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[gofreak]

It's the stack ranking and devs backstabbing each other stuff that is the real story here, the rest is kind of more generally applicable stuff that can suck with all open plan offices.

 

[Turin Turambar]

I've always assumed part of what's taking so long with the newer games is the new engine they've been developing at the same time.

It's going to be eight years since HL2 Ep2 this year, lots of games also use a new engine and they don't take that much time.

 

[Bluth54]

The issue is that Valve's culture may be impeding any other game developments that aren't part of 'as a service' approach. The HL and Portal games were done before that approach proved viable and tenable with the western market. But now that they've been bitten by the bug it seems like everything has to fit that mold, and that the employees aren't going to try and sway most of them back to make a SP focused games when they have that very profitable and immediate business going on.

I would hate for Valve to stick only to those kind of games. In the past they were always waving the flag of Single-Player every time 'SP is dying' articles came about. But now i'm really not sure if the flag hasn't been folded. Valve didn't even bother with Portal 2 SP DLC. There have been no official info about any new SP project and even their Steam client development is being hampered by their working model.

And maybe the most infuriating is Valve's deafening silence on anything bar CS\DOTA\TF updates which really is perplexing. That's inexcusable no matter what your office culture is like.

Gabe Newell talked a little bit about Half Life 3 and it's development process on a podcast interview a couple of years ago. He explains whey they aren't talking about Half Life 3.

 

[iceatcs]

Time to go back single player gaming, Valve? Everything in Valve seem multiplayers, such as games in dev are all multiplayer, open office, etc...

 

[ashecitism]

Gabe Newell talked a little bit about Half Life 3 and it's development process on a podcast interview a couple of years ago. He explains whey they aren't talking about Half Life 3.

That's still a BS excuse and isn't helping the situation one bit.

Time to go back single player gaming, Valve? Everything in Valve seem multiplayers, such as games in dev are all multiplayer, open office, etc...

HL1 was made by the cabal.

 

[charlequin]

The issue is that Valve's culture may be impeding any other game developments that aren't part of 'as a service' approach.

Even moreso than that. If Valve were a company that was firing on all cylinders across a large range of multiplayer, service-oriented titles and external initiatives, it'd probably still disappoint the purely Half-Life oriented crowd, but it'd reflect success relative to their own specific goals and philosophies.

Instead, we have a company with a large staff that's largely underutilized, where the games that are being actively supported (primarily DOTA2 and CS:GO) are being driven by small, focused local teams but most of the employees are spinning their wheels on games that'll never be released or initiatives that will fail out of poor leadership and goal-setting.

Because Steam is so great and so huge, and because they do have a couple very profitable ongoing games that a relatively small number of employees keep in shape, they have enough operating cashflow that they never actually need to stop and consider cultural issues. This is a really common growth issue with companies that hit big success right away -- certain issues that are easy to deal with at a small size get put off until they're much harder to tackle, just because the company's survival isn't dependent on fixing them right away.

This sounds like the endless whining of a disgruntled former employee to me

We're at the point where there are double-digits of former Valve employees who have left over the last five years or so, many of whom were in particularly notable positions of influence, who have all generally painted the same picture: of an inefficient, personally invasive office space where decisions are made by clique membership instead of any rational analysis of their benefits and where most projects don't go anywhere due to lacking management. Whether this guy is whiny or not, he's just confirming the information we already have about Valve's corporate culture.

It's the stack ranking and devs backstabbing each other stuff that is the real story here, the rest is kind of more generally applicable stuff that can suck with all open plan offices.

Yeah, open offices are objectively a bad idea for a software company but they're both a common one and one whose overall productivity/environment hit isn't that big, ultimately.

Stack ranking, on the other hand, is something that almost nobody but Microsoft has ever done, in large part because it's basically the most toxic, socially destructive, and unproductive possible approach to employee evaluation.

 

[BHK3]

Waiting for the guy to crack and release a tweet that says something along the lines of "HL3 IS NEVER COMING OUT IT WAS ALL A LIE *sobs* i'm so sorry Gabe".

 

[p2535748]

Pretty much.

