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1## Preface
2
3In 1996, we set out to make great games, but we knew back then that we had to first create a place that was designed to foster that greatness. A place where incredibly talented individuals are empowered to put their best work into the hands of millions of people, with very little in their way. This book is an abbreviated encapsulation of our guiding principles. As Valve continues to grow, we hope that these principles will serve each new person joining our ranks. If you are new to Valve, welcome. Although the goals in this book are important, it’s really your ideas, talent, and energy that will keep Valve shining in the years ahead. Thanks for being here. Let’s make great things.
4
5## How to Use This Guide
6
7This guide isn't about fringe benefits or how to set up your workstation or where to find source code. Valve works in ways that might seem counterintuitive at first. This guide is about the choices you're going to be making and how to think about them. Mainly, it's about how not to freak out now that you're here. 
8
9> For more nuts-and-bolts information, there's an official Valve intranet (**http://intranet**). Look for stuff there like how to build a Steam depot or whether eyeglasses are covered by your Flex Spending plan. 
10> 
11> This book is on the intranet, so you can edit it. Once you've read it, help us make it better for other new people. Suggest new sections, or change the existing ones. Add to the Glossary. Or if you're not all that comfortable editing it, annotate it: make comments and suggestions. We'll collectively review the changes and fold them into future revisions. 
12
13# Part 1 - Welcome to Valve
14
15## [Your First Day](https://i.imgur.com/zlV2y6G.png)
16
17So you've gone through the interview process, you've signed the contracts, and you're finally here at Valve. Congratulations, and welcome. 
18
19Valve has an incredibly unique way of doing things that will make this the greatest professional experience of your life, but it can take some getting used to. This guide was written by people who've been where you are now, and who want to make your first few months here as easy as possible. 
20
21## [Valve Facts That Matter](https://i.imgur.com/uGys6mX.png)
22
23**Valve is self-funded.** We haven't ever brought in outside financing. Since our earliest days this has been incredibly important in providing freedom to shape the company and its business practices. 
24
25**Valve owns its intellectual property.** This is far from the norm, in our industry or at most entertainment content-producing companies. We didn't always own it all. But thanks to some legal wrangling with our first publisher after *Half-Life* shipped, we now do. This has freed us to make our own decisions about our products. 
26
27**Valve is more than a game company.** We started our existence as a pretty traditional game company. And we're still one, but with a hugely expanded focus. Which is great, because we get to make better games as a result, and we've also been able to diversify. We're an entertainment company. A software company. A platform company. But mostly, a company full of passionate people who love the products we create. 
28
29## [Welcome to Flatland](https://i.imgur.com/eHrvxnj.jpg)
30
31Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people from the top down, which is why military organizations rely on it so heavily. 
32
33But when you're an entertainment company that's spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they're told obliterates 99 percent of their value. We want innovators, and that means maintaining an environment where they'll flourish. 
34
35That's why Valve is flat. It's our shorthand way of saying that we don't have any management, and nobody "reports to" anybody else. We do have a founder/president, but even he isn't your manager. This company is yours to steer—toward opportunities and away from risks. You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products.
36
37A flat structure removes every organizational barrier between your work and the customer enjoying that work. Every company will tell you that “the customer is boss,” but here that statement has weight. There’s no red tape stopping you from figuring out for yourself what our customers want, and then giving it to them.
38
39If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, that sounds like a lot of responsibility,” you’re right. And that’s why hiring is the single most important thing you will ever do at Valve (*see “Hiring,” in Part 5*). Any time you interview a potential hire, you need to ask yourself not only if they’re talented or collaborative but also if they’re capable of literally running this company, because they will be. 
40
41> **[Why does your desk have wheels?](https://i.imgur.com/89OPmwb.png)** Think of those wheels as a symbolic reminder that you should always be considering where you could move yourself to be more valuable. But also think of those wheels as literal wheels, because that's what they are, and you'll be able to actually move your desk with them. 
42
43> You'll notice people moving frequently; often whole teams will move their desks to be closer to each other. There is no organizational structure keeping you from being in close proximity to the people who you'd help or be helped by most. 
44
45> The fact that everyone is always moving around within the company makes people hard to find. That's why we have **http://user** — check it out. We know where you are based on where your machine is plugged in, so use this site to see a map of where everyone is right now.
