How does the company Valve – game developer
Valve Corporation is a company that has created legendary games like Half-Life, Counter Strike, Dota 2, Portal, and others.
The company was created by Gabe Newell, whose biography also includes work at Microsoft for as long as 13 years. To say that Valve Corporation is an innovative company is to say nothing. It is perhaps “more innovative” than many who consider themselves as such. And this concerns not only the developments and the activity itself, but also what the company is from the inside. After reading a few principles of the internal structure of Valve Corporation, you might think “what the hell is happening there,” and you may want to work there yourself.
Everyone does what he wants
New employees at Valve Corporation in the first few weeks of work often cannot understand what is happening. They came to work in the company, but why no one gives them specific tasks? And they will not give. The company does not hire people to do any particular work. She is recruiting just promising and talented. And they themselves must understand and decide what useful Valve Corporation can provide. A well-known programmer Michael Abrash recalls his first weeks at the company: “I thought that I would be assigned a task right away. But I heard only a couple of assumptions from employees regarding what I should probably do … These were just their thoughts, not direct instructions to action. Days went by, and no one gave me any concrete work. And then I realized that everything is arranged in a special way. I need to find my own “place” in Valve Corporation ”.
In the search for new people involved all
Finding new employees is a top priority for the entire company. You will never hear “No specialists are required at Valve Corporation right now.” They are always required, and the process of finding new people never stops. Moreover, absolutely all personnel are involved in this. And the sooner an employee starts attracting new specialists to the company, the more the management will like him. The company has such a rule: “If you are now looking for a new employee, conducting an interview or something else related to the recruitment process, then you need to postpone all your other tasks and not even think about them.”
No bosses and subordinates
Gabe Newell, the founder of Valve Corporation, believes that innovative companies should not have a traditional relationship between employees on the principle of “boss – slave”. This is suitable only for the military sphere, where soldiers must clearly obey the orders of the commander. Or production, where it is necessary to constantly produce the same product. Modern computer industry does not fall under either one or the other option. In Valve Corporation there is no organizational hierarchy familiar to many, no superiors, subordinates or even positions. Sometimes employees of Valve Corporation themselves come up with the name of their position, so that you can write it on a business card, as many people will not be able to take seriously a specialist without a position.
Gabe Newell doesn’t even have a position. One day, in an interview with Greater Cumer, one of the company’s first employees, he said that he did not know what position Newell took: “Following logic, he is probably the CEO. But I can’t say it with confidence. ” Every new employee in the company is given a small guidebook of Valve Corporation, which says that “no one in the company is your boss, and Gabe Newell is not the one to the greatest extent”.
Tables with wheels
Since at Valve, anyone can do what he wants, his workplace can be anywhere. That is why every table in the office should have wheels – so that it can be easily moved to a convenient place. So employees can quickly team up and work on one common task. Or simply move your desk to where they think they will work better and more comfortable. In the same manual for new employees there is also a point about moving tables around the office: “Pull out the computer cable from the outlet, move your desk, plug the cable into another outlet. Now you can get back to work. ”
More creative
The more interesting and unusual past the employee – the better. That is why the company has a former actress of a children’s puppet theater, creators of a satirical site about video games, a developer of special effects for the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, an artist who paints cool graffiti. And there are a lot of such people in the company. To get a job at Valve Corporation, you do not need to have knowledge of video game development, but you must be interesting and creative.
