Ex-Valve Employees Highlight Various Issues Faced In The Company

Various former and current Valve employees have come forward to elaborate on the inner workings of the Corporation. A new report sheds light on the popular structureless system utilized at the giant workplace and a slew of issues, like lack of support and initiatives to increase diversity within the company.

The nearly 1-hour video by the YouTuber People Make Games interviewed 16 present and former employees of the giant conglomerate to clear some of the most frequently asked questions in the gaming industry. The video also explains how the company functions without proper upper management in a structureless ecosystem.

One of the central dilemmas faced by Valve employees is the use of a “stack ranking system;” the workers are judged and ranked by fellow employees since the conglomerate lacks actual bosses.

The ranking indirectly controls the developers’ salary by judging performance, which leads to an overall plunge in morale and motivation within the workplace. As per the different interviewees, the stack ranking system also leads to rising prejudices and hierarchies within the workplace, which increases the disparity among developers.

Valve developers also emphasized a lack of diversity within the workplace; the flat corporate setup was deemed to be the main reason. The report notes that the bulk of veteran employees and its general staff is white and male. The YouTube video claims that longtime employees prefer hiring newer candidates that look like them.

The unorthodox system at the Valve workplace has also alluded to the lack of women workers. The report notes that most contractors or lower-level employees were women and people of color. One ex-employee stated during the interview, “While I was there, there was never more than one female programmer at the company.”

The Black Lives Matter movement was another topic thoroughly discussed in the interview. The workplace was highly divided on the matter, with one party wanting to make a statement publically and others seemingly choosing to exercise silence.

In the end, the senior Valve employees eventually decided not to make a statement and instead allotted 10,000 dollars to employees to donate to any cause of their choice.

Valve is well-renowned for releasing its games after a long time of brewing, which has led people to question what goes on behind the scenes. The slow-release approach has raised eyebrows among the community and game critics, and the main reason behind the lack of game releases is how the company functions.

While the corporation hardly ever releases new entries, it is currently strongly gossiped to be working on a new title called Neon Prime, which is rumored to be a competitive FPS shooter.

All in all, the absence of traditional management and the botched system in place have highly contributed to the issues within Valve’s workplace. The lack of coordination and responsibility, in turn, has resulted in the cancellation of a plethora of projects during different times in development over the years.

The American-based company has not yet issued an official statement nor replied to the YouTuber in light of this new report.

What are your thoughts about the new report signifying all the lingering problems in the structureless workplace? Do you think the utilized stack-ranking system is doing all the different employees any good? Do let us know your opinions in the comments below.

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