These are kind of "generic" complaints that could be leveled about any office space. I mean he literally lists stuff like the temperature being either too hot or too cold. Lighting is too bright or too dark, or wrong color spectrum (!!!).

He sounds like a cranky old man complaining about his retirement home.

He's saying that the open office nature of it makes it impossible for each person to be comfortable. It's a valid complaint. At my company, we all have our own offices, with our own thermostats. You can't completely control the temp, but you can go up or down a few degrees from what the building is. You can also control your own lighting, which is great for people like me who get headaches from florescent bulbs.

Is this all minor stuff? Of course, but successful companies try to make their employees as comfortable as possible (within reason) to let them concentrate on their work, and this is especially important with something highly technical. Open office spaces are a real hindrance to reaching this goal, either in big ways (tons of audio and visual noise) or small ways (lack of temperature/lighting control).

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Yeah, open offices are objectively a bad idea for a software company but they're both a common one and one whose overall productivity/environment hit isn't that big, ultimately.

Stack ranking, on the other hand, is something that almost nobody but Microsoft has ever done, in large part because it's basically the most toxic, socially destructive, and unproductive possible approach to employee evaluation.

Uhh, what? It's been used by thousands of companies. GE were one of the first to use it, before MS. Expedia, yahoo, nielsen and many other companies have or still use it. It was a pretty big hit in the 80's with managers. MS employees just popularized how shitty the system has, and they got the most attention, but they certainly aren't the only ones to have this system.

Many companies avoid using the phrase "stack ranking" since it's somewhat tainted. As an example, I believe yahoo calls their system "quantitative performance reviews".

 

[cpp_is_king]

Uhh, what? It's been used by thousands of companies. GE were one of the first to use it, before MS. Expedia, yahoo, nielsen and many other companies have or still use it. It was a pretty big hit in the 80's with managers. MS employees just popularized how shitty the system has, and they got the most attention, but they certainly aren't the only ones to have this system.

Many companies avoid using the phrase "stack ranking" since it's somewhat tainted. As an example, I believe yahoo calls their system "quantitative performance reviews".

Google, Amazon, and Yahoo currently use it as well. I agree it's toxic when used as an independent input to cull the weak so to speak. But when it's taken in larger context, and doesn't imply someone's doing good or bad by itself, im not as convinced.

 

[charlequin]

Uhh, what? It's been used by thousands of companies. GE were one of the first to use it, before MS. Expedia, yahoo, nielsen and many other companies have or still use it. It was a pretty big hit in the 80's with managers.

Yeah, that was (badly) exaggerated. It was a big management fad at one point, but it never had all that much currency in the tech world that started exploding soon after, since it was kind of a big-business relic. Microsoft was the prominent tech company that both adopted this strategy and stuck to it absolutely for a long period, and thus the clear demonstration of exactly how terrible it is.

Of course nowadays you have companies like Valve who just adopted it because they were staffed with former MS guys and trying to think of their own HR rules was too much work, or all the new tech giants falling ass-backwards into reinventing it by setting up ill-conceived "objective" review systems, sigh.

But when it's taken in larger context, and doesn't imply someone's doing good or bad by itself, im not as convinced.

What do you mean? Stack ranking is literally just a tool to decide that people are doing good or bad based on comparison to other employees, absent of all context. If you don't force-fit people to a bell curve or ordinal numbering it's something different.

 

[Nirolak]

Stack ranking hugely fell out of popularity: http://fortune.com/2013/11/18/microsoft-ge-and-the-futility-of-ranking-employees/

Clifford Stevenson, lead management researcher for the Institute for Corporate Productivity, a Seattle research firm, said his organization’s 2011 survey found a decline in the number of companies, especially those that are high-performing, using the approach.

“The percentage of companies reporting that they used a forced-ranking system declined from 42% to 14%,” he says.

This was prior to Microsoft itself dumping the system.

It doesn't help that the system is also often a tool for bigotry:

Questions were raised about the Welch approach as far back as the early 2000s, when employees of Goodyear and Ford F -0.90% challenged the rankings as discriminatory. Employees at both companies claimed they were singled out because of their age and, in 2002, Ford paid $10.5 million to settle two class actions suits. Both companies later dropped the evaluation system.

