The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. An example: in my first few months, I was struggling to find a good project and a very senior employee (one of the partners, actually) took me aside and recommended I leave my current team since my heart was clearly not in it and take some time to think about what I really wanted to do, or else I'd get let go. I took his advice seriously, came up with a couple ideas, and then approached him a week or so later to pitch these projects. He got _angry_ at me, stressing that he's not my boss, and that it showed a remarkable lack of initiative that I'd ask someone else at the company what I should work on. So: he has the authority to fire me (or at least to plausibly threaten to fire me) but the moment that authority would mean any responsibility or even the slightest effort to mentor someone, he's just another regular Joe with no special role at all. Similarly, there's no way to get meaningful feedback because nobody really knows who's going to be making the performance evaluations. Sure, you can take advice from someone who's been there for ten years, but if they're not included in the group that's assembled to evaluate you then their guidance is worth nothing.
I worked with some very smart people there, but it was the most dysfunctional and broken work environment I've ever witnessed.
In groups of humans operating in "communal" mode, this invisibility of the hierarchy is by design. It's not the top brass that's doing it. It's the "will of the people."
I'm not sure that perspective is useful.
Cowards.
But Valve is famous for their speed of work which would normally get people fired in different companies.
They do make perfect games though.
From what I've heard about Valve, it sounds like there's a class of people that can fire you and therefore force you to do things, but you are still directly responsible if things go wrong. So the high-level people have power without accountability, and the low-level people have accountability without power.
That doesn't sound like a bad deal if you enter with a lot of political capital (maybe you are a world-renowned expert or friends with Gabe Newell). Doesn't seem like a particularly great place to work for everyone else though.
What an abysmal environment. Sounds like everyone is just lusting for money.
>I worked with some very smart people there, but it was the most dysfunctional and broken work environment I've ever witnessed.
Sounds like it. It sounds like a complete vacuum, void of any responsibility. Rife with cowardly management and lack of direction, I could only imagine...
I don't think I have ever read any employee account that's made me want to work in the games industry.
> Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”
...
> The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.
The Tyranny of Structurelessness
> "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is an influential essay by American feminist Jo Freeman inspired by her experiences in a 1960s women's liberation group that concerns power relations within radical feminist collectives.
You can read it here: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
Isn't it an environment for creating ideas, rallying people around them and then leading them?
If you're new with fresh ideas then you can directly go and try to do that because formally there is no boss. You only have to fight the informal hierarchy.