A former Valve employee talks about his experience

Soundchaser · Jul 17, 2018

Rich Geldreich, a game programmer who worked on Portal 2, Dota 2, CS:GO, was involved in Valve's Linux push, and is currently working at his own startup, recently wrote a massive Twitter storm about his experience with so called self-organizing companies like Valve, starting with this tweet (they're not all in one thread unfortunately, you'll have to scroll through the profile): https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018235592620965888

Some choice quotes:

So-called "self organizing" companies are controlled by mass anxiety. Anxiety is contagious. I don't think they are healthy places to work.

So-called self-organizing companies have a corporate arm somewhere controlling the entire operation from "above". Find them and their friends to figure out who has the real power.

What you'll find is that the corporate arm influences, controls, and "anxiety spikes" the self-organizing arm nearly constantly. It's not self-organizing, it's a company with opaque managers ruled through mass anxiety and fear.

If you're at a place like this, you must learn who the corporate managers are, who are their friends, and the cliques. They are the ones with real power and everything else is an illusion.

At self-organizing companies with bonuses, workers will watch for rivalries between other coworkers to exploit. They will team up with one dev to bring the other (disliked) dev down a notch in some way. (I've seen this several times.)

At self-organizing companies, coding must be done super defensively as anyone can come in and "turd up" the code you're working on. You must design your systems for this inevitability.

Related: At places like this, you dare not depend on other systems actually working for any period of time. Copy/paste/rename the helper functions you depend on so others can't quietly break or jankify your systems and make you look bad.

On a competitive team within a self-organizing company, avoid asking for help unless you absolutely, positively need it. Any information you receive may be purposely distorted in some way. If you do ask for help, gather consensus from multiple devs.

Related: Route around problems vs. asking for help or modifications on these teams. Once you ask for help the other dev(s) have control and may purposely send you down a blind alley.

On teams like this, it's the Wild West. The devs aren't working for the greater good of the company, they are working for good bonuses. This is one reason why bonuses in this type of environment are a really bad idea.

At self-organizing companies you must be very social. Early on you need to identify who is closely interacting with the corporate arm, who their friends and cliques are, and what they find valuable. If you fall outside this group's favor be prepared for pain.

Related: You need a powerful "Sponsor" or "Baron" to back you. Figure out what they want and like. Watch or read "Hunger Games". Once you get to this level you are almost untouchable.

At a self-organizing company you must pay attention to subtle hints from the corporate arm. They just won't come to you and say "work on this". Events will just happen and you need to be wise and realize that nothing happens by accident at places like this.

Your mental model should be a hierarchical corporate arm with a self-organizing layer underneath. The corporate arm will reach into and influence the self-organizing arm using various tools.

Some tools are key strategic hires forced into the system, random firings, hints placed with devs that something is valuable or interesting, exposing devs to extra resources like the ability to pay contractors, destroying resources like test labs, or bonus payouts.

You can also just reach in and grab devs and force them to a new team. (That's why you have wheels on your desk.)

If at one of these companies you find yourself in the basement with a stapler, working alone: be prepared to be fired unless you have a strong Sponsor and are taking an approved break.

If you're running a self-organizing company, you need to have a measure and understanding of the current average and peak Anxiety Level within the self-organizing arm. Or it blows up and talent walks.

Random firings, messing around with key resources like test labs, encouraging toxic behaviors through massive bonuses, and forcing devs to move around randomly are all anxiety increasing/morale decreasing events.

And this is why I walked away from a self-organizing company 1 week after being given options. It was just too unhealthy a workplace, and it impacted my health too much. I would say most of my coworkers where ridiculously stressed out (I learned some had to go on meds to cope).

I came in one day and my coworker (let's call him Bob) disappeared, his desk wheeled into the hall to be picked clean. "Where did Bob go?" I asked. I got replies like "Bob who?" or "don't talk about Bob". I realized then that I had no idea what I had got myself into.

Remember Yanis Varofakis?

Another type of temp strategic hire you can make is to recruit a well-known author, a famous dev, or a person with specialized skills (like an economist). Have them write gushingly about their amazing experiences at the company. Once you're done with them quietly let them go.

And so this is a form of Developer Marketing. Hire some key person, push them to write or blog, then once you're done with them let them go. The "pawn" won't complain too much as their career will be enhanced by being associated with your company.

