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The Valve Employee Handbook

Woo-Fu

Woo-Fu

Banned
I would totally fail in a company like this. At work I'm like a vine, I need structure or I don't get anywhere.
 
Q

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
I would thrive in this enviroment like crazy. Shame I have no qualifications and the odds of me getting hired are 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Maybe I should do something about one of those unused game ideas I have saved up. *walks away whistling*
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Zaph said:
Apparently GAF likes to think making 1 game every 2 years (which sells ~3-4 million copies) means you can afford to give 250 employees an extra week-long fully comp'd holiday a year, have a free-form development environment free of pesky 'crunch' time and pay everyone much higher than average salaries.

Someone should really go and tell all the other studios they're doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

Their games all have sold well over 4 million.
 
R

Rebel Leader

THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
"Parking Garage Elevators—Autonomous hostage-taking devices with a will
of their own. Beware."

Half-Life 3 guy in elevator....... hmmmmm
 
1

1-D_FTW

Member
Zaph said:
Apparently GAF likes to think making 1 game every 2 years (which sells ~3-4 million copies) means you can afford to give 250 employees an extra week-long fully comp'd holiday a year, have a free-form development environment free of pesky 'crunch' time and pay everyone much higher than average salaries.

Someone should really go and tell all the other studios they're doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

You learn something new every day. Thank you for teaching me. Valve has gone on 10 of those corporate vacations. I had no idea Steam was around subsidizing them for so long.

Mythology aside, they're averaging more than one game every two years since HL 2.

And guess what? The industry is pretty profitable when you're not supporting a bunch of dead weight. Publishers aren't profitable because they tend to subsidize 10 bombs for every hit. Things suddenly are a lot sunnier when it's nothing but hits.
 
F

Ferrio

Banned
Probably wouldn't of had Dota2 if not for this. Basically one of the employees liked dota and was like "Hey we should contact icefrog".
 
J

Jintor

Member
JaseC said:
But, if you were to be hired, you could get the ball rolling on a fighting game. :p
Click to expand...

You can create that game industry fighting game I've been pumped about for years. Iwata, Kaz and Will Wright v Newell, Suda51 and Molyneux. Let's do it.
 
R

remnant

Banned
Sethos said:
Are you questioning the fact that they have an employee handbook like most established companies have in some form or another, or the fact they made and effort to make it fun to read.
Click to expand...

More marveling that people are so stuck on valve's dick they squeal like groupies at a funny handbook.

It's not that drastically different from a lot of upper class companies, especially in the more tech/VFX oriented industries.
 
F

Feep

Banned
remnant said:
More marveling that people are so stuck on valve's dick they squeal like groupies at a funny handbook.

It's not that drastically different from a lot of upper class companies, especially in the more tech/VFX oriented industries.
Click to expand...
No.
 
N

Nome

Member
The whole desk-on-wheels thing is kind of silly. We have the same thing at the dev I work at... except we just ask IT/facilities to move our stuff for us. No hassle :p
 
B

BabeSlayer

Member
Nome said:
The whole desk-on-wheels thing is kind of silly. We have the same thing at the dev I work at... except we just ask IT/facilities to move our stuff for us. No hassle :p
Click to expand...

Does anyone else find it just a little ridiculous that a group of people working on developing i'm assuming software would need an IT group to set up there stuff for em? Just saying.. :D
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
BabeSlayer said:
Does anyone else find it just a little ridiculous that a group of people working on developing i'm assuming software would need an IT group to set up there stuff for em? Just saying.. :D
Click to expand...

Well, that and it seems the whole idea with Valve's system is to make people take the initiative.

Saying it's your responsibility to move your workstation as needed appears to reinforce that...
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
I don't think anyone here is trying to say that VALVE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN OR EVER WILL DO THIS. You might be projecting, a little.
 
D

DTKT

Member
remnant said:
Pixar? Bluesky? Google? Rearden Labs? I'm sorry but this isn't that exclusive.
Click to expand...

But this is Valve. It's part of "our" industry. It might just feel a little bit closer to us than something like Pixar or Google.

And really, they are the only ones to have such a model in the industry. That's worth something. So, stop complaining about something that matters very little and enjoy a good reading.
 
J

Jintor

Member
Great justification for shitting on everybody's fun and describing everybody here as 'groupies on Valve's dick.' We can't be interested because it's not unique?
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
HP_Wuvcraft said:
Nobody's acting like anyone's saying that, either.
Click to expand...

