this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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I'm actually pretty worried about him dying. Hopefully he has a chosen successor that he's indoctrinated.
I would rather hope that he legalizes and codifies the "flat" management structure, disallowing any one figure head from taking over and fucking things up.
Valve annoys people because it can be slow to choose to do something, because everyone works on what they want to work on, but it means average workers have a lot more agency in how they're involved in the company.
I'm sure there's till unofficial cliques and leaders, but having it in legalese for the employees post-Gabe would be nice.
I would argue the flat management makes it hard for Valve to produce things and they should re-evaluate it, but you can do this while also not turning into a rank and yank shit out fortnite clones 420 69 flossing scheme to fuck over users and line their pockets.
I think that's a valid take, and I think Valve has sort of re-evaluated it, because if I recall correctly, they kind of had to "put on hold" the "do whatever you want" bit to get Half Life: Alyx out of the door. So, imho, it seems like they're capable of doing both. They managed to produce a high quality VR game by putting the "flat" on the backburner, and them coming back to it later.
Although, to be fair, I hadn't heard anything similar about the SteamDeck or any Valve hardware, really. So if they can make a SteamDeck from scratch, an entire new product category, with the flat management structure, I bet it's not holding them back half as much as some folks at GlassDoor seem to think.
Its really hard to get a look inside Valve, because I can't confirm/deny the Steam Deck came about because of the flat management. I'll be honest, my apprehension about their management stems from the many failed attempts to conclude the franchise they started in Half-Life and how 20 different projects died to get to Alyx. Would a change in leadership get us more of the same? Maybe. It would probably be a substandard product, and i'm still recovering from Starfield being mid.
Starfield was Bethesda, though. Eons of distance between those two studios.
The problem with that is that they're a private company so that can just be undone by the largest share holder, unless that codification also splits up his equity across the employees.
Tbf as long as it doesn't go public it will probably be fine regardless of who takes the job. It doesn't take a genius to keep up the good work in a company that can afford to plan long time.
I guess you've never had a "new boss" come in, huh? Even in a private company?
Man, new bosses love to shake things up, to "make the workplace theirs." It's literally one of the most common things to happen when new bosses come, and very often it results in a deep change in company interpersonal politics.
Barry used to be your go-to guy, but the new boss has decided they just don't like Barry. Why? They couldn't tell you, but Barry gets under their skin, so it doesn't matter how he's the best guy on the team who can handle whatever is thrown at him, his role is going to be dilluted and minimized and he's going to be pushed and prodded by negative management to try to get him to just quit. Eventually, Barry will just quit because who wants to work under those conditions. Barry found a better job, and now he's replaced by your new bosses 20-something nephew who doesn't know what the fuck he is doing at all and everyone can't stand. He's a fucking loser who keeps getting promoted by the new boss.
I've been through that too many times to pretend it's just "that easy." No, generally the kind of people drawn to that role are controlling dickheads who have their own dickhead "vision" of being the biggest dickhead to ever dickhead.
But how am I supposed to prove my exorbitant salary if I can't prove I'm doing something. If I don't change anything they'll realize I don't do anything and can't do anything! As for my next idea, we need to put ads in steam because everybody is doing it. And people should watch a promo video before their game starts because look at how successful YouTube is! I'm a genius for doing this. YOU ALL JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND.
~ some manager, somewhere....probably
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Thank you for acknowledging it! Maybe a third of the people I've mentioned this to respond.
Have seen it. Good managers walk in and watch their team for months to learn how things work before making changes. Bad managers walk in and change things before learning why they work the way they do. We saw that with Twitter/X.
A good CEO uses the 30-30-30 method.
The first 30 days they are observing, the next 30 days they are asking questions, the last 30 days is coming up and proposing improvements.
Only after those first 90 days a real decision can be made.
I'd never heard of it that way before and that's interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I fucking hate your comment. Good work capturing the exact futile frustration you're describing.
Unless they fuck it up somehow in recruiting a new CEO, Valve really wouldn't find it hard to ask a new CEO "Here's our revenue, and our expenses, our profits. How would you keep this in place without crashing our revenue stream and maybe doing new greenfield stuff?"
If their first words are: "Well, I like the idea of charging our customers an install fee..." you know to keep looking.
You are right in that Steam would probably continue on just fine on autopilot. You might not be right by assuming that the sort of person who would seek to and achieve such a position wouldn't let their own ego dictate every decision--change for change's sake so that they can point at how wonderful they are at the job.
From my understanding his son is set to take over when the time comes.
Because nepotism just works out gangbusters, every time. /s
Seriously, this is worse news than him not having a plan.
While nepotism is almost universally a bad thing, Gabe has shown that he does not subscribe to the "profit at any cost" school of business, but instead believes that if you provide a good service people will pay you for it. Hopefully he's been able to pass those values on to his son.
My concern is his son despite having this shit DRILLED INTO HIS HEAD (which I can't guarantee) will chase a cashout. That's the one problem with nepos.
The other problem is if he's qualified for the job. Which feeds into point 1.
Is there someone more likely to execute Gaben's vision and follow in his footsteps?
An experienced CEO of their choice.