Valve employee handbook released
The Valve Employee Handbook offers a rare insight into daily operations at the company.
Subtitled "A fearless adventure in knowing what to do when no one's there telling you what to do," the handbook - first published this year - is provided to all new Valve employees as a means of indoctrinating them in the attitudes and approaches of one of gaming's biggest names.
'So you've gone through the interview process, you've signed the contracts, and you're finally here at Valve,' the handbook - illustrated in the manner of a classic children's book - begins. 'Congratulations, and welcome. Valve has an incredibly unique way of doing things that will make this the greatest professional experience of your life, but it can take some getting used to.'
The book starts by offering up some facts which are public knowledge, but perhaps not as well known as they could be: the fact that Valve is entirely self-funded, for example, and that it owns all its own intellectual property following an agreement with Half-Life's original publisher.
The book also claims that Valve operates an entirely flat hierarchical structure, with no official chain of management. 'We do have a founder/president,' the handbook explains, 'but even he isn't your manager. The company is yours to steer - towards opportunities, and away from risks. You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products.'
Other sections of the book give further hints about the flexibility of working at Valve: desks are given wheels, both as a symbolic reminder of the freedom an employee has and also as a means of actually moving the thing - something which happens incredibly often, and at very short notice as employees seek to position themselves wherever they can offer the most value.
'We've heard that other companies have people allocate a percentage of their time to self-directed projects,' the handbook continues in clear reference to Google's famous '20 per cent time.' 'At Valve, that percentage is 100.'
For a video games company, in an industry where 'crunch' - the period weeks or months before shipping where developers are asked to work insane hours to fix last-minute bugs in the code - is distressingly common, Valve's approach to overtime is refreshing. 'While people occasionally choose to push themselves to work some extra hours at times when something big is going out the door, for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communications. If this happens at Valve, it's a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected.'
Other revelations indicate that getting a job at Valve is something to which every coder, artist and gamer should aspire. 'Sometimes things around the office can seem a little too good to be true. If you find yourself walking down the hall one morning with a bowl of fresh fruit and Stump- town-roasted espresso, dropping off your laundry to be washed, and heading into one of the massage rooms, don’t freak out. All these things are here for you to actually use. And don’t worry that somebody’s going to judge you for taking advantage of it—relax! And if you stop on the way back from your massage to play darts or work out in the Valve gym or whatever, it’s not a sign that this place is going to come crumbling down like some 1999-era dot-com start- up. If we ever institute caviar-catered lunches, though, then maybe something’s wrong. Definitely panic if there’s caviar.'
The full handbook can be downloaded in PDF format, if you're curious.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyWork for Valve. Even if it is partically exaggerated it still sounds like my kind of place to be.
[edit] Obviously not ^^
The company is so small and their employees are so likely to be effortlessly brilliant in everything they do they don't need things like a hierarchy, chain or command or line-management.
For every other developer, and probably every other company in the world, this simply wouldn't work. All power to them for doing it differently, but it's a management style that would very much only work for them.
I'm with Parge... this explains a lot...
:)
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Day 1 - Induction then straight to G.O.A.T.
That said, sounds like an epic place to work and I assume they only hire people who know what they are doing :) Love their outlook on overtime though!
Yes. Gabe (or someone else high up at Valve) addressed this sometime last year, saying that the folks at Valve were just having more fun messing around with Portal 2, TF2 hats, CS:GO and all that to give two goat turds about HL3.
The optimist in me thinks that might be to flesh out some sort of meaningful integration between the Portal and HL worlds, now that the Borealis and Aperture Labs are a plot point in the HL universe.
But I could be wrong and they're just having fun at us fanboys' expense.
That said, the things they talk about aren't exactly unheard of, my friend's brother did some work experience at google HQ in Zurich and experienced pretty similar stuff to what they describe.
When the place is organised so that people work on what they want to, it's no surprise that something gets left behind. In this case, HL3?
Oh noes! Employees encouraged/ expected to take responsibility for their actions!
In a previous job, if I wanted to get out of trouble, I just admitted and described what i'd done wrong. Management couldn't handle that.
At least there's no caviar
That's why it's better not to have shareholders ;)
If this was your company, would you want to go public?
Work that is not really work, fun, money, giving fun and money to others (employees). Why sell out? i dont get the big desire to sell out, and ride the corporate wave of greed.
I want HL3 as much as the next man. I do. But i can wait. Hell i would be ok if it never came out. Why? Well they gave us HL / HL2 / TF2 / Portal / Portal 2 / CS 1.6 / CS:S [these are just the games i have from them that i like and rate as 5*] HL3 has sooooo much hype that it might end up being anti climactic. They never made a third series of Fawlty Towers despite the demand. I just want valve to keep doing what they are doing hopefully it will be HL3 if its something else, i'm ok with that.
What I especially like is they say the structure is like that, because why would they hire these people to do jobs if they didnt let them do their jobs! Hire a programmer as they are awesome and raise them to management and they dont get to code, which is why you hired them - let everybody co manage and do what they do best, and you have an entire team doing what they do best :)
And to ALL OF YOU complaining about half-life 3 being "late"... ITS DONE WHEN ITS DONE. You would complain if they rushed it and it sucked, so let them get it right in their own time :) Three companies I know of have this philosophy: Blizzard, Valve and Popcap - notice anything about their games? All very good (though I havent played all popcap games! :)).