1. Soundchaser

    Soundchaser
    Member OP

    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:

    Remember Yanis Varofakis?
    This reminds me of the Oculus debacle:
    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.
     
  2. ILikeFeet

    ILikeFeet
    Member

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

    Ionic
    Member

    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?
     
  4. stumblebee

    stumblebee
    Member

    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.)

     
  5. stumblebee

    stumblebee
    Member

    Also holy shit that's a lot of tweets
     
  6. prudis

    prudis
    Member

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

    kadotsu
    Member

    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.
     
  8. Amiibola

    Amiibola
    Member

    Sounds like a fun place to work
     
  9. Zexion

    Zexion
    Member

    Yeah this sounds like stuff that almost every company does.
     
  10. blizzink

    blizzink
    Member

    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).
     
  11. TheBaldwin

    TheBaldwin
    Member

    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
     
  12. Orb

    Orb
    Member

    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.
     
  13. ToddBonzalez

    ToddBonzalez
    Member

    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.
     
  14. Smash-It Stan

    Smash-It Stan
    Member

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

    ElOdyssey
    Member

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

    Orb
    Member

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

    srhltmr
    Member

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

    Veemo
    Member

    Competitive bonuses are dangerous even in a transparently organized company.
     
  19. prudis

    prudis
    Member

    not really specific to game development , just a basic psychology
     
  20. Jams775

    Jams775
    Member

    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.
     
  21. Drencrom

    Drencrom
    Member

    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.
     
  22. 1-D_FE

    1-D_FE
    Member

    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).
     
  23. Wallach

    Wallach
    Member

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

    Complicated
    Member

    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).
     
  25. Doomguy Fieri

    Doomguy Fieri
    Member

    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.
     
  26. Joseki

    Joseki
    Member

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

    xyla
    Member

    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..
     
  28. PunishedSnake

    PunishedSnake
    Member

    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.
     
  29. potatohead

    potatohead
    Member

    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
     
  30. Derrick01

    Derrick01
    Member

    I don't know about gog specifically, but CDPR is well known these days for not being the best place to work.
     
  31. ultracal31

    ultracal31
    Member

    This

    Especially the remark about contractors as I certainly felt 'lower class' at EA as a result of being a contractor
     
  32. 7threst

    7threst
    Member

    That Bob-thing is like fucking horror. Like, what the fuck????
     
  33. dex3108

    dex3108
    Member



     
  34. Dogstar

    Dogstar
    Member

    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.
     
  35. Interfectum

    Interfectum
    Member

    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.
     
  36. Kalor

    Kalor
    Resettlement Advisor Member

    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.
     
  37. That's a weird read of those tweets.
     
  38. Drencrom

    Drencrom
    Member

    These three excerpts are especially scathing.

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

    Yabab
    Member

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

    Slam Tilt
    Member

    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.
     
  41. Crayon

    Crayon
    Member

    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.
     
  42. gofreak

    gofreak
    Member

    'I am Ofglen.'
     
  43. 7threst

    7threst
    Member

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

    Goldrusher
    Member

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

    Interfectum
    Member

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

    yuraya
    Member

    [​IMG]
     
  47. Hudo

    Hudo
    Member

    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.
     
  48. justiceiro

    justiceiro
    Member

    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.
     
  49. Windu

    Windu
    Member

    Sounds fun.....
     
  50. johan

    johan
    Member

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