“Weird Paranoia” at Valve, Says Former Employee

http://kotaku.com/weird-paranoia-at-valve-says-former-employee-700121951

by danso • 13 years ago

95 108 13 years ago

This is exactly the kind of thing I've been curious about, regarding such "flat" companies like Valve and GitHub.

I've never quite believed that things could go so smoothly as they say. I'm not saying this article is necessarily true, but that I wish there were real research into the negatives of these kinds of management structures (or lack-of-management structures).

_delirium2• 13 years ago

I know there is some study of it in left-wing political groups, both writing by people within such groups, and some sociological study of them by outsiders. One of the manifestations of dissatisfaction with both Leninism/Stalinism's ultra hierarchical style on the one hand, and the emergence of "union bosses" in the trade-union movement on the other, was a strong ideological attachment to radically non-hierarchical organization among groups like anarchists, council communists, etc. And one of the immediate problems that comes up is non-transparent, de facto cliques and networks of behind-the-scenes leaders. There's been a bunch of ink spilled on trying to come up with consensus-based organizational methods and best practices that aim to avoid that and produce "actual" non-hierarchy rather than just the superficial look of non-hierarchy. In some brief searching I haven't come up with any particularly good summary to point to, though, and I don't know if there's any consensus (ha ha) on whether any methods are more successful than others.

In a different vein, there's a lot of academic stuff written on Scandinavian workplace management, which is not precisely flat, but has flattish hierarchies based more on rotating and interlocking committees, rather than boss-and-subordinates tree structures. The goal there seems to be to make the sub-groups that are making decisions overt, so informal cliques don't make the decisions. So there are a lot of committees, with rotating membership to make sure they don't develop into hierarchies. E.g. 5 people are chosen to be responsible for something like working conditions, or strategic direction, or integration of foreign workers, for a term of a year or two, and then a different 5 people will hold that power next year. A big controversy there is how much Scandinavian workplace management is tied to Scandinavian culture, i.e. would it work anywhere else?

JamesArgo2• 13 years ago

It's pretty obvious that hierarchy performs a necessary function. The focus should be on approximating a hierarchy of merit. Perhaps employees should be hired and tasks assigned by weighted vote, with a handicap for those who've performed well on a company betting market which predicts when x employee will finish a task and the quality of his/her work. The whole process could be made anonymous, provided the market is a play money affair.

xaritas2• 13 years ago

Fascinating to think that the organizational methods I saw on Youtube videos of OWS decision making groups last year is an echo of a response to Leninism. Any recommendations to sources on this connection in case I want to follow up?

EthanHeilman5• 13 years ago

ParEcon is an attempt at what you mention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

This is a more problem than networks vs hierarchies since both face this problem. All companies that succeed by definition start with a successful social structure, but as a companies increases the number of employees the social structure has trouble scaling. Clausewitz discusses a simple example of this with an army, as the army grows the number of links in the chain from a commander to a unit increases. He proposes a number of solutions (increase the unit size, increase the branching degree, split the army, etc) but in typical Clausewitzian fashion admits there is an inherent trade off between size and effectiveness.

Valve maybe choosing to stay small to avoid scaling beyond their effective structure. This is a counter-intuitive strategy in the world of bigger is better, but I'm interested in seeing how it plays out.

thenomad• 13 years ago

A Terry Pratchett quote seems appropriate:

"Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don't have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn't have."

Hario• 13 years ago

The canonical text on the subject is "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman.

Freeman was a member of the 70's feminist movement, and wrote this essay to critique how 'flatness' played out - and suggest alternatives.

The big, tl;dr idea could be boiled down to this: Flat organizations substitute unelected, informal leaders for visible, accountable ones.

Essay: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes...

makomk3• 13 years ago

Any time someone claims there's no power hierarchy within their group or organisation, I pretty much automatically assume they're mistaken and there's all kinds of informal power struggles going on. It seems to be true of groups as diverse as Wikipedia and the very early feminist groups, which claimed to be non-hierachical but really weren't.