46
47# Part 2 - Settling in
48
49## Your First Month
50
51So you've decided where you put your desk. You know where the coffee machine is. ^(in the kitchen) You're even pretty sure you know what that one guy's name is. You're not freaking out anymore. In fact, you're ready to show up to work this morning, sharpen those pencils, turn on your computer, and then what? 
52
53This next section walks you through figuring out what to work on. You'll learn about how projects work, how cabals work, and how products get out the door at Valve. 
54
55## [What to work on](https://i.imgur.com/2i13FFl.png)
56
57### Why do I need to pick my own projects? 
58
59We've heard that other companies have people allocate a percentage of their time to self-directed projects. At Valve, that percentage is 100. 
60
61Since Valve is flat, people don't join projects because they're told to. Instead, you'll decide what to work on after asking yourself the right questions (more on that later). Employees vote on projects with their feet (or desk wheels). Strong projects are ones in which people can see demonstrated value; they staff up easily. This means there are any number of internal recruiting efforts constantly under way. 
62
63If you're working here, that means you're good at your job. People are going to want you to work with them on their projects, and they'll try hard to get you to do so. But the decision is going to be up to you. (In fact, at times you're going to wish for the luxury of having just one person telling you what they think you should do, rather than hundreds.)
64
65### But how do I decide which things to work on? 
66
67Deciding what to work on can be the hardest part of your job at Valve. This is because, as you've found out by now, you were not hired to fill a specific job description. You were hired to constantly be looking around for the most valuable work you could be doing. At the end of a project, you may end up well outside what you thought was your core area of expertise. 
68
69There's no rule book for choosing a project or task at Valve. But it's useful to answer questions like these: 
70
71* Of all the projects currently under way, what's the most valuable thing I can be working on? 
72* Which projects will have the highest direct impact on our customers? How much will the work I ship benefit them? 
73* Is Valve not doing something that it should be doing? 
74* What's interesting? What's rewarding? What leverages my individual strengths the most? 
75
76### [How do I find out what projects are under way?](https://i.imgur.com/9xKWbXp.png) 
77
78There are lists of stuff, like current projects, but by far the best way to find out is to ask people. Anyone, really. When you do, you'll find out what's going on around the company and your peers will also find out about you. Lots of people at Valve want and need to know what you care about, what you're good at, what you're worried about, what you've got experience with, and so on. And the way to get the word out is to start telling people all of those things. So, while you're getting the lay of the land by learning about projects, you're also broadcasting your own status to a relevant group of people. 
79
80Got an idea for how Valve could change how we internally broadcast project/company status? Great. Do it. In the meantime, the chair next to anyone's desk is always open, so plant yourself in it often. 
81
82### Short-term vs. long-term goals
83
84Because we are all responsible for prioritizing our own work, and because we are conscientious and anxious to be valuable, as individuals we tend to gravitate toward projects that have a high, measurable, and predictable return for the company. So when there's a clear opportunity on the table to succeed at a near-term business goal with a clear return, we all want to take it. And, when we're faced with a problem or a threat, and it's one with a clear cost, it's hard not to address it immediately. 
85
86This sounds like a good thing, and it often is, but it has some downsides that are worth keeping in mind. Specifically, if we're not careful, these traits can cause us to race back and forth between short-term opportunities and threats, being responsive rather than proactive. 
87
88So our lack of a traditional structure comes with an important responsibility. It's up to all of us to spend effort focusing on what we think the long-term goals of the company should be. 
89
90### Someone told me to (or not to) work on X. And they've been here a long time! 
91
92Well, the correct response to this is to keep thinking about whether or not your colleagues are right. Broaden the conversation. Hold on to your goals if you're convinced they're correct. Check your assumptions. Pull more people in. Listen. Don't believe that anyone holds authority over the decisions you're trying to make. They don't; but they probably have valuable experience to draw from, or information/data that you don't have, or insight that's new. When considering the outcome, don't believe that anyone but you is the "stakeholder". You're it. And Valve's customers are who you're serving. Do what's right for them. 
