Valve's hiring practices

[ChopperDave]

While I was at GDC I had a chance to sit at a talk Valve was giving at their booth that discussed their hiring practices, what they look for in candidates, and how their company operates. While I don't remember all of it, here are some bits of info I got out of it that may or may not be useful to you guys:

- They hire like crazy. Five years ago, Valve was 80 people. Now they are up to 215, working on 6-8 products simultaneously. But that doesn’t mean you’ll get the job – the number of applications they get dwarfs the number of people they actually hire by a considerable amount.

- Valve divides members up into cabals. Each cabal puts together programmers, designers, and artists to focus on a title or a particular section of a title.

- Cabals are not rigid. If you find yourself not being of much use in your current project, move on to one where you will be useful.

- Teams are kept small, usually 10-30 people. The largest team Valve had was the L4D2 team, which peaked at 45.

- Valve has a totally flat structure. There are no producers, no managers, no leads. Everyone has equal say in how a product is designed and developed. The people making the game are the ones that decide how it should be made. Each team tends to elect a lead simply to bring order to the chaos. Being elected a lead does not net you a better title, more money or anything like that. All it actually does is give you more work.

- Due to their flat structure, Valve expects all team members to be able to operate autonomously with little to no supervision. You need to be motivated and able to drive yourself without any external direction. It’s just you and your dev team making the game.

- Though Valve always looks for the best programmers, designers, and artists, what they value even more are multi-disciplinary team members. If you can code but also do level design, or do level design but also model, you’ll be much more valuable to them then if your skillset is limited to one area.

- You do not have to be in the games industry to work at Valve. They’ve hired people from all over the place. One of their HR representatives was hired from law firm, and one of their writers they found through his posts on a humor blog.

- The best way to get noticed is to make your work public. Release your mod, ship a title, make a single map, whatever. Just get it out there, let the end users play it and offer feedback, then incorporate that feedback into your next release.

- For people working on mods, keep your teams very small. Valve is well aware of the number of HL mods that fail, and they said one of the biggest problems is teams get too large. They think a team of 5 people is plenty to make a good mod, and more than that is just going to cause things to fall apart.

- When making a mod or something you intend to release to the public, play to your strengths. You don’t have to create new art if you’re not an artist – you don’t have to build all-new levels if you’re not a level designer. Valve cites Garry’s mod as an example. Garry was just a programmer, yet he managed to make a mod that was wildly successful. Adam Foster was just a level designer, yet he made Minerva and now works at Valve.

- When Valve hires people, they’re looking for those that are in for the long haul. They want Valve to be the last place you ever work, so they look for individuals willing to invest themselves in both the products as well as the company.

[Zipfinator]

These facts are very interesting! Thanks for sharing them with us.

[trcc]

Very nice! Thanks.

But

- They hire like crazy. Five years ago, Valve was 80 people. Now they are up to 215, working on 6-8 products simultaneously.

we Know Portal 2, maybe Episode 3. what are the 4-6 others

[YokaI]

Very Nice, and long time no see ChopperDave.

Not like I could get a job there, but it was a very insightful read. XD

[Zipfinator]

Very nice! Thanks.

But

- They hire like crazy. Five years ago, Valve was 80 people. Now they are up to 215, working on 6-8 products simultaneously.

we Know Portal 2, maybe Episode 3. what are the 4-6 others

TF2 updates, L4D updates, L4D2 updates, Unknown project lead by creator of DOTA and I know of one or two more but they were said to be scrapped.

[no00dylan]

Thanks for the info. I am the secret project Valve is working on.

[YokaI]

Oh, and I would edit my earlier comment, but whatever:

Who at valve did you get to talk to? Good ol' Gabe Newell? =P Lucky, I should really get my ass in gear about getting into this stupid industry.

[ChopperDave]

Who at valve did you get to talk to?

No one-on-one, but the presentation was done by Kathy Gehrig (HR), Charlie Brown and Robin Walker.

[YokaI]

Who at valve did you get to talk to?

No one-on-one, but the presentation was done by Kathy Gehrig (HR), Charlie Brown and Robin Walker.

Ah!

That's even cooler ^^ I REALLY ought to get something done so I can go to GDC next time around...

[Generalvivi]

A lot of people that worked at raven now work at valve. One of our art leads just got a job there

Ive heard many things from being in the industry about valve. Would love to work there someday.

[Psy]

Some good info.

[Phott]

A good read, certainly makes you inspired.

[marnamai]

A lot of people that worked at raven now work at valve. One of our art leads just got a job there

Ive heard many things from being in the industry about valve. Would love to work there someday.

Vivi, weren't you laid off recently? Where do you work now?

[marks]

...Unknown project lead by creator of DOTA...

Icefrog didnt create DotA. Eul created DotA, it was revamped by another guy (whose name eludes me) into DotA: Allstars, which is the current incarnation of DotA. However, that guy left shortly after (rumour says to work on LoL) which is when Icefrog stepped in. Icefrog has basically just done minor balance changes, and added some new heroes since he started working on the game.

[Chopium]

This sounds exactly like a company I would love to work at.