Microsoft also settled lawsuits with employees who claimed the forced ratings led to racial discrimination by “predominantly white male” managers, and Conoco COP -0.20% settled a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that accused the Houston-based company of using the appraisals to favor cheaper foreign workers over U.S. citizens.

 

[blitzcloud]

Pretty much.

These are kind of "generic" complaints that could be leveled about any office space. I mean he literally lists stuff like the temperature being either too hot or too cold. Lighting is too bright or too dark, or wrong color spectrum (!!!).

He sounds like a cranky old man complaining about his retirement home.

Uhhh you are talking shit.

I work in an office that has a sudden change of temperature 3 hours after I start my shift, because it's building regulated and our office isn't as crowded as the other offices. I normally have to put on a sweater, action which is triggered by a sneeze. Not comfortable at all to be exposed to things that may make you ill, but they can't really fix it. However we had a brightness problem due to no curtains, and at some hours you'd either get the sun directly into your eyes, which is really uncomfortable, or on your screen. Thankfully enough my screen is matte, but most of the computers are Mac with glossy screen. So they went pretty crazy until the curtain was installed.

Btw I work in an open space office, and most of us isolate with headphones for that optimal "isolation" when you need to focus only by yourself. I think open spaces are good for the most part, but it's true they had to implement a thursday afternoon shift "no talking" policy because it got too loud and it broke others concentration.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

This guy sounds really bitchy.

In the games industry, Ive found that working in cubes is a pretty damaging experience. Tons of people would slack off and watch tons of youtube all day because theres nobody checking in on them, and certain people having offices locked them out of the rest of the company.

Hes looking at the situation from his prism only. An open space is my favorite way of getting things done and hes treating human interaction like a disease. Too loud? OK then holy shit USE HEADPHONES. Most companies have a set of rules like, if Im wearing headphones = dont bother me. Its that simple.

Regarding the amount of space, what hes talking about is nothing unusual, just sounds like hes the type of person who just rather work from home.

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

HL3.

I'm starting to realize the sad sad truth about H3

 

[Nirolak]

It's the stack ranking and devs backstabbing each other stuff that is the real story here, the rest is kind of more generally applicable stuff that can suck with all open plan offices.

I think a lot of people might be stopping after reading a few paragraphs since that's rarely mentioned.

 

[ashecitism]

Yeah, the open office stuff is just one part of it. It's mostly about that, but it's based on his time at Valve and he brings up other stuff, like the stack ranking and dev backstabs. Also, there are the tweets from multiple devs (a lot from major studios) who touch on those and Goffin who in his last tweet himself acknowledges not everything is perfect.

@richgel999 Just want to say that not all of us drink Kool-aid Pros >>> cons for me, but I recognize that there's a *lot* of work to do.

https://twitter.com/BadMetaphor/status/551267074647920640

Sure, it's all just shades of gray. Forget the science, we need another hat yesterday man! We're raking in 1.21 gigadollars per microsecond here, obviously what we're doing is right and perfect and you're crazy for questioning it. Get back to work! ;-)

As some point there are things that NEED to be said, previous employer or not.

lol

 

[charlequin]

The open-floorplan stuff here is really kind of a distraction. The core issues at Valve (which have been reinforced by a long stream of ex-employees with very similar complaints) have to do with a management culture that doesn't scale and which is broken at the current scope of the company. Bad office space is just a symptom.

Hes looking at the situation from his prism only. An open space is my favorite way of getting things done and hes treating human interaction like a disease.

Open spaces are thoroughly destructive to productivity in creative industries. This isn't an opinion or anything, it's a factual conclusion that arises naturally from several long-established observations about work:

• Creative work isn't done consistently over time; it's done in peaks and valleys, with periods of apparent slacking interrupted by periods of high productivity
• Periods of high productivity have a high refractory index from interruption -- someone might be able to get a ton of work done in a two-hour block "in the zone" but take a half hour to get back in after one five-minute conversational distraction.
• Employees work better when focused on their own individual deliverables and less well when focused on the relative performance of other people around them, and open plans encourage the latter.
• The benefits of random conversation and information exchange between employees arise primarily at first points of contact -- i.e. when two employees start a conversation about what one of them is working on. You get these just fine when people run into each other in the hall or the breakroom, or get lunch together cross-department, while being in close proximity all day means you only get these at a few specific times.

