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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
I see this as two different complaints. I would agree that her project didn't sound too interesting but that doesn't necessarily discredit the complaints not directly relating to her project. Well, the fact her project didn't have big bonuses associated to it is indeed a formula for creating a problem since that's a financial incentive to not get involved.
And it is rather difficult to make hardware if you don't hire people that make hardware.
I dunno how big the bonuses are, but I honestly hope that people joining valve aren't doing it for the money. Sure extra money is always good, but I imagine you try to join valve for the love. Still, I'm going to conceed the point.
However, cheeky counter. Valve spends over 5 years making sequels to half life. They're not a quick company and yet they fired her because she was abrasive after only one year of employment while workong on an R&D project. In other words, she comes across as extremely impatient.
End of the day though, she can prove everyone wrong by her project going huge after the kickstarter. However, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't be bitterly dissing my ex-employer, I'd be estatic that they'd handed me what I thought was a gold mine. :p
I would imagine no one outside of Valve knows for sure but I've seen it mentioned in several places, including in one of her interviews, that the bonuses can be quite substantial.
Personally, I see the length of time that Valve takes to make their games as a sign of problems. If she were fired for being impatient enough to actually wanting to do something NOW, then that further proves the point in my mind. I would hope that wasn't the issue because it seems silly to fire someone over the fact that they like to produce things in a timely manner. But, I suppose it's possible because it more or less fits the story we're hearing from her.
I'm also guessing the reason some of their games take so long is because they have serious watershed moments where everybody wants a say in the game so they can get in on the bonuses.
I don't see her as being bitter towards Valve, but towards the small group within Valve that she feels is behind her and her team being fired. Which is totally understandable. From what I read, granted her words, I'm assuming that Gabe handed over the project to her because she got a raw deal.
>Personally, I see the length of time that Valve takes to make their games as a sign of problems.
Valve make money and they make some of the best PC games about. Even if they're not your thing, it's hard to call love and polish a problem in a world where most of the moved loved series have been slated with their recent releases.
>I would hope that wasn't the issue because it seems silly to fire someone over the fact that they like to produce things in a timely manner. But, I suppose it's possible because it more or less fits the story we're hearing from her.
>Which is totally understandable. From what I read, granted her words, I'm assuming that Gabe handed over the project to her because she got a raw deal.
My guess was more along the lines of Gabe not thinking she had anything because she mentioned they were some serious major hints that her project didn't have interesting gameplay metrics.
I have to admit, like I did in my first post on this subject that I'm bias because I don't believe in the idea, but I find it strange that most people are behind her despite the fact it doesn't sound like she's got a game for her hardware.
Well, a project could take time because of love and polish or because of internal bickering over small details. There's nothing to say that it couldn't be a bit of both. Without knowing the details of internals, there's no way for us to know. I'm willing to accept your possibility but you have to be willing to accept mine as well.
From my understanding she wasn't just working on the project that eventually went with her. But you do have a point, it's certainly possibly they canned the project because it didn't fit within a new company mission that apparently previously involved the project. I dispute that in any way.
But as I think I said before, I agree that her project may not have been that interesting to Valve, but that's not what I'm really discussing here. I'm talking about the problems within Valve that she claims were part of the reasoning behind all the firings that day, not just her project. It's just that she's been the only one that's somewhat vocal about it.
> a bunch of geeks playing with toy swords dressed in cloaks
Meta: this place is really going to the dogs. I thought we were over making fun of "those nerdy geeks with their elves, they don't even buy A&F and smell bad".
I wasn't making fun of them, just trying to paint the picture that we're different kind of geeks. I'm a PC gamer and have no interesting in LARPing of whatever the technical definition of that game is. That doesn't mean theres anything wrong with that, just suggesting it doesn't intrinsically fit the mold of what valve is about.
And I would argue that rigidly deciding that Valve is just going to be about what PC gamers think is cool and refusing to seriously consider other ideas is not good culture. Its close-minded. Adopting a hardware project and then hamstringing efforts to bring it to fruition because of a lack of creativity and unwillingness to compromise is toxic.
Just to be clear srdev, I'm not rigidly defining valve. My original point was rather than assuming people weren't interested based on bonuses, it might just be that a bunch of gamers aren't really interested in tech that hasn't been shown to have any interesting game play metrics.
That'd mean that while it doesn't work to her interests, valve would actually be working as intended, where people work on projects they feel interested and useful in, which is good for everyone who doesn't have a burning desire to make other folks work on their niche project.
That makes more sense than my initial understanding of what you were saying. I would still argue that Valve, as a company, should not have strung her project along if they were not really interested in committing to AR. The problem I see here is that they brought on people to do hardware projects, and then resisted making any compromises that might be required to see the project to completion. Its easy to understand why said employees would be bitter in such a case, and I would say that there should have been some more introspection on whether they were really committed to the project or not. The one-sided story we're getting indicates that the introspection never occurred and it was brushed off as the employee's problem when it really was Valve's.
Edit: That being said, the resolution of the situation was impressive. I think that Gabe handing over the rights to the work she did was a class act, so I definitely don't want to make it seem like Valve is a bad place. Rather, my argument is that this is a potential downside, and it'd be warranted to keep the pitfalls involved with this kind of culture in-mind.
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.