This sounds a lot like a "lattice" organisation. It was invented by Bill Gore, founder of W.L. Gore & Associates (famous for their Gore-Tex fabric). At Gore, apparently everyone is an associate with no specific job title. There are no chains of command or hierarchy. People choose to work on projects based on their own judgement.<p>As Gore grew, it was apparent that this structure did not work with more than a couple of hundred people. So now, teams are limited to about 200 people (approximately Dunbar's number). I imagine Valve will run into this social limit as well once they grow well beyond their current 260 employees.<p>Given that Gore still exists, has 9000 employees and is profitable after 60 years is testament that such a structure can work for small as well as larger organisations over a longer period of time.<p>I first learned about this organisational structure in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. There are multiple descriptions online, here's one that seems interesting: <a href="http://ecgi.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=619020093024125107124111019099119123070005063047062066086085064045007008026071062033009127053113030117126090013072022059045025126101104000112025068069094&EXT=pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ecgi.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=61902009302412510712411...</a>
Funny but true I interviewed and was given an offer but the pay was so far off what I was earning "at market" that I ended up not going to work for them.<p>The interview process was amazing, took 6 hours at a white board, multiple teams drilled me on all the various languages I claimed to know and then some business teams grilled me on my thoughts about the industry.<p>The passionate side of me really wanted to work for them but the pragmatic side of me made it clear I would have to work for considerably less than I was making open market. To make things worse my next position literally was almost double the salary Valve offered me.<p>I was just last night joking with my wife that when I want to settle down maybe I should try and go back through the process with the understanding it will most likely be 1/3 of my current salary.<p>I love working in my passion but as I always tell people the people at the grocery store still want me to pay for my food.<p>I try to balance passion and pragmatism and if I need some crazy passionate project I take on a side project on the weekends for some open source project etc.
This has the single best description of a team lead I have ever seen:<p>"[Team leads are] keeping the whole project in their head at
once so that people can use them as a resource to check
decisions against"
Hm. So is this a leak or a "not strictly public but if it fell into the hands of a bunch of people we want to hire then I guess we'll just have to deal with it" sort of thing?<p>With this and the recent Michael Abrash blog post, I get the feeling that Valve is putting a bit more attention into making themselves attractive to developers. Frankly, I think it's working.
It works really well because Valve hires only highly experienced Senior people. Which is why they're able to manage themselves.<p>They liked my game ideas in my blog (I even predicted Steam's Big Picture mode) and I got a call from Greg Coomer, but ultimately I never got an interview because I didn't have the experience and hadn't shipped any real profitable products. It was a really nice reality check though. It made me realize where I am in life and where I need to go. So thank you Greg.<p>Also, they play the "Portal - Still Alive" song when you're on hold.
This is one of the coolest looks behind the scene's of one of the world's most successful companies. I have read every page.<p>As they mentioned in the handbook, Value's revenue per employee is the highest in the world.<p>Source: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newell-videogames-valve-online-mayhem.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newel...</a>
To everyone wondering if it was leaked on purpose or whatever, it clearly says right at the top:<p>Originally uploaded to <a href="http://cdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf</a>
Handbook courtesy of Valve<p>So, they shared it on purpose and are not trying to disguise it as a "leak".
"Gabe Newell — Of all the people at this company who aren’t your boss,
Gabe is the MOST not your boss, if you get what we’re saying."<p>Most egregious example of double-speak ever?
I really like that they highlight and discuss possible downsides of their approach. It makes it a more credible source of inspiration and discussion for other companies.<p>In my experience it's really difficult to use material from Github or 37signals, for example, to start a constructive conversation on work practicess at your own company. Half of the team might dismiss it as a self-promotional, patronizing PR fluff piece, while the other half might gobble it up and fail to rationally weigh the pros and cons. And everyone gets this vague unpleasant feeling of being told that they're inadequate - like a 15-year old girl watching a weight watcher commercial.
