I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land a another billion dollar baby, then sure, this strategy is good for that. However Valve kind of advertises itself as a video game company, and if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve, simply because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
And the bonus structure that I recall also seems dated. iirc it was setup in a way such that delivering new projects would land you a bonus. But this incentivizes creating things, but there is no incentive to continue supporting or updating or iterating on it. In my opinion the bonus structure should be done in such a way so that if you deliver something new, you would land a bonus, and then you'd get larger bonuses at the 1 year mark, 2 year mark, etc, if that thing has been updated and improved.
Many things these days are not just a single product that you release and that's that. They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused. Obviously I don't know how it actually is in there these days, but things like this manual and other hearsay / rumors are the best I have to go off of.
If all your failures are as "mild" as the "failure" of Valve's flat structure, you will have a very nice life.
> However Valve kind of advertises itself as a video game company, and if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve, simply because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
They've released a game every year or every other year since they were founded. That's more than a lot of studios, and the fact that they also do stuff with steam and hardware makes it that much more impressive.
> They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
This would be a more valid critique of Valve's management structure if companies with traditional management structures didn't do the same damn thing. World of Warcraft has had dozens of abandoned features over the years, and Activision-Blizzard has a normal management structure. This is just general software industry shit, I can't think of any company that doesn't leave some stuff on the side because the focus moved onto something newer and shinier.
> I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused.
Well if they had traditional management, the game development part of the company would have been deleted a loooong time ago, and Steam would be completely enshittified by now.
I think there are valid criticisms of what they're trying at Valve, but 1) I'm glad they're doing it, I don't want every company to operate the same MBA playbook, and 2) I don't think the problems are really problems for the customer! It seems like it's mostly a problem for _employees_.