This is putting aside all the narrower issues, like how unreasonable it is to expect everyone to be a constant aggressive extrovert just to work in an office. The floorplan thing is kind of like the crunch time issue: you can't trust people's subjective assessments of their own productivity, when these factors consistently tank productivity in objective measure.

Getting back to the bigger picture issue, you get this at a place like Valve due to a bit of a cargo cult mentality -- they see how startups can be successful in cramped quarters with flat organizational structures, and try to copy these at a company whose size demands very different strategies for success.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Yeah, that was (badly) exaggerated. It was a big management fad at one point, but it never had all that much currency in the tech world that started exploding soon after, since it was kind of a big-business relic. Microsoft was the prominent tech company that both adopted this strategy and stuck to it absolutely for a long period, and thus the clear demonstration of exactly how terrible it is.

Of course nowadays you have companies like Valve who just adopted it because they were staffed with former MS guys and trying to think of their own HR rules was too much work, or all the new tech giants falling ass-backwards into reinventing it by setting up ill-conceived "objective" review systems, sigh.



What do you mean? Stack ranking is literally just a tool to decide that people are doing good or bad based on comparison to other employees, absent of all context. If you don't force-fit people to a bell curve or ordinal numbering it's something different.

Stack ranking is, by definition, a comparison of employees against each other. It doesn't imply anything else. All it implies is "how does A compare against B". If Microsoft wants to derive a bell curve out of that, that's an extension of their implementation. It doesn't even imply a fully linear order. What if A > B and C > D, but there's no data point comparing B and C? Who knows.

The point is, "stack ranking" doesn't imply someone is looking at the results and punishing the people at the bottom.

Suppose you've got some guy who is, say, level 6 (whatever that means). He wants to get promoted to level 7. Everybody loves the guy, he does great work. If his stack ranking puts him higher than some level 7s, that doesn't mean the level 7s should be punished for underperforming. Maybe it means this guy is overperforming and deserves a promotion.

The point is, the stack ranking result doesn't need to be looked at in isolation. It can be part of a much larger context of an employee's performance characteristics and interpreted accordingly.

 

[ashecitism]

Btw if he writes that blog post, then what? Can we expect Valve to actually respond or Goffin will stay the only one who stands up for the company? The press will probably jump on it, and other devs and gamers etc...

 

[jimi_dini]

As a developer myself, fuck that.

I need my own office room, so that I can concentrate.

Valve sounds like an absolutely toxic work environment.

 

[ashecitism]

please quote that image

also I put in the stack ranking stuff in the OP

 

[Nirolak]

Btw if he writes that blog post, then what? Can we expect Valve to actually respond or Goffin will stay the only one who stands up for the company? The press will probably jump on it, and other devs and gamers etc...

Valve barely even talks about their own games they're not going to respond to this outside of an interview in 8 months where Gabe goes "We don't talk about employment issues and people have varying opinions about things."

 

[ashecitism]

Yeah, but there was that pre-TI incident with Fnatic where they actually published confidential emails to try and clear themselves after Fnatic painted them as the villains. I mean, they do whatever they want, but if Geldreich really lets everything out, then maybe not one "random" employee should be the only one to represent them (if he actually posts more, maybe he's done).

 

[alexandros]

Valve barely even talks about their own games they're not going to respond to this outside of an interview in 8 months where Gabe goes "We don't talk about employment issues and people have varying opinions about things."

Which is fair enough. Isn't it? I don't see why Valve has to comment on these opinions.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

The open-floorplan stuff here is really kind of a distraction. The core issues at Valve (which have been reinforced by a long stream of ex-employees with very similar complaints) have to do with a management culture that doesn't scale and which is broken at the current scope of the company. Bad office space is just a symptom.

