Ex Valve dev describes flat company structures: staff purges, anxiety, fighting - Sensationalist Headlines

Former Valve dev Rich Geldreich has wrote hundreds of tweets recently describing without naming Valve how things really work in companies with flat structure. It's too long to summarize but it's horrendous if true, if this guy isn't having a mental breakdown, some of the stuff is very bizarre. Just really look at his twitter for ten minutes, this man's either insane or brave. Here's a starter https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1018642399512420352

I would say obviously archive this now, and this is pretty much par for the course in flat structures. They turn into popularity contests without fails. Bungie, Looking Glass, Obsidian, Valve, every company that flirted with this structure either abandoned it or ceased to be after that. Bethesda used to have a pretty lax structure and that all went away as of Morrowind, including getting two of the founders "fired."

Valve has gone completely crazy according to this guy, it's like fucking Bioshock. A secret corporate arm that acts like Agents from the Matrix, people taking drugs to cope with the stress, mentally breaking people to reform them in the company's image, spouses acting as informants to employees, forcibly moving desks, coworkers fucking up your work to bet bonuses for them selves. ad fucking infinitum Also will give a diamond to whoever can archive these tweets.

I’m looking at his Twitter and I don’t even know where to begin. It just goes on and on and on.

Hierarchies exist for a reason in companies. Flat structure is always a breeding ground for chaotic internal conflicts because there's no real repurcussions, feeding a cycle that is easily exploitable by bad people. Whereas in a company with leaders, you would have your ass fired on the spot for terrible behavior. The chance for corruption is still there, but somewhat mitigated; or entirely, depending on the person. Valve needs to change if these tweets are true. I hate to say it, but their model may have come back and bit them in the ass hard. Part of me hopes these tweets aren't true, cause it's quite heartbreaking.

Like holy shit the labor rights and ethics watchdogs need to get involved this is lunacy.

Now I understand why all the old guard left. What the hell.

I mean that's obvious. Look at all these great original games and sequels we've been playing the last 10 years.

This is beyond games this working environment is harmful to the mental health of their employees. The dev who made these tweets said he almost died in 2015, don't know if it's related to Valve.

Hey look I found out why the Source Engine still has gaping security flaws that a fellow Facepuncher pointed out years ago https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/657/cbba06db-bf87-424f-bf05-274f742b0151/image.png

I can see a flat structure working for a small indie team that is experienced enough to manage each-other effective but again, a small team, no more than 8 people, if not 4.

I feel more bad for this man as I keep reading the tweets. Yeah, big time. No one should be forced to work at their job like this, ever.

At this one company, the only time I saw the president/CEO do a whole company meeting (at the office) all he basically talked about was how he manipulated the press. It took a while for that to sink in. It was a let down. Only the best and most savvy SeltOrganizingCo CEO’s have mastered the powerful art of media manipulation. Imagine if the Gaben memes were orchestrated by the man himself.

Can someone compile this into an easier format to read? Twitter is absolute shit and doesn't work for me half the time

If you can tolerate walls of text someone pasted the tweets in reddit comments here.

It just keeps going, hot damn.

I'm getting extremely strong "half of what this guy says is accurate/good advice and the other half is completely batshit but it's hard to tell which is which sometimes" vibes from reading this guys' Twitter. Take it with a grain of salt. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/217538/d0add426-7493-4f52-bb2a-94f43c690c17/Screenshot_20180717-225652.png

Well that might explain the vulnerabilities the engine had in the past, and the current lack of support on the Source SDK codebase. Latest GitHub update was in September 2015 and is seemingly out of date with the engine, won't make it any easier on mod authors.

Some things to note: The things he talked about happen 5-10 years ago, so they are not recent developments, and may have changed with time. Rich Geldreich has worked at numerous different companies, of which some were self-organizing, and some had normal hierarchies. His tweets seem to imply that he's been at more than one developer that has adopted a flat hierarchy, so it may not just be Valve he's talking about. By his own admission, he thinks that self-organizing companies do have the potential to perform better than hierarchical structures. The main issue with self-organizing companies are bonus systems, which in his view lead to a hostile, competitive and toxic work environment. He has worked at Microsoft and/or studios bought by Microsoft, and he does say that hierarchical company structures can be pretty insane as well. His material is 3/4 collected from notes he made over the years. He's also saying that he's trying to make them sound funny, so some tweets may be pretty hyperbolic at times.

Can't wait for major press to get a hold of this. Valve deserves to get some huge backlash

What i'm reading is literally how a prison hierarchy works... This is disgusting valve can go eat a dick and choke on it for willingly putting people in these super stressful and dystopic positions.

He said the desks have wheels to the higher ups can forcibly move people around projects and that he's avoided using "the V word" Tyler from Valve News Network and the HDTF stream also asked him a few questions.

Another type of temp strategic hire you can make is to recruit a well-known author, a famous dev, or a person with specialized skills (like an economist). Have them write gushingly about their amazing experiences at the company. Once you’re done with them quietly let them go. This is most definitely Yanis Varoufakis he's talking about here. He was politically active, and would later become the Greek finance minister.

You have to understand that they are all Valve, and a lot of it is self-imposed.

Another former dev https://twitter.com/BadMetaphor/status/1019340707553689600 https://twitter.com/BadMetaphor/status/1019341514604834816 https://twitter.com/BadMetaphor/status/1019342023315283969 https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1019347633062608896 Rich said he saw insane hostility at Microsoft too. What the FUCK is wrong with the Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond software industry?

Welp Facepunch I think you all were dead on about Valve I also think this guy sounds honest, reliable, and fed up about the mental breakdown comment: "The “C” (crazy) word will be used to discount what I’m saying. It’s easy to call some group or person crazy. Self organized workers are trained to see hierarchical firms as utterly crazy places. Anyone who points this stuff out and just tells it like it is is marked as Crazy."

I'm in Texas and know several people in the software industry. One friend got fired and blacklisted from the industry, potentially for life, because one person decided to start shifting blame on them. Beyond that, I can't even count how many times my friends got backstabbed on several-month long projects and either took a reputation hit or else got a ton more work with no pay boost shoveled onto them. It's across all types, too. Games, IT, building automation, everything involving programming for a career that I've seen is just fucked.

Most people have been angry with Valve for years for a variety of reasons.

It's pretty crazy how one of their best tools turned out to be their greatest downfall in the grand scheme of time.

Imagine someone actually trying to make a game in that environment "If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the HL3 road! Witness me"