What the developer actually writes is actually consensus based mumbo-jumbo. It's just marketing. It'll be based off the version of reality the corporate arm wants to market to developers they haven't recruited yet.

This reminds me of the Oculus debacle:

If you run a self-organized firm and you have turned up the anxiety levels too high, your company will become brittle and prone to mass talent flight. Wealthy competitors can come in and make offers and basically steal all your tech and devs right out from under you.

Company parties at self-organizing firms can be incredibly awkward events. Imagine Stalin holding a Worker's Party at a Gulag. That's how fun they are. Genuine relationships are rare at these places and there's too much mass trauma.

All legit self-organizing firms have to "leak" an official unofficial Company Manual. It's got to be slickly made and fun to read. Developer Marketing gurus create these productions to sway new recruits into the Hiring Funnel. Insiders laugh at these things.

There's a lot more tweets that I didn't include here, and it's all very interesting. It's startling to see Valve through such lenses after being their fanboy for a very long time.

John Carmack also chimed in with his experience at id Software:

Purge me if old.

ILikeFeet · Jul 17, 2018

has there been a non-supernatural horror movie about working in an office? cause this kinda sounds like it

Ionic · Jul 17, 2018

I feel like I've played enough TF2 to have seen the effects of the defensive coding and mucking up of things, purposefully or not. It was interesting to hear Carmack said those mega bonuses during the Doom boom led to some pathological behavior. Is the solution to make fewer bonuses for work done relative to others and focus on people just having their agreed upon salaries instead?

stumblebee · Jul 17, 2018

https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018955827770638336

This one about company vacations is incredibly interesting to me. (Valve's Hawaiian vacations are the first thing I thought of.)

Beware of company vacations at self-organizing firms. Stay on your best behavior, don't drink much, and keep your mouth shut about your personal life. You can be fired at these events, and any info gathered can be used against you. Make sure your spouse is given the heads up.
On the flip side, feel free to talk to the corporate arm workers and their friends in the self-organized arm. Valuable info and connections can be made during this time. Just be aware it's absolutely not a real vacation.
These events occur in multiple phases at large firms. Purposely claim some excuse to attend the island with a totally different group. You'll be treated better, have the opportunity to be recruited by different groups, and be able to network more effectively outside your group.
Also, if you are a contractor never inquire or ask about attending the company vacation. Contractors are 2nd class citizens and are not permitted on the island. If you ask too much you're just decreasing your purge immunity

stumblebee · Jul 17, 2018

Also holy shit that's a lot of tweets

prudis · Jul 17, 2018

lot of it sounds like the standard corporate shtick (at least from my experience) ... nothing really that specific to the "self-organizing firms"

kadotsu · Jul 17, 2018

Call me shocked that professionals that are alienated from their work will chose to maximize their individual gain over anything else. No one could have predicted this, especially not in 1867.

Amiibola · Jul 17, 2018

Sounds like a fun place to work

Deleted member 3038 · Jul 17, 2018

prudis said:
lot of it sounds like the standard corporate shtick (at least from my experience) ... nothing really that specific to the "self-organizing firms"

Yeah this sounds like stuff that almost every company does.

blizzink · Jul 17, 2018

kadotsu said:
Call me shocked that professionals that are alienated from their work will chose to maximize their individual gain over anything else. No one could have predicted this, especially not in 1867.

I couldn't have said it better.

All the more reason to start putting more emphasis on alternative services, like GOG (cue stories about how that place is trash, too).

TheBaldwin · Jul 17, 2018

I dont know much about the insides of game development, so forgive me if im wrong.

What this is basiclaly saying is that devs will intentionally try and bring down other projects within the company, so that the project there working on ends up being the best/completed and therefore results in them getting bigger bonuses ?

And also that becuase these places dont realy have 'officially' bosses, it creates 'unofficial bosses' and cliques that basically control the work environment

Orb · Jul 17, 2018

I have suspected a lot of this about Valve for a long time.

Their happy-go-lucky "Be your own boss! Move your desk to whatever team you want to work on!" thing is kind of a crock.

There is always someone in charge.

ToddBonzalez · Jul 17, 2018

This isn't that surprising to me. The whole self-organizing, people-work-on-whatever-they-want-to-work-on culture always sounded too Utopian to be true.

Smash-It Stan · Jul 17, 2018

Explains a lot going from how tf2 and Dota are/were developed.