Open spaces are thoroughly destructive to productivity in creative industries. This isn't an opinion or anything, it's a factual conclusion that arises naturally from several long-established observations about work:

• Creative work isn't done consistently over time; it's done in peaks and valleys, with periods of apparent slacking interrupted by periods of high productivity
• Periods of high productivity have a high refractory index from interruption -- someone might be able to get a ton of work done in a two-hour block "in the zone" but take a half hour to get back in after one five-minute conversational distraction.
• Employees work better when focused on their own individual deliverables and less well when focused on the relative performance of other people around them, and open plans encourage the latter.
• The benefits of random conversation and information exchange between employees arise primarily at first points of contact -- i.e. when two employees start a conversation about what one of them is working on. You get these just fine when people run into each other in the hall or the breakroom, or get lunch together cross-department, while being in close proximity all day means you only get these at a few specific times.

This is putting aside all the narrower issues, like how unreasonable it is to expect everyone to be a constant aggressive extrovert just to work in an office. The floorplan thing is kind of like the crunch time issue: you can't trust people's subjective assessments of their own productivity, when these factors consistently tank productivity in objective measure.

Getting back to the bigger picture issue, you get this at a place like Valve due to a bit of a cargo cult mentality -- they see how startups can be successful in cramped quarters with flat organizational structures, and try to copy these at a company whose size demands very different strategies for success.

Im not trying to discredit you, but in about 10 years of making games I have seen much better production out of an open floor plan than out of individual cubes. If the science doesn't support that, sure, but actual experiences matter too.

I think the best setup however, is a mix of both. Separate the teams and give them a little bit lf autonomy but still get the benefits of an open space.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Im not trying to discredit you, but in about 10 years of making games I have seen much better production out of an open floor plan than out of individual cubes. If the science doesn't support that, sure, but actual experiences matter too.

I think the best setup however, is a mix of both. Separate the teams and give them a little bit lf autonomy but still get the benefits of an open space.

In what role?

 

[Durante]

Or even what a team working on another module is doing at any given time. I mean, it's good to know your teams status. But that's 3-5 people. Any more than that and you'll run into Brook's Law/communication issues. I can get caught up at the next milestone.

Yeah, I agree. Having teams of ~5 people working on the same thing sharing an office space works, going much larger than that is questionable. I like that you related it to Brook's law, that makes sense to me. Also, all-to-all communication in CPUs similarly only scales to ~4

 

[Raging Spaniard]

In what role?

Oh yeah, forgot to add. Art department.

 

[Nirolak]

Which is fair enough. Isn't it? I don't see why Valve has to comment on these opinions.

Yes I agree there. As they're not a public company they don't have to answer to shareholders about how they run their company.

I was just saying that as a very quiet company they're super unlikely to be talkative.

 

[alexandros]

Yes I agree there. As they're not a public company they don't have to answer to shareholders about how they run their company.

I was just saying that as a very quiet company they're super unlikely to be talkative.

Indeed. I think they never commented on the stuff Jeri Ellsworth said, did they?

 

[BeatResetsTheWorld]

As a developer myself, fuck that.

I need my own office room, so that I can concentrate.

Valve sounds like an absolutely toxic work environment.

Lol, really? And you consider this to be reasonable?!

 

[jimi_dini]

Stack ranking hugely fell out of popularity: http://fortune.com/2013/11/18/microsoft-ge-and-the-futility-of-ranking-employees/

This was prior to Microsoft itself dumping the system.

It doesn't help that the system is also often a tool for bigotry:

Not only that, but doesn't "stack ranking" also stop people from collaborating?

Sounds like one of the reasons for a toxic work environment. That's almost as stupid as that "lines of code" measurement, that some idiotic companies used some ages ago.

Lol, really? And you consider this to be reasonable?!

I'm developing medical software. And I actually got my own office room, thank you very much. You do not want me to make errors.

 

[jelly]

So, why doesn't Gabe Newell fix issues like these, is he too busy playing DOTA ?

 

[TeddyShardik]

No wonder they take half a devs lifetime to finish a game when the devs are more interested in backstabbing each other than to make the best product they can as a team.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I agree its hard to concentrate in those open spaces. there is too much noise. I felt that too. Its also difficult if you have to manage a support line, and you cant talk to loud to disturb your coworkers, who hear, critique and evaluate everything you do, even though they dont want to.


