Until people vote on firing you because you didn't invite them on your birthday party :D.

I listened to the podcast a few days ago and found it hilarious how they would spend millions on equipment but refuse to spend $40,000 a year for someone qualified to work it because they would "pollute their culture".

Having no set management structure, then basing pay on how popular your project is discourages taking risks. Why try an unsure project when you can go "I made some hats!" and see a nice fat Christmas bonus.

I don't understand what's so scandalous about not wanting to keep someone in your company who doesn't fit in with the rest of your team.

You must be out of the loop, they just let the community make the hats for them now ;)

Granted, those people make a ton of money on it if their stuff gets selected. There's workshop modellers who basically make a living off it apparently.

Didn't Valve come out with something saying they have no managers and everyone's desk has wheels?
A lot of people responded with the usual ass-kissing, saying it's the way of the future. BUT, Valve can afford to be lazy because of they have Steam, TF2 & DotA 2. Such a flat management structure couldn't work anywhere else.

Go ahead read this, Valve's handbook for new employees.

Someone made the decision to start a hardware development team, spent millions of dollars to get things going, and then other managers started exercising their veto power to prevent this new department from hiring anyone or developing any actual products. That's pure dysfunction and lack of leadership. Fact is, she wasn't part of the software team. She was brought in to spearhead the hardware team, people who would (by nature of their discipline) come from a very different background and perspective and would be working on completely different projects.

It would be perfectly fine for Valve to make a decision that it's a software company and won't be entering the hardware market. The problem is that they brought on a new department, then proceeded to passively allow their own corporate culture to pick it apart before it could get established.

Again, we're only getting one side of the story here, but what's on display looks like blatant mismanagement.


Yup; that revenue stream isn't going anywhere any time soon. They can pretty much do whatever they want for the time being. This is a problem that will likely get passed on to the next generation of owners/managers.

That Valve is afraid of chances in their "company culture" basically translates that they don't want foreigners of the working world (other companies, not nations) so in a sense they're a little racist. :P

I find anything regarding sh*t like this useless and a waste of time. I hope the woman in the article finds a better job and that the old Valve people notice it and kick themselves for letting her go.

Apparently it doesn't work there either.

She already has a new job :)

No, it was only my interpretation but I may have misused racist a bit. I can understand if they want to make sure that new people can get along with old employees but "company culture" could mean anything.

You know how monks keep their discipline... it leaves some painful marks on one's back :P I wanted to post a picture, but they are too drastic and graphic for a SFW boards.

Look, whatever the reason, a team is perfectly within its rights to kick out players who don't belong there for whatever reason. This lady is just capitalizing on the anti-Steam, anti-corporate attitude of some gamers, nothing more.

And she's probably doing this to get some sort of monetary compensation from Steam (for her new venture), which they will be forced to cough up because it's better than bad PR.

No one is ever really "enemies" in corporate culture; it's just as likely that she and Steam will be okay tomorrow, so there's no need to get indignant about anything.

If I'm not mistaken - she's starting a kickstarter, so you're not far off. She's probably just starting these childish waves to get noticed, therefore supported in scamstarter.