EthanHeilman5• 13 years ago

All large groups have power struggles, but that doesn't mean they are hierarchies, they could be strongly connected graphs or other topologies (for instance voting on a referendum is both non-hierarchical and a power struggle).

Aloisius• 13 years ago

I've experienced a flat-like organization and I have to say, it was easily one of the worst experiences of my career.

The company was setup like a collection of startups. You would pitch your ideas to executive management who would green light hiring and what not. You'd also borrow or entice engineers over to your group. When I joined, it sounded very interesting, but it was a complete nightmare.

The executive management would green light things, but they'd green light 10x more than could be done by the engineering staff. The hiring queue was so long that you'd be lucky to see engineers hired for your project for 6 months. That meant stealing engineers from other groups which encouraged serious protectionism by doing things like say, loading down your group with busy work to keep your empire intact.

It was a political nightmare because no one was really in charge, so everyone claimed ownership. You had review processes for every single step of development by whatever group claimed ownership over something you touched regardless of how trivial.

The executive management rarely stuck their necks out making decisions. You had to prove something was better with data. The fact that data was easily manipulated didn't bother anyone, as long as they didn't have to take any blame.

The thing is, the company itself is wildly successful and could be held up as a model for flat organizations if you didn't look too closely. But really, it is in spite of their organization rather than because of it.

meowface• 13 years ago

That really does sound like the kind of thing that would look good on paper but be terrible in practice.

What market is this company in, if I may ask?

hrkristian• 13 years ago

The fact that Valve has stayed "small" might be the singlemost reason why they're actually pushing for alternative gaming options. Steam for Linux and the games that come with, do you figure that'd be the case today if the company had sold out like for instance Blizzard? Steambox/Piston? Yeah, no. It's a novel idea with some potential if they can get the module upgrading right along with a stable whatever Linux distro they end up going with, but no stakeholder og board of Scrooges would sign off on that stuff.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

I'm getting older, and I've seen about 40 companies between places where I've worked, those I've advised, and places where I have some insider detail.

I think that open allocation in terms of project mobility is the right way to go. I also think that flat structures are rarely truly that, and that they're certainly not resistant to fast growth (more than 20% per year).

There's a paradox inherent in the fact that if there's no management at all, informal psuedomanagement appears and that's worse (because it's unstable and must compete to hold ground). What you want is minimalist, benevolent management that operates in the joint interest of the company and its people, but that seems to require a relatively rare lack of ego. You need a cultural shift to a maker's culture where people who build things are held in highest esteem, and the long-term builders/individual contributors have as much influence and credibility as management.

It's pretty rare that one can do away with management outright, though. Someone has to protect the good.

neilk• 13 years ago

There may be other options apart from flat-management versus hierarchical management.

Management is basically there to provide accountability. But peer systems can also provide some accountability.

Semco has an interesting model because they do insane things like allow employees to set their own salary. But your salary will be public, and if you can't prove to your peers on a regular basis that you are still needed, you will be asked to pack up your things.

This is just one of the way that they've delegated management functions downwards, which by all accounts works very well. There is still an official hierarchy but it's more about mediating disputes or very high level strategy.

http://www.freibergs.com/resources/articles/leadership/semco...

jongraehl• 13 years ago

'certainly not resistant to fast growth'

Do you mean the opposite? Either way - "certainly" is a cheap trick. Reasons please.

__--__2• 13 years ago

I don't know, the more I see of this conversation between flat vs hierarchical management, the more I think the actual structure doesn't matter. If you have highly ego driven people with bad motivations, the company will be a bad place to work no matter the structure. Small, family owned or "lifestyle" businesses tend to be better because the motivations are more modest. People working and running those companies are looking to make a living instead of getting filthy rich. Maybe I'm romanticizing it, but the best jobs I've ever had were at private companies where the focus wasn't on getting obscenely rich.

incision2• 13 years ago

I've had a few experiences with flat organizations.

Notably, the one which was proud to loudly proclaim it's flatness and openness was far and away the worst. It didn't quite fit the high school analogy, but it wasn't far off.