It also creates a culture of interrupting. I was interrupting the people who knew more than me all the time. and then when I felt I couldnt bother them anymore, I just asked somebody else. and that way you ruin productivity.

bureaucracy in companies is a big thing, but at the same time, some people just half-ass it if they have their own space and are not supervised.

I think the best way is to give people their own space, but make sure they have goals to meet for the day, so they can work on the task at hand un-interrupted.


My boss, would send me emails even though we are less than 5 meters apart, because everyone gets edgy when the manager comes.

 

[Shining Sunshine]

So, why doesn't Gabe Newell fix issues like these, is he too busy playing DOTA ?

Too busy counting cash from CS:GO cases.

 

[alexandros]

So, why doesn't Gabe Newell fix issues like these, is he too busy playing DOTA ?

Maybe he feels that the system works as intended. There are bound to be problems in every kind of company structure, if the pros outweigh the cons and the company is successful then there's no real incentive to implement sweeping changes.

 

[RustyNails]

I agree its hard to concentrate in those open spaces. there is too much noise. I felt that too. Its also difficult if you have to manage a support line, and you cant talk to loud to disturb your coworkers, who hear, critique and evaluate everything you do, even though they dont want to.


It also creates a culture of interrupting. I was interrupting the people who knew more than me all the time. and then when I felt I couldnt bother them anymore, I just asked somebody else. and that way you ruin productivity.

bureaucracy in companies is a big thing, but at the same time, some people just half-ass it if they have their own space and are not supervised.

I think the best way is to give people their own space, but make sure they have goals to meet for the day, so they can work on the task at hand un-interrupted.


My boss, would send me emails even though we are less than 5 meters apart, because everyone gets edgy when the manager comes.

Hmm, I find opposite to be true. Shoulder height cubicle spaces make me feel suffocated. I love open office design, where it feels more like a classroom space than a stupid walled up corner where you jerk off. My corporate office is open space and I love the organic feel to it. Work comes naturally, and the teams function so much better. Old closeted cubicle spaces belong in 1950s in my opinion, or in heavily silo'ed companies.

 

[jelly]

Maybe he feels that the system works as intended. There are bound to be problems in every kind of company structure, if the pros outweigh the cons and the company is successful then there's no real incentive to implement sweeping changes.

Looking at their track record, not hard to imagine but could they do better?

They have nothing to fear with Steam being so successful and three titles of their own printing money. Coasting is harsh but there doesn't seem to be that, aim for the best about them. Should a major part like Steam be decent or great, Valve seem to think the former.

 

[Parsnip]

So, why doesn't Gabe Newell fix issues like these, is he too busy playing DOTA ?

Too busy sharpening his knives.

 

[GlamFM]

It´s easy to believe everything these former employees say. Especially since everything they say lines up nicely.

But than again this is the company that made Portal 1 & 2 and DOTA we are talking about.

Something also seems to be absolutely right in the way they do things.

 

[Qassim]

So, why doesn't Gabe Newell fix issues like these, is he too busy playing DOTA ?

Well unless things start going wrong, there isn't usually much reason to try and fix something that isn't broken. A few people (that we know of) complaining out of the 330+ employees may or may not be representative of everyone else feelings.

Remember, these dissatisfied ex-employees are notable because we've usually only heard mostly good things about how Valve operates, making them one of, if not the most desirable place to work in the industry. I can't imagine it is all just myth and legend.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-is-the-most-desirable-employer-in-video-game/1100-6421807/

Personally, if it is as described by this particular guy, it doesn't sound like I'd be that comfortable there too, but who knows.

 

[Ovek]

Too busy sharpening his knives.

I'm betting he barely turns up to office any more.

 

[Jac_Solar]

The open-floorplan stuff here is really kind of a distraction. The core issues at Valve (which have been reinforced by a long stream of ex-employees with very similar complaints) have to do with a management culture that doesn't scale and which is broken at the current scope of the company. Bad office space is just a symptom.



