this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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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.