Valve is a mirage: it looks incredibly good from far away, but look closer... - Anonymous employee Valve Corporation Employee Review

"Oligarchy" best describes what goes on at Valve. Valve looks like a dream job from far away, but, like with any mirage, if you look closer, you realize that it is an illusion. This company is very big on buzz corporate words. "we are like a big family" "we care about your well being" are some of the slogans you will hear or read. If you buy their rhetoric, you'll hear that there are no bosses, no managers, no supervisors and that there is a flat structure where everybody is so smart, so cool and so intelligent that they can work completely autonomously. That is only a facade. There is probably no other company that is so hierarchically structured like Valve. There are no bosses but there are bosses. There are no managers, but there are managers. In order to succeed at Valve, you need to belong to the group that has more decisional power and, even when you succeed temporarily, be certain that you have an expiration date. No matter how hard you work, no matter how original and productive you are, if your bosses and the people who count don't like you, you will be fired soon or you will be managed out. Valve first tries to manage people out, if they think that firing them will cause troubles. They will assign you boring projects that nobody wants, your boss who is not a boss will harass you, they will sit you in a corner and make your life impossible. Their favorite way to insult you is byt giving you a ridiculously low bonus when those who count are getting bonuses in the range of 60 k or even more. You are not allowed to be using terms such as "boss, supervisor, manager", though. Think about the elephant in the living room. You are not allowed to point out flaws and suggest ways to fix things, otherwise you'll immediately be labelled "negative". Valve does not want smart thinkers. Incompetent people are the ones deciding who gets hired and who doesn't. Probably someone who was selling TVs at Best Buy a year before, with no formal education, is going to stand on a pedestal and decide who gets hired. Valve has an intricate but absurd interview system that is meant to give the impression that they only hire geniuses, yet some of the questions they ask during these interviews are risible and surreal. Not to mention that some excellent candidates are rejected either because the incompetent interviewer is intimidated or because they appeared too old for certain departments. Juvanilism and ageism are real in this company but, again, you cannot talk about it openly. Like I said in the beginning, they are big on buzz words and one of them is "team player". They overemphasize how important it is to be a team player and how working as a team is paramount, yet, they cannot conceive the existence of certain duties that are best accomplished in solitude or certain employees who thrive when they detach themselves from the stupid team. Valve is an incredibly archaic company that has the presumption of being progressive and innovative. If you fall for the fluff, it looks as if it is super modern, but, once you live there long enough, you are shocked at how such a disorganized and inefficient company has managed to make so much money (mostly by living off on old games and leeching on volunteers like mods). You need to conform to their modus operandi. So, if you are a genius with brilliant ideas, go somewhere else. Everybody at Valve think they are super smart and they even try to adopt the outlook of the typical nerd just because they want to play the role of the super smart person. They want you to believe that they are your friends, and there is a company trip, each year, to an exclusive location beach resort. Who wants to go on a trip with their coworkers? It's bad enough to have to deal with coworkers in the office, let alone having to see them in a bathing suit (and, trust me, with all the free food floating around and the nerdiness at Valve, seeing them at the beach is not a "belle vue"). Every year they have this company trip, a bunch of people get fired since they forget they are going to a company trip, they let their guard down and get drunk and do stupid things. You cannot have some privacy in this company. They will ask you inappropriate questions, they want to know who you are dating, if you are dating, why you are not dating, how many kids you have. Again, they want to give you the impression that they are your friends.