So apparently, according to Gamasutra, Valve fired a bunch of people. They also seem to have lost Jason Holtman, their Director of business, who worked on Steam. I'm a bit of confused by Valve as of right now, they seem to be at some sort of turning point, and their decisions appear somewhat muddy : they launch Greelight then Gabe talks about ending it, they tease us with a steambox... What is going on ? Are they losing it or are they going to surprise us ?
Since Valve is privately owned (almost entirely by one guy) financial reports aren't terribly meaningful.
hmm true, when I saw the news, the thing popped in my head was it's just like when Hermes from Futurama fired himself!
The thing that's odd is that Valve is known to be a "bossless" studio. People move around from project to project. So the layoffs is puzzling since we would have thought people would have just moved to another project if the project they're on gets cancelled. Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman diffed the People section of Valve's website to find out who got let go.
The work environment I've heard Gabe describe in no way implies indefinite employment, no matter how loose the company structure is. There is still a person(s) hiring and firing. These folks, for whatever reason, didn't fit Valve's long term plans. I hope they find more work quickly!
I'm following this on QT3 also and there was this video posted there. The relevant bits are mostly in the second half. Given the list of people let go and his comments in the video maybe Valve is moving away from development.
I think having Valve Software on your resume helps a lot. The HR people will hire you just so you can spill some juicy details on Half-Life 3!
Gabe emailed one or more news sites; Forbes alleges him to have written (also reported by Engadget) I'm told that the video linked does still contain relevant information; supposedly he answers a question by saying he wishes they'd been more aggressive about firing people, but I haven't watched it to verify.
I've wondered if Valve is on the cusp of changing directions somewhat. Newell's been out in public a lot more, making a lot of comments. And now this, including the firing of some senior Valve people. Newell's "we're just firing some people for no reason really, no news here" is such a non-response too. Valve's on the cusp of some major launches, but let a bunch of people go. Seems very odd. Wonder if they've managed to overstretch themselves internally, too many special projects going on and not enough oversight.
On the other hand, they may have been fired for being jerks. I know nobody wants to think that but it seems just as likely at this point.
It was a bunch of jerks that all went to go work on the same jerky project team making a game where you're a jerk. I seriously don't understand how Valve works. It strikes me as one of those companies where it's fun and games until someone realizes that they should be making more money that they are.
We know from the Valve Handbook that Valve has no managers to fire their jerks. And we know from the Valve Handbook that "once a year we all give each other feedback about our work". There wasn't much of a pattern in Develop's list of probably-fired-employees (which may also not be complete). The idea that this represents some seachange in Valve's planning doesn't seem to fit with that, which lends some credence to Gabe's claim. For all I know this happens every year, but it never gets any publicity because people don't go "I got fired from Valve", they say "I left Valve" (and Valve, of course, doesn't comment). What he said is also exactly what you'd say if there was no change of direction or projects, just individuals being fired for individual reasons (and you never comment on individual people's job status for legal etc. reasons).
From Gamespot quoting the video linked above I believe, I haven't had time to watch it all (emphasis added): Was the handbook a handbook or a recruiting tool? From PC Gamer:
I find it odd there's no middle management to see if someone is not working out. I've read/heard of horror stories of people from the film industry not able to adjust to the game industry. For example, there was an art director who was used to working in films and was surprised why a set of stairs were so low poly and wanted very detailed stairs with thousands of polys and normal mapping (this was back in the original Xbox days) in the game he was working on, apparently not realizing that games are rendered in real-time compared to film's pre-rendered scenes.
talk about peer pressure, instead getting fired by your company, now it's like you are getting fired by all your coworkers.
Carousel! Carousel! I'd never heard of Jeri Ellsworth before but her videos on technical stuff, like the magnetic logic one, are pretty damned awesome (and I think I follow)! (Link instead of embed as it is tangential: http://www.youtube.com/jeriellsworth).
In a way, yeah, I think so. If you only have to please the management, at least you can be open and at ease with your coworkers. If you have to watch yourself around everyone at work, it can be pretty disquieting. It introduces more politics than are already present between colleagues. I mean when everything goes right, when the project you're working on is very interesting, peer pressure wouldn't be such a problem. But when things go sour your workplace might turn into Live Action Paranoia. So far, Valve is doing great, but their very elitist vision of what a worker should do can be questioned.