ElOdyssey · Jul 17, 2018

The part of "who's bob?" creeped me out. Sounds like a cult.

Orb · Jul 17, 2018

ElOdyssey said:
The part of "who's bob?" creeped me out. Sounds like a cult.

I used to work in a company like this. It's maddening and childish.

srhltmr · Jul 17, 2018

I'll stick to my 35 person company where I'm the only coder.

Veemo · Jul 17, 2018

Competitive bonuses are dangerous even in a transparently organized company.

prudis · Jul 17, 2018

TheBaldwin said:
I dont know much about the insides of game development, so forgive me if im wrong.

And also that becuase these places dont realy have 'officially' bosses, it creates 'unofficial bosses' and cliques that basically control the work environment

not really specific to game development , just a basic psychology

Sidebuster · Jul 17, 2018

sounds like a FUCKING NIGHTMARE. I was getting an upset stomach and a flush face just reading those choice quotes. Almost on the levels of the mornings I had chemo therapy. I hope everyone that can and wants to leave, does so and are better off. As much as I think I like Valve, I have to remind myself of this now. Maybe it's time to back off using Steam once and for all.

Edit: If this is corporate culture like another poster says, I imagine I'd end up like Peter from Office Space.

Drencrom · Jul 17, 2018

Not surprised at all to hear Valve is an awful place to work at.

They seem to curate their own company and staff with the same mentality as they handle Steam.

1-D_FE · Jul 17, 2018

TheBaldwin said:
I dont know much about the insides of game development, so forgive me if im wrong.

What this is basiclaly saying is that devs will intentionally try and bring down other projects within the company, so that the project there working on ends up being the best/completed and therefore results in them getting bigger bonuses ?

And also that becuase these places dont realy have 'officially' bosses, it creates 'unofficial bosses' and cliques that basically control the work environment

This hostile competitive nature is exactly what tore Microsoft apart for years.

Gabe was an early MS employee (and got filthy rich from it) and his biggest mistake when founding Valve was adapting MS' toxic, loathed (and now abandoned) stack ranking system.

Every single one of those tweets, at their heart, goes back to stack ranking.

All of Valve's dysfunction is related to stack ranking.

There's a reason even MS eventually abandoned this shit system. It's awful and notorious to anyone who understands it.

Valve didn't succeed because Gabe copied that model, they succeeded despite it (although they're now stuck in the malaise that it created).

Wallach · Jul 17, 2018

I can't remember the last time I heard anything about Valve that made me think better of it as a conpany.

Complicated · Jul 17, 2018

Shocking that Valve sounds like a Libertarian Lord of the Flies hellscape of an office to work in. Corporate offices do these things as well, but I can't imagine not having any structure and accountability with that level of office politics going on. It creates incentives for everything bad/exploitable about corporate structure without any of the benefits for lower-tier employees (structure, chain of command/accountability to the extent it can be relied upon).

Doomguy Fieri · Jul 17, 2018

Years ago I commented on a gaf thread about how valve obviously has "bosses" despite claiming to be "self organizing." People thought I was trolling but this is just common sense. Organizations have heirarchies even if they are unofficial.

Deleted member 31092 · Jul 17, 2018

Considering that the "work on what you want!" thing lead up to more of the same for year I totally believe it.

xyla · Jul 17, 2018

Well it sounds a bit too cynical to me.

But while I'm not sure, everyone sees working there the same way, I'm also sure that complete self organisation at a job is a myth. There's always influencing going on somewhere..

Deleted member 8106 · Jul 17, 2018

Doomguy Fieri said:
Years ago I commented on a gaf thread about how valve obviously has "bosses" despite claiming to be "self organizing." People thought I was trolling but this is just common sense. Organizations have heirarchies even if they are unofficial.

Of course there are bosses, but people are just too blind or too stupid to admit it.
Just imagine a working place with no bosses where you can do whatever you want, it would self-implode in no time.

potatohead · Jul 17, 2018

Observing how dumb people act even when there is hierarchy this is not surprising at all

Valve is overrated as fuck for so many reasons and this myth about their nonsense is one of them

Derrick01 · Jul 17, 2018

blizzink said:
I couldn't have said it better.

All the more reason to start putting more emphasis on alternative services, like GOG (cue stories about how that place is trash, too).

