how that stacks up against other tech companies, but it seems abysmally low from my perspective.

By: HahTse

HahTse — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:34:00 +0000

Judging from http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/ , I wouldn’t say that it is an UNKNOWN project exactly…

And I would give my Appendix to be on it (I still need my digits, so…)

By: chenille

chenille — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:45:00 +0000

Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and the computer said “goodbye”, and we were like “no way!”, and then it was all “we pretended we were going to murder you”? That was great.

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Sorry, I can’t fit even volume one of Das Kapital into a single comment, no matter how hard I try. ;)

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:49:00 +0000

“you’re probably going to be OK unless you run into a personality conflict or you act like a tool.”

FYT – you’re probably going to be OK unless you run into a tool.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:48:00 +0000

wishes are not returns.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:47:00 +0000

You forgot the other tenet of capitalism (which Valve seemingly avoids): Cancerous growth to mollify short term investors.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:45:00 +0000

I assume you define work as ‘people set to chasing their own tails for your amusement’ by you.

By: novium

novium — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:39:00 +0000

Actually, I’m thinking, God, I hate my stupid sucky job and its soul-crushing management and about how much more I could get done in an environment like that…and then I’m also sad about my life choices, because I have none of the required knowledge necessary to get a job in a place like that.

And then I thought, “hey, Portal is that game that all the cake jokes came from, isn’t it?”

By: Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:37:00 +0000

As it turns out, 150 is the ideal number of employees in a company, according to Oxford professor Robin Dunbar. That is to say, any more than this creates problems. NPR did an interesting story on this last year: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends

By: Alex Schneider

Alex Schneider — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:44:00 +0000

What our government needs is more common-sense ideas like this “wisdom of the herd” business right here, dontcha know. These private job creators, they sure know what they’re doing.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:38:00 +0000

There is not nearly enough mention of Half Life 3 in these comments.

I betcha this is what 3D Realms was probably like for all those years that DNF was in “development” (or whatever it is you want to call it). The difference with Valve is that they have this giant button on the wall that says “PRESS HERE TO MAKE MONEY” that starts a Steam sale whenever someone pushes it. (Everybody gets a turn. They left that part out of the manual.)

By: Tynam

Tynam — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Nope. If News Corp did it, they wouldn’t be behaving like such **!* all the time, because this business model only works with self-motivated cooperators who care about the company’s reputation and customers.

By: Tynam

Tynam — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:12:00 +0000

Basically, Valve do it by not having project deadlines. Ever. They ship when it’s ready, and sometimes they screw up publicly and cancel a project – the price of flat org. So they lose some commercial advantages. But it pays off in efficient, well-motivated employees. (Remember: a well-rested team working 7.5 hour days produces work faster than a team that’s been in death crunch overdrive for two months. And much better work, of course)

That it turn only works because they’re privately owned, of course.

(That’s one big reason they run Steam; they don’t fit as well into the general pick-your-ship-date-and-work-to-it culture as they’d like. But with Steam they really don’t need to.)

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:04:00 +0000

The Sebben and Sebben employee orientation film, with the voice of Stephen Colbert, as Phil Ken Sebben, the eccentric playboy billionaire.

“Birdman, get in here!”

http://youtu.be/f37I7HNfK0k

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:41:00 +0000

The compensation/evaluation system reminds me of W. L. Gore, also known locally as “the Snake Pit”… I’m suspicious of any scheme where you can prosper through ability, blackmail, or sexual manipulation.