Lessons from Valve - How to build a designer's paradise | Hacker News Reader

Lessons from Valve - How to build a designer's paradise

m.garrettamini.com

183 pointskadjar21 comments

I have come to really dislike lessons - love anecdotes, though. A 'lesson' taken from a specific context and applied under different circumstances is, in my opinion, just as likely to harm than help. Some of the 'rules' may be completely arbitrary but work because Valve has some great people. Others work because Valve is Valve and wouldn't work anywhere else.

I wish sometimes people would just tell the story, and not try to distill it down to lessons for everyone to follow.

Wait, if no one ever leaves Valve then why is Garrett for hire? Would be interesting to see him address that...

^ Garrett

I finished my contract at Valve a couple of months ago. I'm still fairly early in my design career, and work with a contracting agency in Seattle. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not quite well-rounded and seasoned enough to be a true Valve hire, but I also think I was there to fulfill a short-term need.

Still, it was a great experience. I learned more in that contract than any other, by far. Just thought I'd share some of it!

It's a great post and I think your/Valves observations about letting designers design are spot on. Thanks for the follow up on your reasons for leaving.

The rolling desk idea is brilliant, I do wonder how often the configurations are shifted around though.

From this http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gab... it sounds like their employees shuffle between projects and teams pretty frequently. I imagine some employees are more mobile than others, but from the sounds of most things about that studio, people are rarely locked down spatially unless they want to be.

So, dumb question, but how do people do power cords safely? I would love to do this at our office.

Those desks are surreal. They have their own built-in power distribution and wiring looms, so all of the cords for monitors, the PC, sound, and so on are bundled out of sight. You only need to unplug one AC cord, trundle the whole thing down the hall, and plug it in when you get where you're going.

Indeed. Technically two chords (ethernet too!), though.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Power_cord

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Power_chord

I assume electric guitars are not involved[1].

</pedant>

[1] Although Gibson do make an Ethernet capable guitar: http://guitarist-gear.blogspot.com/2006/04/gibsons-ethernet-...

Integrate an emergency energy unit and you do not even have to reboot for changing your location

I wonder if they fire bad hires? Even the strictest hiring regime will result in some errors. Do they fix those?

Yes =)

What are some other software companies that share a similar philosophy?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that google shares a similar philosophy in a few ways.

There are many similarities, but the nature of the products each produces introduces some differences. Valve creates occasional monolithic products that depend heavily on art direction and experience design. Google produces a complex, interconnected system where Everything Must Scale.

Ah, thanks for the correction.

I imagine their digital distribution system (Steam) is very much like what you described (complex, interconnected, scalable systems). Valve is quite diverse.

In some ways, Valve manages to be more extreme, because it's smaller. 250 employees could conceivably be totally flat, if they are all committed and the boss is ... brilliant.

Google has a few more employees.

The idea that everything is shared, and people do pretty much whatever they want is nice, but doesn't work if you want as many heads as Google has.

GitHub's organisation is pretty fascinating... GitHub employees work on whatever they personally think is the most important thing. http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-creativity/ and http://warpspire.com/posts/product-design/

Great post, and an awesome perspective on working for Valve

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