I don't know about gog specifically, but CDPR is well known these days for not being the best place to work.

ultracal31 · Jul 17, 2018

prudis said:
lot of it sounds like the standard corporate shtick (at least from my experience) ... nothing really that specific to the "self-organizing firms"

This

Especially the remark about contractors as I certainly felt 'lower class' at EA as a result of being a contractor

7threst · Jul 17, 2018

That Bob-thing is like fucking horror. Like, what the fuck????

dex3108 · Jul 17, 2018

Wallach said:
I can't remember the last time I heard anything about Valve that made me think better of it as a conpany.

Dogstar · Jul 17, 2018

RUN... run away from these places.... they have nothing to do with living a real life. Corporate = living a non human life, that really has no meaning at all..... it's all just empty, fantasy, crazy nonsense.

Bunkles · Jul 17, 2018

dex3108 said:

Very ominous tone in both these tweets (probably in my head). I feel like this is the beginning of a horror/drama movie and we'll see what she's tweeting in a couple years.

Kalor · Jul 17, 2018

I'd believe it. Some of the stuff he mentions definitely lines up with some of the stuff other former Valve employees have said over the years, especially the competitive nature of it.

Randomly Generated · Jul 17, 2018

Interfectum said:
Very ominous tone in both these tweets (probably in my head). I feel like this is the beginning of a horror/drama movie and we'll see what she's tweeting in a couple years.

That's a weird read of those tweets.

Drencrom · Jul 17, 2018

If you're at a place like this, you must learn who the corporate managers are, who are their friends, and the cliques. They are the ones with real power and everything else is an illusion.

At self-organizing companies with bonuses, workers will watch for rivalries between other coworkers to exploit. They will team up with one dev to bring the other (disliked) dev down a notch in some way. (I've seen this several times.)

I came in one day and my coworker (let's call him Bob) disappeared, his desk wheeled into the hall to be picked clean. "Where did Bob go?" I asked. I got replies like "Bob who?" or "don't talk about Bob". I realized then that I had no idea what I had got myself into.

These three excerpts are especially scathing.

Like holy shit... Sounds like an office version of hell

Yabab · Jul 17, 2018

Holy fucking shit @ copying and pasting code to avoid being fucked over...

Slam Tilt · Jul 17, 2018

prudis said:
lot of it sounds like the standard corporate shtick (at least from my experience) ... nothing really that specific to the "self-organizing firms"

I've been working in similar fields for my entire life (easily several decades worth) and I've never had to put up with anything like this. Maybe I was just lucky.

Crayon · Jul 17, 2018

Little dramatic there.

I don't blame him. There are successful companies that can be a real fuckshop to work at. The grass is always greener on the other side, though.

Work is Hell.

gofreak · Jul 17, 2018

ElOdyssey said:
The part of "who's bob?" creeped me out. Sounds like a cult.

'I am Ofglen.'

7threst · Jul 17, 2018

Randomly Generated said:
That's a weird read of those tweets.

I actually felt the same tbh. She sounds kinda dark, as if nothing matters anymore while still trying to wear a happy face.

Goldrusher · Jul 17, 2018

Bob was working on Half-Life 3, wasn't he?

Bunkles · Jul 17, 2018

7threst said:
I actually felt the same tbh. She sounds kinda dark, as if nothing matters anymore while still trying to wear a happy face.

Like Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate. First couple months are gravy then......... cue dark_music.mp3.

yuraya · Jul 17, 2018

ElOdyssey said:
The part of "who's bob?" creeped me out. Sounds like a cult.

Goldrusher said:
Bob was working on Half-Life 3, wasn't he?

Deleted member 11926 · Jul 17, 2018

That this kind of defensive coding is necessary doesn't surprise me at all and would also explain (in part) why Valve's output is so slow. Valve really got lucky with Steam and its de-facto monopoly (unfortunately). I expected Valve not to be a fun place to work at but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

justiceiro · Jul 17, 2018

I actually appreciate how the guy gives a lot of tips for people who end up working on places like these. This invaluable information people, learn from it.

All that rings true to the history that James( the guy called a ass by gaben) told on why he got fired. All work of a guy who didn't liked him and tried to lobby against him.

Windu · Jul 17, 2018

Sounds fun.....

johan · Jul 17, 2018

I never believed Valve's flat structure or whatever you want to call it was any good. Humans need hierarchy

A former Valve employee talks about his experience

DF Deet Master

Deleted member 3038

The Pyramids? That's nothing compared to RDR2

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