In reality, the "flat", "open" structure was actually a concentric hierarchy radiating from The Boss. The Boss > The Inner Circle > Untouchables > Loyals > The Rest.

As bad as that was, I'm still inclined to something generally flat given an exceptional leader to set the tone.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

Given how rare heroes are, a system that relies on heroes to work properly is a system that doesn't work.

__--__2• 13 years ago

How is this different from a traditionally structured office? The Boss is the CEO, the inner circle are the VPs. The Untouchables can be literally anywhere in the org, but generally have special titles, like "Director of Creative Direction". The Loyals tend to be management. The rest are the rank and file.

All this really tells me is, given a lack of formal hierarchy, people tend to organize themselves into the exact same hierarchies that are formalized everywhere else.

pekk• 13 years ago

Why are you specifically interested in the negatives and not in an overall accurate comparison?

LandoCalrissian2• 13 years ago

I find it pretty astounding that she is bitter considering they let her take all her research and hardware developments when she left with no stings attached. You would never get that a most companies.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/08/hardware-hacker-spills-on-...

From that link too it sounds like she gave Gabe Newell an ultimatum, but here she's claims she was fired because she was a trouble maker.

EDIT: The ultimatum appears to be after she was already fired, thanks for the clarification.

makomk3• 13 years ago

From that link, it sounds like she gave Gabe Newell an ultimatum after the project she was working on had already effectively been sabotaged from within.

LandoCalrissian2• 13 years ago

Yeah, after re-reading that appears to be the case.

danso• 13 years ago

If you were passionate about a project and believe that, had you been trusted enough to be given adequate resources, you could've built something great for the company you loved...no amount of severance can completely eliminate the bitterness.

srdev8• 13 years ago

She told Gabe after she was fired that he should either fund the project she was working on personally or give it to her. Its not much of an ultimatum because she was already fired and had no bargaining power. Its pretty awesome thing for Valve to do, all things considered.

EvanAnderson• 13 years ago

There's some discussion here and a link to a podcast episode where Jeri talks about the firing and being given the IP for her project:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5786200

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

So, because her former employer gives her certain benefits, she's not entitled to feel bitter? That logic reminds me of people who think that presents 'make up' for abuse and/or neglect.

moomin• 13 years ago

Worth bearing in mind that she's not an isolated case. A lot of talented people have unexpectedly left Valve recently. There's a possibility that Valve's culture is failing.

Ygg22• 13 years ago

Maybe they are approaching limits of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number.

epsylon3• 13 years ago

At 300 people, they are well above that limit. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6018134

Zikes• 13 years ago

I suspect it's more an issue of critical mass. A "flat" culture like that can probably only grow so large and remain stable and cohesive. Without the leadership and direction that even a minimal hierarchy could provide, they can't afford to branch out to such an extreme degree as what her AR project would require.

vbl• 13 years ago

I'd add that trust is a critical component of flat structures. If you lose it, or feel threatened and react accordingly, it shifts power around in a way that will ultimately unbalance the ship.

ownagefool10• 13 years ago

Personally I think it's a case of her jimmies being rustled.

She's complaining about the flat structure because she cannot cocere coders to get interested and join her project. Maybe that's because they're all chasing the big bucks and prestige or maybe it's because they're paranoid, but maybe it's just because she's not a gamer, working on an unproven prototype that doesn't seem to have any gameplay, in a gaming company filled with people who care about actual games.

Of course it couldn't be that she actually doesn't get valve and doesn't fit in, the problem NEEDS to be with the organisation, not the person who admitted to constantly complaining they couldn't hire someone cheap to do their grunt work.

No disrespect, I'm sure she's extremely talented but it really does sound like she fit the culture and I think valve were pretty cool to let her export the project and continue working on it.