"It's not that drastically different from a lot of upper class companies, especially in the more tech/VFX oriented industries."

?
 
R

remnant

Banned
Rez said:
I don't think anyone here is trying to say that VALVE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN OR EVER WILL DO THIS. You might be projecting, a little.
Click to expand...

When people make posts equating working at Valve to being accepted into Harvard, yeah I think that attitude is being projected.

It's also important to note that Valve isn't that special if you are going to try and understand how and why Valve is the way they are. For example many people in this thread seem to have suggested that Valve being how they are would be impossible for a company that isn't private or has corporate ties and relations and I just named a large public corporation and two studios under a corporate umbrella that have similar cultures.

There is a more nuanced conversation out there about how how these companies start and grow, and how they may fail as other companies have tried similar approaches(such as stack ranking) with different results.
Great justification for shitting on everybody's fun and describing everybody here as 'groupies on Valve's dick.' We can't be interested because it's not unique?
Click to expand...
But being critical of valve or anything they do isn't going to happen here. Instead we cry over a handbook.
 
N

Nome

Member
BabeSlayer said:
Does anyone else find it just a little ridiculous that a group of people working on developing i'm assuming software would need an IT group to set up there stuff for em? Just saying.. :D
Click to expand...
The larger the company, the more it necessitates IT. I work for a fairly large dev (500+ people), and only 100-200 of them are actually working on the game. The rest are community, marketing, business, accounting, etc. Of the ones that work on the game, including me, many don't have backgrounds in anything remotely related to software.

Kaijima said:
Well, that and it seems the whole idea with Valve's system is to make people take the initiative.

Saying it's your responsibility to move your workstation as needed appears to reinforce that...
Click to expand...
I think that's a stretch, or at least, you can't make that assumption. Valve is a small company, and it's more likely that they just don't see the need to hire dedicated facilities personnel. I asked my boss about why we need IT to move our shit around, and he said to me, "so you can spend your time doing something actually productive in the meanwhile" :)
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
touch on the handbook where the handbook touched you
 
H

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
The fact that everyone is always moving around within the company
makes people hard to find. That’s why we have http://user—check it
out. We know where you are based on where your machine is plugged
in, so use this site to see a map of where everyone is right now.
Click to expand...
God fucking damnit that's cool.
 
O

Orayn

Member
GeekyDad said:
This is what it's come to? Really?

I'm fucking a nerd. I love to geek out on gaming shit, but an employee handbook? Coming from me it's ironic, but some folks need to get a life...
Click to expand...

Late to the dogpile, but why? Valve is a cool, semi-mysterious company that a lot of GAFers admire. How is reading their (rather impressive) employee handbook somehow crossing the line into "GET A LIFE LOSERS!" territory?
 
J

Jintor

Member
remnant said:
But being critical of valve or anything they do isn't going to happen here. Instead we cry over a handbook.
Click to expand...

It's a better use of our time than accusing everybody of being knob-riding groupies. If you want to start a proper conversation, maybe lose the dismissive attitude.
 
S

SlipperySlope

Banned
Probably already posted, but HAHAHAH

Where Will You Take Us?

Valve will be a different company a few years from now
because you are going to change it for the better. We can’t
wait to see where you take us. The products, features, and
experiences that you decide to create for customers are
the things that will define us.

Whether it’s a new game, a feature in Steam, a way to
save customers money, a painting that teaches us what’s
beautiful, something that protects us from legal threats,
a new typeface, an idea for how to be healthier while we
work, a new hat-making tool for TF2, a spectacular animation,
a new kind of test that lets us be smarter, a game
controller that can tell whether you’re scared or a toy that
makes four-year-olds laugh, or (more likely) something
nobody’s thought of yet—we can’t wait to see what kind
of future you choose to build at Valve.
Click to expand...
 
F

Fredescu

Member
remnant said:
Pixar? Bluesky? Google? Rearden Labs? I'm sorry but this isn't that exclusive.
Click to expand...
Eh, Pixar and Google are pretty different from each other and both different from Valve. No idea about the other two, but if you're going take a "this isn't that special" dump on a thread, you're going to have to do better than that.
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
remnant, showing all us dick riding groupies the light with weak arguments and smug attitudes.
 
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