I certainly seemed to work well as a marketing tool for Valve. Also, the claim that they couldn't quite work terminations correctly so they left that bit out seems very weak. Because, y'know, employee handbook. If Valve really does use peer systems to evaluate people to retrench, let's hope everyone gets on well enough, because such things can be easily hijacked by cliques or internal power struggles.
That process also sounds like it is very vulnerable to forming a harmful group-think or even a 'boys club' type of atmosphere. Eh, if it works for them. Looking at the list of people fired it seems like they just got rid of a large chunk of the people behind the 'Meet the...' videos, women and a couple of immersive sim veterans which adds up to a little sadness from me. As a list of people to be fired this reads like Valve moving in a more MOBA and other 'hardcore' development direction rather than towards the kind of projects that I most enjoyed from them. Hopefully that's not the case and these people were actually all secretly terrible people that made bad games.
Pretty much what MartinL and UnSub said, I feel it's really hard to not have work place clique, if firing/layoff was up to vote by your coworker I can see a lot of people will view it as unfair, since they will feel like it's a popularity contest. I think people feel a lot better if their boss pull them aside and said "we are cutting back, and the company had to let you go." versus a majority of your coworker think that letting you go is the best choice. One is "It's business, I'm sorry", other is "You are the most insert"useless, unlike, etc etc" person in the company".
Hmm... this could be a Survivor type of reality tv show. There's already the Playstation The Tester show.
I get what you're saying, and I have certainly worked in places, where I trusted my boss way more than my co-workers - but I've also seen my share of woefully incompetent middle managers, so I'd be willing to give Valve's way a try. Of course it depends on the company not hiring a bunch of idiots. But it strikes me as odd to prefer democracy in governance but put my faith in a hopefully benevolent dictator in the workplace.
This system doesn't sound like democracy. It sounds like a system where the longest serving senators get to decide which new senators 'fit-in'.
I'm something of an anarchist myself, but the problem is when you mix up anarchism and capitalism... as far as I know Valve isn't really a "commune", as Newell owns a big part of it. They're also out to make money, which is fine in itself, but doesn't bode that well with the objectives of a democracy which would be the common good of the workers. It's hard to tell how things really work from the outside, and Valve obviously must have plenty of quality people, but I'd be slightly afraid to work in an elitist anarcho-capitalist environment. In a way I'd rather work in a place where the roles are more defined, and where the actual bosses don't pretend to be like anyother coworkers. Fortunately, I don't work in the videogame industry.
Again, I get what you're saying - but there's also a lot we don't know about how Valve is run and about this case, so there's a lot of conjecture and people, like Dan above, making blanket statements based on little evidence. I've seen the benevolent dictatorship model work out really crappy time after time, so I'd be willing to give something else a chance - at least I'd be willing to not rule it completely out before I knew all the details.
I don't know about most people, but if I'm friends with someone there's no way I'm going to say anything to get them fired unless they're horribly grossly incompetent. I might not stick up for them very passionately, but I'm not going to narc on them (obviously a different story if I were their direct supervisor - then that's part of my job, but I'd still probably be biased). So I don't see how it doesn't turn into mostly a popularity contest. The point of having managers has always seemed to me so that somebody could be the bad guy.
I wouldn't be surprised if these were all people who, in a more traditional hierarchy would have been fired one at a time for personal reasons. Especially if the Valve handbook is genuine, making the call on firing someone is going to be something coworkers will avoid when they aren't specifically given the responsibility to do so. I can also see Valve being hesitant to give that responsibility to a group of people given the extra power it wold generate in conflicts, especially the peer review system they claim to use for conflict resolution. Given the above and a number of people who really should be fired, because reasons, despite being perfectly decent people in other respects I can totally see a large clump of people being axed at once for personal reasons once someone finally gets around to doing something about it. Well, either that or Newell is running a cabal of dark Technomancers and preparing to hold the worlds games hostage for a kings ransom in bitcoins.
Well, that and so that someone has some level of responsibility and ownership. Otherwise you end up with a lot of hot potatoes getting passed around or someone who's a manager in all but name and remuneration.