P.S. I have a bias point of view. I was a pretty hardcore gamer and I really don't believe her project is at all interesting. Sometime in the future, maybe. But more likely in a venue like laser tag, probably not for a pc gamer. Thus I don't think it was fair of her to complain until she actually proved her concept.

srdev8• 13 years ago

She's complaining about the flat structure because she cannot cocere coders to get interested and join her project. Maybe that's because they're all chasing the big bucks and prestige or maybe it's because they're paranoid, but maybe it's just because she's not a gamer, working on an unproven prototype that doesn't seem to have any gameplay, in a gaming company filled with people who care about actual games.

She relates stories about how employees would come by to play with the prototypes, so there appeared to be some interest from a gaming perspective. She elaborates that there are disincentives to work on risky or less-visible projects because of the way that the bonuses work. Assuming what she says is accurate, that sounds like a legitimate problem.

Of course it couldn't be that she actually doesn't get valve and doesn't fit in, the problem NEEDS to be with the organisation, not the person who admitted to constantly complaining they couldn't hire someone cheap to do their grunt work.

The problem was specifically that they found machinists who were qualified and willing, but were rejected at the eleventh hour for not being a culture fit. That is a problem. I know the conventional wisdom around here is that office culture is king, but there should be some amount of flexibility in order to staff necessary positions.

ownagefool10• 13 years ago

She relates stories about how employees would come by to play with the prototypes, so there appeared to be some interest from a gaming perspective. She elaborates that there are disincentives to work on risky or less-visible projects because of the way that the bonuses work. Assuming what she says is accurate, that sounds like a legitimate problem.

She may well have a point, but that doesn't change the fact that she herself admitted her prototype was way to cumbersome to clamour interest and she hoped that newer, smaller versions would help this. It also doesn't change the gameplay sounded like an AR version of D&D, which makes it sound like a bunch of geeks playing with toy swords dressed in cloaks. Fun for some, but not exactly a direct parallel to PC gaming.

The problem was specifically that they found machinists who were qualified and willing, but were rejected at the eleventh hour for not being a culture fit. That is a problem. I know the conventional wisdom around here is that office culture is king, but there should be some amount of flexibility in order to staff necessary positions.

Watching the video, it sounded a lot more like it was Engineers being rejected at the 11th hour while machinists were never on the agenda.

rst• 13 years ago

She's complaining about the flat structure because it was unwilling to accommodate hardware specialists (e.g., a machinist) which her project needed, but which the software-centric crowd just wouldn't hire. The specific complaint about folks like this was that they were poor fits for the culture as a whole, which is almost certainly true as far as it goes: a machinist can't toddle off with their wheeled desk and join a purely software game project, because they don't have software skills. In other words, they can't function the way a member of that culture is expected to. But at the same time, skills in machining, board design, and the like are necessary if you're going to have a hardware project go to completion.

The bottom line is that her project was just doing something different from the rest of the organization, and needed some degree of autonomy --- particularly in terms of really big areas like hiring --- to do it effectively. The flat structure was simply unable to provide that, because that requires that there be a corner of the organization where, say, software devs have nowhere near the sort of influence that they're used to having on, say, hiring as a matter of course.

ownagefool10• 13 years ago

I don't think being an expert in a field prohibits you from getting hired by valve. Her project comes across to me as R&D where a small team of experts are working with something trying to find an application, while she seems to come across as wanted to scale up and produce something functional now.

From my POV it almost certianly sounded like she actually needed software folks, as opposed to additional hardware, because the nudges from valve were that her project had to actually display some interesting game play before anyone would be interested.

grannyg00se• 13 years ago

What's with this trend of adding some kind of menu overlay on the top of your page that allows text to scroll underneath?

You read a page, then scroll forward a page, and 4 lines of text at the top are obscured. You then have to scroll back up individual lines and try to figure out where you were.

Am I the only one hating on this design trend?

adventureloop• 13 years ago

I despise this UI trend, if I really want to read a page I will jump into Chome's Inspector and fix the CSS. Otherwise I navigate away.

Amadou• 13 years ago

It is a waste of screen space. Something that the UIs of chrome and firefox (and probably other browsers which I don't use) have tried to improve upon in recent years. What the browser giveth, the web designer taketh.