93
94> There are lots of stories about how Gabe has made important decisions by himself, e.g., hiring the whole *Portal 1* team on the spot after only half of a meeting. Although there are examples, like that one, where this kind of decision making has been successful, it's not the norm for Valve. If it were, we'd be only as smart as Gabe or management types, and they'd make our important decisions for us. Gabe is the first to say that he can't be right nearly often enough for us to operate that way. His decisions and requests are subject to just as much scrutiny and skepticism as anyone else's. (So if he tells you to put a favorite custom knife design into *Counter-Strike*, you can just say no.)
95
96Whatever group you're in, whether you're building Steam servers, translating support articles, or making the ten-thousandth hat for *Team Fortress 2*, this applies to you. It's crucial that you believe it, so we'll repeat it a few more times in this book. 
97
98### What about all the things that I'm not getting done? 
99
100It's natural in this kind of environment to constantly feel like you're failing because for every one task you decide to work on, there will be dozens that aren't getting your attention. Trust us, this is normal. Nobody expects you to devote time to every opportunity that comes your way. Instead, we want you to learn how to choose the most important work to do. 
101
102### How does Valve decide what to work on? 
103
104The same way we make other decisions: by waiting for someone to decide that it's the right thing to do, and then letting them recruit other people to work on it with them. We believe in each other to make these decisions, and this faith has proven to be well-founded over and over again. 
105
106But rather than simply trusting each other to just be smart, we also constantly test our own decisions. Whenever we move into unknown territory, our findings defy our own predictions far more often than we'd like to admit. We've found it vitally important to, whenever possible, not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or folk wisdom. 
107
108This kind of testing takes place across our business, from game development to hiring, to selling games on Steam. Luckily, Steam is a fantastic platform for business learning. IT exists to be an entertainment/service platform for our customers, and as such it also is a conduit for constant communication between us and them. 
109
110Accepted truisms about sales, marketing, regionality, seasonality, the Internet, purchasing behavior, game design, economics, and recruiting, etc., have proven wrong surprisingly often. So we have learned that when we take nearly any action, it's best to do so in a way that we can measure, predict outcomes, and analyze results. 
111
112Recruiting can be a difficult process to instrument and measure. Although we have always tried to be highly rational about how we hire people, we've found much room for improvement in our approach over the years. We have made significant strides toward bringing more predictability, measurement, and analysis to recruiting. A process that many assume must be treated only as a "soft" art because it has to do with humans, personalities, language, and nuance, actually has ample room for a healthy dose of science. We're not turning the whole thing over to robots just yet though (*see “Hiring,” in Part 5).
113
114### Can I be included the next time Valve is deciding X?
115
116Yes. There's no secret decision-making cabal. No matter what project, you're already invited. All you have to do is either (1) Start working on it, or (2) Star talking to all the people who you think might be working on it already and find out how to best be valuable. You will be welcomed—there is no approval process or red tape involved. Quite the opposite—it’s your job to insert yourself wherever you think you should be.
117
118## Teams, Hours, and the Office
119
120### [Cabals](https://i.imgur.com/Mbu3X3r.jpg)
121
122Cabals are really just multidisciplinary project teams. We’ve self-organized into these largely temporary groups since the early days of Valve. They exist to get a product or large feature shipped. Like any other group or effort at the company, they form organically. People decide to join the group based on their own belief that the group’s work is important enough for them to work on.
123
124>For reference, read [the article on cabals by Ken Birdwell](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_design_process_.php). It describes where cabals came from and what they meant to us early on.
125
126### Team leads
127
128Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re keeping the whole project in their head at once so that people can use them as a resource to check decisions against. The leads serve the team, while acting as centers for the teams.
129
130### Structure happens
131
132Project teams often have an internal structure that forms temporarily to suit the group’s needs. Although people at Valve don’t have fixed job descriptions or limitations on the scope of their responsibility, they can and often do have clarity around the definition of their “job” on any given day. They, along with their peers, effectively create a job description that fits the group’s goals. That description changes as requirements change, but the temporary structure provides a shared understanding of what to expect from each other. If someone moves to a different group or a team shifts its priorities, each person can take on a completely different role according to the new requirements.
133
134Valve is not averse to all organizational structure—it crops up in many forms all the time, temporarily. But problems show up when hierarchy or codified divisions of labor either haven’t been created by the group’s members or when those structures persist for long periods of time. We believe those structures inevitably begin to serve their own needs rather than those of Valve’s customers. The hierarchy will begin to reinforce its own structure by hiring people who fit its shape, adding people to fill subordinate support roles. Its members are also incented to engage in rent-seeking behaviors that take advantage of the power structure rather than focusing on simply delivering value to customers.
