"Hours While people occasionally choose to push themselves to work some extra hours at times when something big is going out the door, for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communication. If this happens at Valve, it’s a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected. If you’re looking around wondering why people aren’t in “crunch mode,” the answer’s pretty simple. The thing we work hardest at is hiring good people, so we want them to stick around and have a good balance between work and family and the rest of the important stuff in life."
I've also heard that the everything-is-flat model isn't all that great either. Yes you get to work on what you want, but, going back to the stack-ranking, it can be quite the political place if you want to get on the right projects, etc.
I'm not trying to say that Valve isn't a great place to work, but I think people romanticize it a little too much when this handbook gets trotted out on HN every other month.
context matters: the work-life norm for video games is horrendously awful.
I'm not saying this is how Valve thinks, but if you were recruiting for a video game company, you could totally tell people "work-life balance matters here, so you'll often be able to go home on weekends," or "work-life balance matters here, so we rarely work more than ten hours a day."
That is going to be their downfall.
I actually do work a 9-5 job in tech' in government, but I am more the exception than the rule. Many people seem to be working an hour more, and up to three to four hours more (e.g. 8 to 7, or 7 to 7) in other local places (and certainly in SV).
If my start up ever gets off the ground and I bring people in, I am going to strongly encourage a 9-5 by 5 day working environment with vacations, because I feel like if you ask for more you're exchanging short term productivity for long term productivity (i.e. people burn out, both with a longer work day, but also with no actual seven plus day holidays).
Some people will claim that "startups simply cannot afford that!" but to me that is just the cost of doing business. Stress doesn't make for an efficient employee, and higher turn-over certainly doesn't improve efficiency (for anyone). But I feel like my attitude is very "European" and most Americans see hours worked as a mark of honour and a competitive bargaining chip.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2zxcyy/gabe_newell_re...
edit: looked on github for hacker news source, to see if I could automate this. is it not open-sourced? all I found was docs for the API.