While this is probably not too helpful, I didn't even notice the problem on that site because I use a portrait-oriented monitor for my web browser, the entire page was visible without scrolling.

protomyth• 13 years ago

I look at it and think some web designer really thinks the network logo staying on during an entire television show was a great idea. I just hope they don't start having animated ads drop down from the bar every couple of minutes.

srdev8• 13 years ago

There's a lot of discussion around this interview, and unfortunately much of it tries to paint her as a trouble-making whiner. A lot of her complaints match what I would expect from an attempt of a non-hierarchal organization: cliques, lack of ability to get man-power for essential but non-popular work, and inability to consider points of views that don't match with the larger group. The potential downsides of open allocation systems are swept under the rug as bitterness, and nothing of value is gained.

What I wonder is, are the issues she encountered fixable? She recommends a small layer of management, but that seems like it would erode away at the system they are trying to harbor. Since the issue seemed to be specific to the challenges of the hardware division, maybe they could have just split and applied the fixes only to the hardware portion.

ownagefool10• 13 years ago

I have no idea what goes on internally in valve but the lady wasn't working on essential but non-popular work, she was working on an idea, based around her desire to engineer hardware, retroactively attempting to add gameplay to it after what sounds like numerous attempts were made to nudge her onto course and remind her she was working at a gaming company.

She pretty much says all that in the video interview, it's just a shame that people have bought into valve having a problem, rather than valve just being the wrong place for her to work and follow her desire to produce new and interesting hardware, which doesn't sound like it entirly fits the pc gaming landscape.

talmand9• 13 years ago

Do you work at Valve? Because you are laying claim to a great deal of information that you say you don't know.

You say you have no idea what goes on internally at Valve but you then make a judgement call on someone's work at Valve? You seem to believe the parts of her story that are negative towards her but choose to ignore the parts of her story that are negative towards Valve? What's wrong with thinking there might be a problem at Valve? Hardware doesn't fit the PC gaming landscape?

Why don't we go with the idea that we don't have enough information to know anything of what's going on inside of Valve other than the people inside Valve?

dnautics• 13 years ago

it sounds like the 100% democratic across the board structure may have failed - if Valve wanted to try this again, i would suggest they self-appoint a "small committee" of people interested in spearheading the project, keep the same "internal corporate rules" but keep decision-making between the two sides of the company firewalled for a fixed period of time while the new venture gains traction.

MartinCron• 13 years ago

"I was fired for being abrasive," she said. "And I probably was"

As someone who has been there, I'm impressed by her brutally honest introspection.

mindstab• 13 years ago

I'm not really surprised by reports of an ~ unofficial semi secret cabal forming and consolidating power. It's human nature to collect power and if the rules say "flat" then the only way to get power is to band together. Power generally wants to consolidate and it seems to take concerted constant effort to diffuse it.

talmand9• 13 years ago

You only have to watch the first season of Survivor to see that very thing in action.

patcon• 13 years ago

Isn't this just the results of this philosophy? http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2013/05/06/toxic-employees-3-type...

I'm not even passing judgement. If some group is sowing discontent in what is otherwise known as a happy, fluid environment, you get rid of them. I pass no judgement on whether that environment is "right" or "wrong", but my sense was that you deal with it quickly before it spreads.

talmand9• 13 years ago

Ah, but what if enough of these types of people get together to form their own inner group, let's call it a clique, to the point that they can manipulate what goes on within the company? Then this group of people can label any undesirable, for whatever reason, as a person that's difficult to work with. If successful in convincing enough people outside their little group of such things, then they control a great deal of what happens inside that company.

makomk3• 13 years ago

Well, that's interesting. That article's scrupulously gender-neutral in describing two of the three types of employees, but consistently genders "The Complaint Artist" as female.

DanBC• 13 years ago

For people who don't know, Jeri Ellsworth does interesting hardware stuff.

The C64 in a joystick case (in 2004); the homemade transistors, etc.