135
136### Hours
137
138While 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. 
139
140If you find yourself working long hours, or just generally feel like that balance is out of whack, be sure to raise the issue with whomever you feel would help. Dina loves to force people to take vacations, so you can make her your first stop.
141
142### The office
143
144Sometimes things around the office can seem a little too good to be true. If you find yourself walking down the hall one morning with a bowl of fresh fruit and Stumptown-roasted espresso, dropping off your laundry to be washed, and heading into one of the massage rooms, don’t freak out. All these things are here for you to actually use. And don’t worry that somebody’s going to judge you for taking advantage of it—relax! And if you stop on the way back from your massage to play darts or work out in the Valve gym or whatever, it’s not a sign that this place is going to come crumbling down like some 1999-era dot-com startup. If we ever institute caviar-catered lunches, though, then maybe something’s wrong. Definitely panic if there’s caviar.
145
146## Risks
147
148### [What if I screw up?](https://i.imgur.com/cHhxjuo.png) 
149
150Nobody has ever been fired at Valve for making a mistake. It wouldn’t make sense for us to operate that way. Providing the freedom to fail is an important trait of the company—we couldn’t expect so much of individuals if we also penalized people for errors. Even expensive mistakes, or ones which result in a very public failure, are genuinely looked at as opportunities to learn. We can always repair the mistake or make up for it. 
151
152Screwing up is a great way to find out that your assumptions were wrong or that your model of the world was a little bit off. As long as you update your model and move forward with a better picture, you’re doing it right. Look for ways to test your beliefs. Never be afraid to run an experiment or to collect more data.
153
154It helps to make predictions and anticipate nasty outcomes. Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m right?” Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m wrong?” Then ask yourself “what do I see?” If something totally unexpected happens, try to figure out why.
155
156There are still some bad ways to fail. Repeating the same mistake over and over is one. Not listening to customers or peers before or after a failure is another. Never ignore the evidence; particularly when it says you’re wrong. 
157
158### [But what if we ALL screw up?](https://i.imgur.com/jCzDa9Y.jpg) 
159
160So if every employee is autonomously making his or her own decisions, how is that not chaos? How does Valve make sure that the company is heading in the right direction? When everyone is sharing the steering wheel, it seems natural to fear that one of us is going to veer Valve’s car off the road.
161
162Over time, we have learned that our collective ability to meet challenges, take advantage of opportunity, and respond to threats is far greater when the responsibility for doing so is distributed as widely as possible. Namely, to every individual at the company. 
163
164We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with our customers. They watch us, sometimes very publicly,  make mistakes. Sometimes they get angry with us. But because we always have their best interests at heart, there’s faith that we’re going to make things better, and that if we’ve screwed up today, it wasn’t because we were trying to take advantage of anyone. 
165
166# Part 4 - Choose Your Own Adventure
167
168## Your First Six Months
169
170You've solved the nuts-and-bolts issues. Now you're moving beyond wanting to just be productive day to day—you’re ready to help shape your future, and Valve’s. Your own professional development and Valve’s growth are both now under your control. Here are some thoughts on steering both toward success.
171
172### [Roles](https://i.imgur.com/urGcc4j.png)
173
174By now it’s obvious that roles at Valve are fluid. Traditionally at Valve, nobody has an actual title. This is by design, to remove organizational constraints. Instead we have things we call ourselves, for convenience. In particular, people who interact with others outside the company call themselves by various titles because doing so makes it easier to get their jobs done.
175
176Inside the company, though, we all take on the role that suits the work in front of us. Everyone is a designer. Everyone can question each other’s work. Anyone can recruit someone onto his or her project. Everyone has to function as a “strategist,” which really means figuring out how to do what’s right for our customers. We all engage in analysis, measurement, predictions, evaluations. 
177
178One outward expression of these ideals is the list of credits that we put in our games—it’s simply a long list of names, sorted alphabetically. That’s it. This was intentional when we shipped *Half-Life*, and we’re proud to continue the tradition today. 
