Former Valve employee, Rich Geldreich, who worked for the company from 2009 to 2014, spent many days in a row talking about insider books of ‘self-governing’ companies – including one located in Bellevue, Washington, where Valve’s headquarters are located… Some of Geldreich’s comments could refer to any autonomous company (i.e. a company) no hierarchical management system), but in general, he mainly talks about Valve. For example, Geldreich talked about major staff cuts in 2013and we know Valve actually cut staff that year.
While Geldreich says he prefers an autonomous system to a decentralized one, many of the ‘autonomous’ policies he describes are not amusing at all. The company he mentioned is often advertised as a friendly staff environment, but it is actually very stressful, an extremely difficult place to work, always being ‘hacked’ and taken advantage of for extra money.
After joining this one Bellevue company one of the psuedo-managers kept ragging on a well known physics coder I reputable. He joined the company and left for another after a few months.
— Rich Geldreich (@richgel999) July 15, 2018
Here are a few descriptions from the lengthy tweets, helping us to believe that it is Valve:
“At an autonomous company there’s an extra bonus: Once you’ve touched on a project, you’re responsible for it until the product is complete. The team will keep your bounty and assume you messed something up. It’s like a legitimate form of corporate blackmail.”
(In 2013, former Valve economist Yanis Varoufakis explained that bonuses are the main part of Valve employees’ income: “This salary system is heavily based on bonuses. So the contract is only a base salary. The lowest version. Then, the most interesting part of the contract lies in the process of evaluating employees against each other, which is quite complicated. It includes a lot of evaluation processes.”)
“The company then moved into a new field. They had a strategy of hiring her temporarily and kicking her out after a year without warning, before that the company had already hired all of her friends.”
(During Geldreich’s time with Valve, the company dropped the virtual reality development business, fired developer Jeri Ellsworth and many others, but Geldreich may also be referring to someone else.)
“One temporary hiring strategy that you can use is to hire a famous writer, a featured developer, or someone with specialized skills (like economics). Have them write about great experiences working in the company. After completing everything with these people, the company quietly ‘sends’ them away.”
(You seem to be referring to the economist Yanis Varoufakis, who talks about the bonuses mentioned above, and writes blog posts for Valve. In 2015, Varoufakis was elected Greece’s Economy Minister.)
“All self-managed firms must ‘leak’ the Corporate Governance Guide. It should be easy to read and funny. The Marketing team creates these products to attract new recruits. Everyone who worked in the company laughed mockingly about these documents.”
(Valve’s employee manual was leaked in 2012, around the time Geldreich was with the company.)
Some of Geldreich’s comments are similar to what Ellsworth said when he was fired by Valve. “…There is actually a very strong underground hierarchy in the company and it feels like a school,” Ellsworth said in 2013. “There are a lot of famous ‘students’ who have gathered a lot of power in the company. company, then the troublemakers, and the people in between.”
Geldreich also describes the powerful, the people who hold power in the company but always make confusing decisions, and a culture that forces employees to flatter them with ‘sponsors’ if they want peace of mind. .
At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends.
— Rich Geldreich (@richgel999) July 16, 2018
While Valve was rated as a great place to work in reviews by anonymous employees on the Glassdoor website, some of the evidence from former employees echoes comments from Geldreich and Ellsworth. One Glassdoor reviewer called Valve’s employee reviews a “popularity contest,” while another said “Valve’s reward process creates a culture of illusion,” although reviews are generally positive. pole.
“If you hear about Valve, you will hear that the company has no boss, no manager, no supervision and this is a self-governing system: everyone is smart, cool and can work on their own without anyone reminding them. reminder,” according to a negative review on Glassdoor. “That’s just the surface… To be successful at Valve, you need to be on a powerful team, and even if you’ve succeeded temporarily, make sure you’re beautiful in everyone’s eyes. No matter how hard you work, how creative and unique your product is, if your bosses and people don’t like you, you’ll soon be fired or sidelined.”
This description sounds similar to the “purification” process in Geldreich’s tweets, as well as the systematic assertions within the company that company policy is indeed influenced by certain people in positions of authority. high and powerful.
If you are a total outsider coming into the firm, your best bet is to buddy up with a baron and/or their friends and just make their lives easier. Be a machine and get shit done for a while. Your goal should be to rapidly up your purge immunity level before the next firing cycle.
— Rich Geldreich (@richgel999) July 18, 2018
Valve has long had a reputation as a mysterious company: staff and creativity are always transferred between projects without any restrictions, and the CEO is always happy to answer fan emails while still being an employee. mysterious object. This makes us not know everything about the working environment at Valve, and that attracts everyone’s curiosity.
Many people have had a positive experience at Valve, or at least they think so, and that’s reflected on Glassdoor while they were with the company. In 2012, Michael Abrash praised the clarity and freedom he had at Valve, including the autonomous system within the company that produces “wonderful results, the likes of which cannot be seen in a hierarchical system.” traditional.” (Abrash left Valve to join Oculus in 2014.)
However, there is also criticism from former employees that the teamwork atmosphere within Valve can create hostility among employees. Many former Valve employees say that the “non-hierarchical” system the company says does not really exist, and that projects and personnel still depend on the power and decisions of the operator, like any other. any other job.
I’m not interested in talking to the press at all, so please stop contacting me as I won’t reply. For the record, all of my tweets are based off real-life events, and I have borrowed terminology, ideas, or concepts from other current/ex-coworkers at various places.
— Rich Geldreich (@richgel999) July 19, 2018
When asked why Geldreich revealed these things about the game industry, he said “nobody is brave enough to do that” and accused the media of being pawned by corporations. As for why you didn’t name Valve by name, Geldreich said to a person that he did not use “the V word” (referring to Valve) to avoid being noticed by the press. However, in the past, he has criticized Valve, saying his time working here was the “worst experience” of his life.
Geldreich’s tweets talk about a lot of bad stuff in the ‘self-governing’ system. For example, he talked about a company, claiming that the chairman/CEO had a meeting to talk about “how he manipulated the media.” I also accusing the game industry “illegal wage collusion” and Employees are blackmailed from the company.
By PC Gamer
Source link: The terrible secret behind the dream job at Valve: draconian policies and ‘self-governance system’
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