“Weird Paranoia” at Valve, Says Former Employee

Half-Life 3?

No but seriously she probably deserved it. Being abrasive in a work environment is a huge no-no. And bitching about it doesn't exactly help her case so...
 
Good luck getting a job when you publicly talk shit about your former employer. Isn't usually a wise move
 
> posting a Kotaku link

There, I fixed the source for you. We don't need sensational stories around here.
 
ill just copy pasta what i posted on reddit:


the fact that the VR project she was working on eventually stagnated only emphasizes valve's t-shaped employee model. wide range of skills, expertise in one field.

from what i understand, valve's staff was split on developing for the OR or for CastAR. the majority went with OR which left jeri out as a minority, as she sub sequentially wanted to pursue CastAR instead of jumping on the OR bandwagon.

that means CastAR dev was costing valve $ without anything coming out of it, and since jeri obviously wasnt partial to stick with OR or make herself useful in another area of the company, the math was clear to sign her the rights to CastAR and fire her. its a very genuine move by valve considering most companies would just cut you loose, keep the tech, and forget you ever worked there. she also sounds very spiteful and likely to hold grudges, which wouldnt bode well inside of valve's offices.

more than anything it sheds light on how valve employees have to shift gears in order to keep a job with the company if R&D on a project isnt proving to be a fruitful endeavor. the analogy of having your desk on wheels only rings true here. it is a prime example of valve being a collective group that moves almost autonomously and why people might struggle or thrive in a dynamic environment like the one valve has built.

i can imagine it is almost as if...one person pops their head up and says "hey guys, check this out, maybe we can do something with this" and if enough people say "hey yea we can go somewhere with this" then groups of devs start working together on producing mock ups or betas and such to propose to guys like Gabe.

if Gabe says yes, then it gets to the point where CastAR got. if Gabe says no, its nixed.

if employees dont want to work on fixing and patching server exploits for games like TF2 (regardless of how much they might need to) then no one will.

if an employee gets hung up on a project and cant let it go, they get fired. alot of designers and artists have a level of obsessiveness about their work that would in turn inhibit valve's productivity because they would be pursuing dead ends. if a project drains too much from collective push or direction the company is moving, then it gets shelved and employees wheel their desk to the next project.

case in point: HL3

valve has the financial stability to be able to do this because of how their employee model is structured and how steam pulls in profits.

i could write i book on the inner workings of valve. it is very fascinating stuff.
Click to expand...
 
Shem said:
No but seriously she probably deserved it. Being abrasive in a work environment is a huge no-no. And bitching about it doesn't exactly help her case so...
Click to expand...

Yeah, we were aware of the stream interview weeks ago, but we never posted it because it doesn't even classify as news, and there is absolutely no way to determine what is true and what is purely self-admitted bias.
 
Sounds like she probably realized she didn't fit in. At least, that's the sense I get from the "weird paranoia" she mentions, because I doubt most people there have such a feeling. Especially since she was trying to hire people that also didn't fit in with the company, and was getting annoyed that they weren't getting hired. She probably just expected things to work differently, and felt that they aught to have done things her way. Which isn't the attitude you take when you're not the business owner.
 
Sounds like valve's flat management structure isn't what its cracked up to be.

Also explains why Valve is concentrated on hats and not on HL3.
 
My god that article is poorly edited. So many poorly written sentences, and "Game Newell"?
 
I still don't understand what's wrong with linking to Kotaku.
 
This sounds like exactly the kind of pathological hierarchy that will inevitably evolve if you don't bother trying to build a better one. An ad-hoc structure based on tenure, cliques, strength-of-personality, and an overseeing dictator, where meritocracy is ignored and minority or unpopular opinions are not tolerated, regardless of the actual evidence for or against them. No wonder Valve has problems producing anything when its structure is this rotten.

She probably was a difficult employee, but it's my experience that dysfunctional management structures consider "abrasiveness" to be any kind of low-level employee arguing against managerial diktat. While the managers themselves have free reign to be rude, aggressive, scheming, bullying, inconsistent and incompetent without it ever being considered "abrasive". And there will always be plenty of people, just as in this thread, who jump to the defence of management, ignoring all the substance of the complaints and declaring it all to be bitching and complaining. One day, these people will lose their jobs, when their employers are driven out of business due to incompetent management, and all their "loyalty" and efforts to keep their head down and stay afloat in a sea of mediocrity will be for naught. Meanwhile, the "complainers", who actually cared about doing things well, will likely have long since moved on to better, more successful things.
 
Amtiskaw said:
One day, these people will lose their jobs, when their employers are driven out of business due to incompetent management, and all their "loyalty" and efforts to keep their head down and stay afloat in a sea of mediocrity will be for naught. Meanwhile, the "complainers", who actually cared about doing things well, will likely have long since moved on to better, more successful things.
Click to expand...
So what you're saying is that these things sort themselves out? Gotcha. So, when do you expect we'll see Valve's poor management kill the company? One or two years?
 
Shem said:
No but seriously she probably deserved it. Being abrasive in a work environment is a huge no-no. And bitching about it doesn't exactly help her case so...
Click to expand...

Sounds like she had good reason to be frustrated if she couldn't hire anyone to develop the hardware that Valve hired her to develop.

I've always thought it was a bit weird the way Valve have just been tentatively dipping their feet into the hardware side of things without really committing to anything. Except I guess Steambox.
 
Having worked in a very relaxed office with a pseudo-flat-management structure before, this account of events doesn't surprise me. Friendly bosses who are more likely to invite you for a drink than scold you, completely free dress codes, and the ability to move around and collaborate with whoever you like are all lovely things. However, when your accountability and performance evaluation criteria are nebulously defined it's often difficult to get a firm grasp on your responsibilities. I don't say this out of bitterness, because I believe I was very well-regarded in that job before I quit, but you're never sure why management - the real management - reach the decisions they do about you. 'Weird paranoia' is exactly what that management philosophy engendered in me.

Sometimes the flexibility of these working environments is a bit of a sham, too. You may be told 'here's your goal - now go and do it however you think is best, with whoever you think is best'. Later you may find out that the people you need simply can't be made available, because their own roles are too rigid and their responsibilities too important. Maybe your ideas just don't turn out to be what others had in mind. So the things you request still go to the bottom of an unshrinking queue just like they would in any dogmatic corporate structure that doesn't have wheels on their desks.

There's also very little way to establish whether a project you've been assigned is failing because you're not showing enough initiative or because it's simply a pointless money bonfire. Ultimately, the top dogs will reach their conclusions about such things based on gut feeling. This woman could have been terrible to work with, but in principle it doesn't surprise me at all that Valve's methodology might create these problems.
 
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