Page 55, Josh Weier, 14 year old boy. Google him. This manual is from this year and it says he is 57. He really does look like he's been bathing in stem cells
If Valve's organization is simply to let employees fight it out thunderdome style to see who controls projects, culture, and direction, the organization should be grown by spinning off completely new and independent businesses, not by hiring people. Then the economics of free enterprise provides a true risk/reward system. With salaried employees rewards are capped. Employees will only stick around until they discover that the real economy pays much better for hard work and good ideas and that the risks are basically the same: no income.<p>The "we have no structure" culture is disingenuous. I don't buy the idea that most of the employees at valve don't want to dominate all the projects and their coworkers. It is exactly the same anywhere. You can't simply say 'we don't have managers' as obviously only certain people are going to have power of budget and final hiring decision. Only certain people can sign documents. Only when employees can expense anything they want and hire anyone they feel should be hired would a "no managers" description be appropriate. You might say that this would never work, but it does work if each employee is given assistance or investment to spin off a new organization at any time, hire anyone, and spend money.
I can see why they would not want this leaked:<p><i>Fishbowl—
The conference room by the lunchroom. The one with a bigglass wall. Don’t let the name throw you—we don’t actually use it as a fishbowl! Except, of course, on Fishbowl Fridays, where we fill it up with tenthousand gallons of putrid saltwater so that all the manta rays and sharks will have something to breathe while they fight to the death. You won’t seeit in your list of benefits, not because it isn’t fun, but because it is illegal.</i>
Best part so far:
"Accepted truisms about sales, marketing, regionality, seasonality, the Internet, purchasing behavior, game design,
economics, and recruiting, etc., have proven wrong surprisingly often. So we have learned that when we take nearly any action, it’s best to do so in a way that we can measure, predict outcomes, and analyze results."
Inspiring reading. I wish they had chosen a better example of the archtypal "T" employee than the Heavy class...many of those attributes he has are just things that are obvious consequences/contributing factors to his main skill "hugeness, killing people".
I just can't believe that this works as seamlessly as the handbook would have you believe. It seems it would create a very Lord Of The Flies/cliquey atmosphere. In a group of people, there <i>always</i> exists some kind of hierarchy, whether it's explicit or implied. In this case, there is zero attempt to create an explicit power structure, so it's 100% implied, but I don't see why that's fundamentally better.<p>In general this sounds like the natural structure for pack animals, where you join a pack and no one anoints a power structure, but it becomes clear very quickly who is "alpha", "beta", etc. IMHO it sounds like it possibly could be a very stressful situation.
Somehow I tend to think that this leak is intentional... and it may be that the document has been specifically written for that purpose. Anyway, if what's written is true, Valve must be an amazing place to work at.
This is a cool handbook. I wonder what the frustrations are that come with this? As the book says, Valve sucks at disseminating information. It'd be interesting to see if there is some sort of pervasive feeling of "why didn't I know about that project? I wanted to work on that."
In case anyone wants to read this on their e-reader, here is a single page version - <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2177514/Valve_Handbook_LowRes_singlepage.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2177514/Valve_Handbook_LowRes_single...</a>
I wonder if this only applies to the game developers or other Valve staff (say web developers) as well. Is there anyone here working at Valve to could clear this up?
This kind of company coulture seems to run thru the most succesful software companies, such as Google is prominent is their areas, Valve are huge in games, Facebook seems to work in the same way. AFAIK Apple is hierarchical and is run in a very "traditional" fashion, but are still very successful.<p>Is there a pattern about theese things, and what way of managing a software company works best?<p>EDIT: Also, Half-Life is the best game ever.
There are a lot of good ideas in here, but stack-ranking is a terrible one.<p>First, it makes people hate each other. Anyone who comes up in the bottom half is going to be looking immediately to move to another group simply because he ended up in the bottom half. And if someone ends up near the bottom and ends up with no bonus or on a PIP, he's going to be spending the next few months trying to figure out who screwed him, which creates this whole side game that has nothing to do with actual work.<p>Second, it encourages people to work on the projects that are most visible, which are not always the most valuable.<p>Third, it creates a general atmosphere of distrust. People are constantly watching their back for others who might screw them in the peer review process.<p>This is an outsider's view and a microgripe, and I think a lot of the ideas in that book are good ones. I just saw the words "stack ranking" and knew I had to speak up. It's seriously not a good idea. If someone's going to get whacked, it should happen for a real reason, and not because that person ended up in the bottom 15% because only a couple people knew what he was working on. Maybe he was working on something important but unglamorous. I've seen that kind of shit happen all the time with stack-ranking systems.