Here's an English version:
http://www.develop-online.net/news/44746/Valves-perfect-hiring-hierarchy-has-hidden-management-clique-like-High-School

Thanks, I can't find one :)

No wonder they take so long to make games then, their constantly slacking off and waiting for the teacher to stop paying attention

an interesting read

Seems more like a whiny baby making excuses for being fired. Read the first paragraph and lost interest right away. You got fired/laid off like a lot of people in the world. Get over it and leave with a little dignity.

This was my first reaction, as well, but reading a little deeper it seemed like it was a hostile work environment from day 1. The biggest thing appears to be the comment that they had 7-figure equipment budgets, but couldn't actually use it because other managers kept veto'ing them when they tried to hire a 40k per year technician. That's just dysfunctional when some guy on the opposite end of the company can effectively paralyze your department like that.

I'm sure there are two sides to this story, but frankly I'm not surprised to hear about flat-management failing to scale as a company grows. That's a pretty common growth pain.

I don't buy that it's a flat-management structure, really. I mean that doesn't flat structure only apply to creativity? Do they take company votes on firing people? Do they vote on how much people get paid? I mean how can it be a flat structure if someone is doing the paying (owns the company and sales go to them) and someone is being paid. There would be de-facto boss/s by default unless Valve is some communist utopia where all workers, even Gabe Newell himself, are paid the same wage (which isn't true as he's a billionaire).

She and other guy from Valve established their own company, so she is not looking for employment. According to interview with some other guy from Valve (published on Eurogamer earlier this year), yes. He didn't use such blunt words like "vote to fire", but he said something like that they together talk about people who doesn't fit company's environment and then they decide if they should leave company etc.

That's certainly one way around that problem. :D

Not sure if I'm surprised or not. On one hand we have a disgruntled employee, on the other we have a rather weird development hierarchy. The most interesting part of the article was one of the comments below. I was thinking the same thing. However, I could just be looking too much into it.

Huh, this does explain why Valve seem to be so bad at getting on with things and finishing games. I guess they have no incentive though since Uncle Gabe probably swallows more money by accident while swimming in the Steam money vault than I see in a year.

By which I mean Steam props up what seems to be a very inefficient developer, it's like Romero's half of Ion Storm but with an infinite supply of money.

Developer 1 "Hei, I'm on Valve, let's make a game"
Developer 2 "Shut up and finish your hat, you. And you, guys, let's make some artwork for HL3!!"

Meanwhile Gabe:

More like "Valve like high school as seen in American movies".
The article makes the company seem like a place I'd love to work at, to be honest.

It's like... an Internet forum.