Open spaces are thoroughly destructive to productivity in creative industries. This isn't an opinion or anything, it's a factual conclusion that arises naturally from several long-established observations about work:

• Creative work isn't done consistently over time; it's done in peaks and valleys, with periods of apparent slacking interrupted by periods of high productivity
• Periods of high productivity have a high refractory index from interruption -- someone might be able to get a ton of work done in a two-hour block "in the zone" but take a half hour to get back in after one five-minute conversational distraction.
• Employees work better when focused on their own individual deliverables and less well when focused on the relative performance of other people around them, and open plans encourage the latter.
• The benefits of random conversation and information exchange between employees arise primarily at first points of contact -- i.e. when two employees start a conversation about what one of them is working on. You get these just fine when people run into each other in the hall or the breakroom, or get lunch together cross-department, while being in close proximity all day means you only get these at a few specific times.

This is putting aside all the narrower issues, like how unreasonable it is to expect everyone to be a constant aggressive extrovert just to work in an office. The floorplan thing is kind of like the crunch time issue: you can't trust people's subjective assessments of their own productivity, when these factors consistently tank productivity in objective measure.

Getting back to the bigger picture issue, you get this at a place like Valve due to a bit of a cargo cult mentality -- they see how startups can be successful in cramped quarters with flat organizational structures, and try to copy these at a company whose size demands very different strategies for success.

I agree, but creativity doesn't seem to be valued at larger companies (20+ people.). Most creative industries seem to be moving closer and closer towards formula based products, and I'd say that open office spaces in creative industries or game studios supports this notion.

Like, let's use Hollywood or popular movies in general as an example (90% Hollywood style?). Movies across all the genres are becoming more and more alike on all points except for genre tropes and common genre elements. I think it's because the "Hollywood screenwriting formula" is a thing, and easily accessible, since the majority of screenwriting books probably use this formula, or at least the ones that are supposed to help you write a "popular" movie. And aspiring writers use these books as a guide (Well, the ones that try to make it in Hollywood -- which is the most popular movie scene.)

Point is, the various creative industries *want* to streamline development, filming, etc. and maximize profit prediction accuracy, or product value while it's in development.

 

[BeatResetsTheWorld]

I'm developing medical software. And I actually got my own office room, thank you very much. You do not want me to make errors.

Well I'd hope medical software isn't being developed solely be a single person and that having other people in the room isn't enough to make you forget to check that it works and run tests...

 

[Messofanego]

I'm developing medical software. And I actually got my own office room, thank you very much. You do not want me to make errors.

Ooh that's rad. For what kind of thing?

 

[victreeb3l]

My office has an open office plan as well and as much as I like my colleagues, I would really prefer to have my own office or cubicle or something. Its just very easy to get distracted and theres always noise and stuff. Its fine in the mornings but after like 3pm everyone is just like "fuck it time to have fun".

 

[Varth]

I kinda wish I had problems like my office being close to barber facility or day care room.

Or a kitchen of some sorts, you know.

#FirstWorldEmpyreanProblems

 

[Acorn]

Stack ranking is, by definition, a comparison of employees against each other. It doesn't imply anything else. All it implies is "how does A compare against B". If Microsoft wants to derive a bell curve out of that, that's an extension of their implementation. It doesn't even imply a fully linear order. What if A > B and C > D, but there's no data point comparing B and C? Who knows.

The point is, "stack ranking" doesn't imply someone is looking at the results and punishing the people at the bottom.

Suppose you've got some guy who is, say, level 6 (whatever that means). He wants to get promoted to level 7. Everybody loves the guy, he does great work. If his stack ranking puts him higher than some level 7s, that doesn't mean the level 7s should be punished for underperforming. Maybe it means this guy is overperforming and deserves a promotion.

The point is, the stack ranking result doesn't need to be looked at in isolation. It can be part of a much larger context of an employee's performance characteristics and interpreted accordingly.

Nonsense.

Every stack ranking system has a predetermined percentage of employees who "must" be underperforming. Commonly 20 - 70 - 10(Yahoo in a report published yesterday has different percentages)

20% Must be exceeding, they should be lavished with gold
70% Must be achieving No promotions but should be kept as they make up the majority.
10% Must be failing and should be fired (or disciplined depending on country/company)

This is why it's called Stack ranking. Management is forced to put people in predetermined stacks even if all objectives have been met.

What you're calling stack ranking is basic performance management.