What's It Really like Working at Valve?

If you want some more insight into what working at Valve is actually like, People Make Games released a great video last year [1] where they talked to a bunch of current and former employees. While there are people who can thrive at Valve, their structure doesn't set people up for success. Valve has a many pseudo-managers, people who have a lot of influence at the company, but aren't designated as such. Doing well at Valve often requires trying to figure out what sort of things these people want, which they often don't make clear. Getting meaningful feedback is difficult, with employees often having little idea on what they need to do differently to improve things. It really seems like Valve is kind of a mess internally, and they probably wouldn't still be around if it wasn't for the enormous success of Steam. [1]: ▶ this video

They care about whatever Valve employees are interested in / is perceived as creating most value (not always the same as creating most value). Valve has a system of weighted peer feedback (impacting salary and sometimes continued employment) that encourages follow-the-leader mentality despite their supposedly open culture. People Make Games made an enlightening documentary on the Valve model and where it fails: ▶ this video Though if you need an example: Steam still doesn't have M1 binaries. Steam uses about 15 variants of UI framework, and some of it simply doesn't work on some platforms. Steam also took record time shipping an x86_64 (over x86) binary back in the day. Everything that's not the shiny current thing receives life support at most.

For people interested in this topic, the "People Make Games" channel on YouTube have a couple of related videos with original research/interviews: * "How Valve is Profiting from Steam's Back-Door Casinos": < link > * "Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?": < ▶ this video >