(http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth/videos)

9999• 13 years ago

Yes, it's well worth watching the entire interview where she talks in detail about CastAR, the project she was working on at Valve, and what she's doing with it now.

(http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/c/2488434)

sillysaurus5• 13 years ago

It's important to take this article with a grain of salt. It appears that it was written based solely on her (obviously one-sided) testimony.

kevingadd3• 13 years ago

It's one-sided because Valve refuses to comment on the (very visible) firing of (what appears to be) their entire hardware team. What else is there?

talmand9• 13 years ago

It wasn't just the hardware team, there were quite a few surprises that day.

sillysaurus5• 13 years ago

What could Valve possibly say? "We fired her because we felt it was a mistake to hire her, and then afterwards there wasn't anything for the rest of the hardware team to do."

It sucks, but it happens.

Incidentally, this is exactly why a large portion of the Valve handbook is devoted to hiring. Letting questionable people into your company will poison the place from the inside, and then from the outside. This is a perfect example of that.

Valve wanted to get into the hardware field. Then the way she went about hiring people made it clear that it was a mistake to hire her in the first place. What else was there to do except layoff the entire hardware team, or let her ruin the company culture by acquiescing to her demands for "let these engineers work here, or this project can't work"? And maybe it couldn't. But preserving company culture is far more important than this particular project, especially at a place like Valve.

bockris• 13 years ago

It definitely wasn't their whole hardware team. I personally known one EE still at Valve and I think there are a couple more that I follow on various social networks.

to3m• 13 years ago

More evidence, as if more were needed, that in this sort of situation, you should probably have all parties agree to a "no comment" all round. And then, having agreed to it, all parties should stick to their agreement and bite their fucking tongues!

Dear people, air your dirty linen in the privacy of your own home...

jokoon• 13 years ago

Well the bigger the boat, the more vulnerable it is.

New cool things don't come out of big companies, it either comes out of small/medium companies who did not prove their worth, or either of particular smart people or indie devs.

I don't even know how successful google is at this 20% "free time" thing. I don't think it works, because any hiring process is always biased in order to have those people work on things they want. Not only people working at google could turn this free time and environment into a success.

You don't sit talented people in a room and get success. You need to sit aware people who just have the motivation to do cool things, and let them work.

"Talent" is overrated. You can't tell a person is talented because this person had or is having success. You don't plan success, you just see it where it is, and make it happen, talent or not.

Getting hired because of talent, and you end up in your comfort zone. Then bye bye "talent".

spikels• 13 years ago

Why does this article call Jeri Ellsworth a "longtime" Valve employee? She was hired in in early 2012 and fired in early 2013.

shadowmint• 13 years ago

Just thought I'd point out that everything I've read about Valve says that people who are a cultural fit are the most important thing.

Can't hire a machinist?

Well, what exactly would they do there? What if they decide to go and write games instead? Do they have to hire another machinist then?

There's lots of talk of social cliques, and maybe they didn't handle the dismissal process right, but if she was trying to create a hierarchical hardware department (where say, a machinist is required to stay in that role), that's the end for her, or Valve stops being Valve.

mwfunk• 13 years ago

I always felt like flat organizations, once they grew beyond a certain point (25 employees? 50 employees?) would just end up replacing a formal, explicit structure with an informal, implicit structure that is much more confusing and frustrating for everyone involved.

cdegroot• 13 years ago

Personally, I think this is more an indicator that, whatever you do, growth sucks. Semco is most likely still doing well because they have an enormous amount of small subsidiaries.

Something similar happened to Toyota - once the poster child of lean companies, then they wanted to become the largest car producer in the world, the rest is history.

I wonder - maybe it is time to pick up these clues and start being satisfied with working at companies that are fun and stable and stay small?

amerika• 13 years ago

Gosh, a lack of hierarchy means that everyone is unstable because they might get climbed over by others. Who would've guessed.

fractallyte• 13 years ago

Perfectly described by George Orwell: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." (Animal Farm, 1945)

“Weird Paranoia” at Valve, Says Former Employee

Related Stories