from Hacker News

Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?

by stoicjumbotron on 1/28/23, 4:13 PM with 4 comments

• by haunter on 1/28/23, 6:10 PM

  From a gamer POV Valve always seemed like an ADHD group. They hyper focus on one thing, they make it pretty good... and suddenly they throw it away without any words and might never touch it again. Like what happened to the L4D franchise, TF2, Artifact, Dota Underlords, the VR projects, Steam Controller etc. I like their games and use Steam all the time but ngl it's hard to take them seriously anymore. I honestly think if it weren't for IceFrog they would had already ditch Dota 2.

  But that's more or less becuase of the compensation strategy. As Richard Geldreich said: "Nothing will get worked on unless it's perceived that it will lead to a good bonus." https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1520473199410135040

• by Kab1r on 1/28/23, 9:35 PM

  After watching the whole video, I have to say it's not very well written. The video, without any real thesis, fails to reach any real conclusions; or at very least, it fails to convince me of anything new. I think it's pretty stupid to look at Valve giving employees money, without requiring them to spend it any single way, and turn around and say they might use that money to fund anti-BLM organizations. Pretty much every problem identified by this video is not exclusive to Valve. I certainly don't think that this is a great way to determine compensation, but neither are traditional corporate structures. The connection with the themes in Lord of the Flies are really not there. I am not saying the problems aren't real, just that the video does an awful job conveying them.

• by ecshafer on 1/28/23, 10:16 PM

  I saw this video and it was not good. It makes pretty large jumps to conclusions with no evidence and seems more like a hit piece than anything.