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Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?

by connor on 4/29/12, 1:14 AM with 99 comments

• by wpietri on 4/29/12, 3:00 AM

  Do the dishes in the office sink get washed? If so, by whom? And how clean is the kitchen area?

  This may seem like a joke, but the answer says a lot about an organization. For example, last time I was at the Wikimedia Foundation offices, this sign was above the sink:

  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:These_dishes_may_requ...

• by talentdeficit on 4/29/12, 3:21 AM

  i don't work at valve, but i work at an organisation with a very similar management structure (there is none) and payment scheme (autonomous self organizing teams are paid by clients and distribute payments as negotiated by the group). we have virtually zero overhead and minimal residual or recurring income so we are not identical to valve, but their employee handbook could very easily be ours

  we have a number of 'bad apples', but they generally find themselves ostracized very quickly. as we have no downside income guarantees (we are organized as a group of independent contractors), people very quickly fall out of the organisation

  i assume valve accomplish similar by minimizing payments to individuals who act in bad faith. as they are probably primarily financially motivated and valve is likely a great entry on a cv, i'm sure they don't stick around long

• by wpietri on 4/29/12, 3:03 AM

  In the dark days when I worked for financial traders, once a year the company would set aside a pool for bonuses and then try to figure out how to share it out based on contribution. If you went around and asked people what percentage they deserved and then added them up, the total would never be less than 300%.

  I don't think most people are quite as bad about this as financial traders, but I imagine no group's numbers add up to 100% exactly. What's the dynamic like at Valve, and how do you make sure people feel fairly treated?

• by lemming on 4/29/12, 11:19 AM

  Another notable company that does this is Gore & Associates (of GoreTex fame):

  (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates)

  Unlike the traditional management structure that Bill Gore had experienced at DuPont, he proposed a flat, lattice-like organizational structure where everyone shares the same title of “associate.” There are neither chains of command nor predetermined channels of communication. Leaders replace the idea of “bosses.” Associates choose to follow leaders rather than have bosses assigned to them. Associate contribution reviews are based on a peer-level rating system.

  I always assumed this sort of org could only function with relatively small companies (e.g. Github, maybe even Valve) but Gore has 9000 employees - pretty impressive.

• by cypherpunks01 on 4/29/12, 4:00 AM

  For more context, here's their employee handbook that explains their flat org: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

• by gauravk92 on 4/29/12, 2:19 AM

  1. How do you handle the logical conclusion of letting your workers do whatever they want, they don't do anything? This may not apply to all employees, but it surely applies to at least one, and I wanted to know specifically how you might handle that situation.

  2. What sort of system do you have to address problems with the unconditional hierarchy? For example, if an employee disagrees with Gabe, who wins and how is that handled?

  UPDATE: addition to question #1

• by brentpayne on 4/29/12, 2:34 AM

  How many Valve employees does it take to change a light bulb? Who orders the light bulbs and who decides when and where it is to be installed?

• by threepipeproblm on 4/29/12, 2:09 PM

  I think it's sad that so many commenters genuinely can't seem to fathom anything positive happening without a hierarchical / top-down / command-and-control approach. Especially when a few billion years of evolution has basically never selected that approach (something like a bee colony may seem similar, but is radically different... it's not like there is a manager bee for every 5-7 worker bees). Please don't vote me into oblivion for saying this.

• by wpietri on 4/29/12, 4:58 AM

  How many hours a day does the average Valve person spend in meetings? How are they organized?

  I've looked into some co-ops, including San Francisco's venerable (and very profitable) Rainbow Grocery. One of the biggest complaints is the amount and/or difficulty of meetings, but they see them as necessary to settle issues with sufficient buy-in from all stakeholders. How does Valve minimize that pain?

• by irollboozers on 4/29/12, 5:19 AM

  This is actually great, I had the same idea last week coming across that handbook, so hopefully someone at Valve can shed some light.

  I was mostly curious about project management. It seemed like everyone could be very fluid going from one project to another, or even proposing one on the spot and going on to execute it. There has to some sort of enforcement for this though. Are there expectations, do the self-selected leaders lay out milestones or goals, what happens when those aren't met?

  Valve doesn't necessarily seem to have a reputation for having too many product delays vs. always shipping on time. They definitely seem to have constant flow of different products getting out the door though.

  Hopefully someone answers, otherwise I might just hitchhike across the lake into Bellevue and see if I can meet with someone there. Very curious to learn what makes their system actually work well.

• by wpietri on 4/29/12, 4:50 AM

  How do you settle disputes?

  In hierarchical organizations, people often look to authority figures to decide between competing alternatives. How does Valve avoid or deal with deadlock, forking, cliques, cabals, butthurt sulking, and other common group dysfunctions?

• by flavien_bessede on 4/29/12, 2:23 AM

  Next up: "Poll: How many people consider switching to Valve organization?"

• by teach on 4/29/12, 2:23 AM

  Is it known that Valve employees frequent HN? I'm not sure why this story is here.

• by Paul_Morgan on 4/29/12, 3:55 AM

  Best Buy has something similar called ROWE:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE

  The business measures performance instead of hours. At Valve the performance appears to be measured as 'shipped'.

  I'd also guess that Gabe is practicing his own version of servant leadership:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

• by lgieron on 4/29/12, 3:13 PM

  Job postings on Valve site tend to be very specific about the person's duties. To me, it seems to be in contradiction with being able to choose how one contributes to the company.

  http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html

• by wpietri on 4/29/12, 4:10 AM

  How do you deal with the Dunning-Kruger effect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

  The short version is that people who are good at things generally get that way because they have a strong ability to tell good work from bad. People who are bad at things can't tell the difference, so they a) have a hard time improving, and b) think their low-quality work is pretty swell.

  Is your culture perhaps unusually frank? Alternatively, is it very supportive in a way that makes critique more comfortable? Might you have a formal (or informal?) mentorship program so that people get useful feedback?

  Are there peer groups that meet around particular skill areas? E.g., do visual artists get together regularly to show recent work and discuss it?

• by serverascode on 5/2/12, 9:30 PM

  I go home for lunch. So I wash my dishes at home because that's where I use them.

• by richcollins on 4/29/12, 5:39 AM

  github has a similar structure. Maybe a githubber will chime in.