179
180### Advancement vs. growth
181
182Because Valve doesn’t have a traditional hierarchical structure, it can be confusing to figure out how Valve fits into your career plans. “Before Valve, I was an assistant technical second animation director in Hollywood. I had planned to be a director in five years. How am I supposed to keep moving forward here?”
183
184Working at Valve provides an opportunity for extremely efficient and, in many cases, very accelerated, career growth. In particular, it provides an opportunity to broaden one’s skill set well outside of the narrow constraints that careers can have at most other companies.
185
186So the “growth ladder” is tailored to you. It operates exactly as fast as you can manage to grow. You’re in charge of your track, and you can elicit help with it anytime from those around you. FYI, we usually don’t do any formalized employee “development” (course work, mentor assignment), because for senior people it’s mostly not effective. We believe that high-performance people are generally self-improving.
187
188Most people who fit well at Valve will be better positioned after their time spent here than they could have been if they’d spent their time pretty much anywhere else.
189
190### Putting more tools in your toolbox
191
192The most successful people at Valve are both (1) highly skilled at a broad set of things and (2) world-class experts within a more narrow discipline. (*See [“T-shaped” people](https://i.imgur.com/1R5bsJ0.jpg)*) Because of the talent diversity here at Valve, it’s often easier to become stronger at things that aren’t your core skill set.
193
194### Engineers: code is only the beginning
195
196If you were hired as a software engineer, you’re now surrounded by a multidisciplinary group of experts in all kinds of fields—creative, legal, financial, even psychological. Many of these people are probably sitting in the same room as you every day, so the opportunities for learning are huge. Take advantage of this fact whenever possible: the more you can learn about the mechanics, vocabulary, and analysis within other disciplines, the more valuable you become. 
197
198### Non-Engineers: program or be programmed
199
200Valve’s core competency is making software. Obviously, different disciplines are part of making our products, but we’re still an engineering-centric company. That’s because the core of the software-building process is engineering. As in, writing code. If your expertise is not in writing code, then every bit of energy you put into understanding the code-writing part of making software is to your (and Valve’s) benefit. You don’t need to become an engineer, and there’s nothing that says an engineer is more valuable than you. But broadening your awareness in a highly technical direction is never a bad thing. It’ll either increase the quality or quantity of bits you can put “into boxes,” which means affecting customers more, which means you’re valuable.
201
202# Part 6 - Epilogue
203
204## What Is Valve Not Good At?
205
206The design of the company has some downsides. We usually think they’re worth the cost, but it’s worth noting that there are a number of things we wish we were better at: 
207
208* Helping new people find their way. We wrote this book to help, but as we said above, a book can only go so far.
209* Mentoring people. Not just helping new people figure things out, but proactively helping people to grow in areas where they need help is something we’re organizationally not great at. Peer reviews help, but they can only go so far.
210* Disseminating information internally.
211* Finding and hiring people in completely new disciplines (e.g., economists! industrial designers!).
212* Making predictions longer than a few months out.
213* We miss out on hiring talented people who prefer to work within a more traditional structure. Again, this comes with the territory and isn’t something we should change, but it’s worth recognizing as a self-imposed limitation.
214
215## What Happens When All This Stuff Doesn’t Work?
216
217Sometimes, the philosophy and methods outlined in this book don’t match perfectly with how things are going day to day. But we’re confident that even when problems persist for a while, Valve roots them out.
218
219As you see it, are there areas of the company in which the ideals in this book are realized more fully than others? What should we do about that? Are those differences a good thing? What would you change? This handbook describes the goals we believe in. If you find yourself in a group or project that you feel isn’t meeting these goals, be an agent of change. Help bring the group around. Talk about these goals with the team and/or others.
220
221## Where Will You Take Us?
222
223Valve will be a different company a few years from now because you are going to change it for the better. We can’t wait to see where you take us. The products, features, and experiences that you decide to create for customers are the things that will define us.
224
225Whether it’s a new game, a feature in Steam, a way to save customers money, a painting that teaches us what’s beautiful, something that protects us from legal threats, a new typeface, an idea for how to be healthier while we work, a new hat-making tool for TF2, a spectacular animation, a new kind of test that lets us be smarter, a game controller that can tell whether you’re scared or a toy that makes four-year-olds laugh, or (more likely) something nobody’s thought of yet—we can’t wait to see what kind of future you choose to build at Valve.