My current project got rid of everyone with less than ten years of experience and I thought that was weird because there are usually tasks that you can give juniors. Is Valve unusual in not having any positions for people under seven years of experience?
Based upon everything we know from Valve's corporate structure, they're basically their own self-contained YCombinator. They have a ton of internal 'startup' groups that are constantly trying new and boundary pushing ideas. Looking at it through this lens, it's not really a good company fit for any junior. Having juniors detracts from your seniors work, but the point is that you're supposed to get value from that when they eventually become mid-level or senior engineers themselves. But if you're constantly working in new complex environments it's hard to bring a junior up to speed and teach them the requisite skills to thrive, especially if that project they just spent 3 months getting up to speed on gets canned because the idea didn't actually pan out.
I'm guessing that with the flat structure of the company, there are more engineers that have a deeper responsibility with regards to ownership of a product. The guy responsible for maintaining a game does everything from project management to low level patches. Kind of a fun way to run things but you do end up needing to wear many hats which can be a bad thing if you would prefer sticking to one area.
Positive Publicity. Valve does many things that are received poorly (e.g. cancelling counterstrike fan projects, intransparent lootbox gambling, etc.), but they are doing enough good things that such things are quickly forgotten.
My current project got rid of everyone with less than ten years of experience and I thought that was weird because there are usually tasks that you can give juniors. Is Valve unusual in not having any positions for people under seven years of experience?
Based upon everything we know from Valve's corporate structure, they're basically their own self-contained YCombinator. They have a ton of internal 'startup' groups that are constantly trying new and boundary pushing ideas. Looking at it through this lens, it's not really a good company fit for any junior. Having juniors detracts from your seniors work, but the point is that you're supposed to get value from that when they eventually become mid-level or senior engineers themselves. But if you're constantly working in new complex environments it's hard to bring a junior up to speed and teach them the requisite skills to thrive, especially if that project they just spent 3 months getting up to speed on gets canned because the idea didn't actually pan out.
I'm guessing that with the flat structure of the company, there are more engineers that have a deeper responsibility with regards to ownership of a product. The guy responsible for maintaining a game does everything from project management to low level patches. Kind of a fun way to run things but you do end up needing to wear many hats which can be a bad thing if you would prefer sticking to one area.
Making $50M per employee is an insane stat for any company and I'd have never guessed it of valve.
With that kind of income why bother with making any games even half life 3?
Positive Publicity. Valve does many things that are received poorly (e.g. cancelling counterstrike fan projects, intransparent lootbox gambling, etc.), but they are doing enough good things that such things are quickly forgotten.
They mostly don’t bother making games.
an alternative perspective: with that much capital wouldn't they make games?
Because they love to.
2015 might as well be a century ago… I doubt this would happen today.
Gaben is a gem.