What it's Like to Work at Valve

What people said

doright · 2025-11 · Reference

Another source from 6 years ago: [VIDEO] It seems like the flat management structure allowed an ad-hoc hierarchy of cliques to form in the office anyway, pitting entrenched teams of old-timers against new hires, but implicitly. When you think of the lack of support for TF2 over the years, this is illuminating. It's astounding that Valve/Steam are still as successful as they are in spite of this culture.

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nonbirithm · 2023-04 · Reference

Only anecdotal, but there may be cultural problems stemming from the flat structure at Valve that make organizing around products difficult. This video came out 4 years ago so I don't know if anything's changed since then, but it's one ex-employee's experience of their work culture at the time. Basically he claims that even though there's a flat corporate structure within Valve, in practice an implicit management structure arose in which those with the most political clout controlled others without it. Plus they used stack ranking at the time. [VIDEO]

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nonbirithm · 2022-10 · Reference

This anecdotal review from a former Valve employee seems to indicate as much. [VIDEO] Yet it's interesting that despite Valve having what is essentially a monopoly on PC storefronts and the implicit corporate hierarchy with alleged double-crossing, there is little complaint about Steam as a service from most users.

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