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| Valve |
| Mon June 28th, 2010 at 6:46 PM PDT |
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I know, I forgot to update ...several times. I've been preoccupied with work mostly, and unfortunately most of the stuff I've been preoccupied with is subject matter that I probably shouldn't post in public. Some things I can share, though. Last Thursday a group of Microsoft interns took a tour of Valve Software's offices. You know, the makers of Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat. Their offices happen to be in downtown Bellevue, Washington, right next door to one of Microsoft's office buildings. Valve has a bit of a history with Microsoft (cofounders Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington are former Microsoft employees), and of course we interns are huge fans of theirs, so they gave us a very nice tour. Valve's offices are very well designed. The space was stripped bare and redone to suit their needs, so staircases hang from ceilings and go through holes drilled in the floor, giving the place a very utilitarian feel. The hallways have perforated metal plates hanging from them, from which artists attach concept art with magnets for others to critique. Except for a very small (less than 20) administrative staff, there are no offices. Product groups (called 'cabals') work together in large rooms with their workstations on wheels so they can reconfigure the spaces as needed. We walked through the space of the Portal 2 cabal, who were having a mini-meeting (possibly about level design). They had all the workstations on one side of the room, and the other side had couches and larger desks and whiteboards. The lights were off and all illumination came through shaded windows. They covered up some of the whiteboards before we came in, but still showed us some things, notably some concept art for Portal 2's Chell, who looks older but still badass, and they had us vote for which of four Xbox cover art designs we liked best. On one wall I also spied what looked to be similar to the sentry guns in Portal, but black, and on legs. Valve eschews offices for collective spaces because of the way the company is structured -- entirely without bosses or managers. Individual employees take up leadership helms as needed, but there are no titles -- everyone works on everything. This is why when you watch the credits roll on a Valve game, it simply says "Valve is:" and then lists the names of all Valve employees. Their thinking is simple: they've hired the best people, so they don't need to be managed. Everyone collaborates and decisions are made by the group. They explained all this to us as we sat at a conference table made of solid cast iron in their meeting room called the "fishbowl", probably because one of its walls is formed of windows separating it from their lunch room. After talking about the company and its history and answering a bunch of our questions, they gave us Team Fortress 2 tshirts, and we sadly had to go back to work. It was very classy of them to take time out of their day to show the bunch of us around and let us peek at their inner-workings. Even though I have zero interest in working on video games at this time, I'm extremely impressed with Valve and I think it would be pretty close to the coolest thing in the world to work there. |
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At Valve, did they offer hats? And were they all wearing hats? Was there a hat that seemed to be made of skin? Did you see Gabe, and if you did, is he really as wide as he looks? (There's another 3 months)
Also, apparently Pat wants me to start a blog of my own, since I'm interning at Argonne National Lab right now. Any suggestions?
Also, apparently Pat wants me to start a blog of my own, since I'm interning at Argonne National Lab right now. Any suggestions?
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