Valve ‘fires’ prototype engineer, 25 laid off, Holtman exits – report

lol

People generally don’t get fired unless they’ve done something to seriously breach company policy. If she were made redundant, that’d be a different thing.

@1 Someone’s lost their job. Why is that funny? :/

@1 lol i agree lol
@3 lol

@2 Not necessarily at Valve. You can be fired for not creating enough of what they call ‘shippable’ content on a monthly basis. The pressure’s on employees to keep creating, which is obviously a hard thing for anyone to do at a company that forward-thinking.

Read the handbook dude, it’s genuinely interesting, but also kind of scary

@1 & 4 – morons, the pair of you.

Hmm, maybe Valve decided to completely outsource the Steambox idea.

Hmm I wonder what she done, if anything.

@6 Maybe…

@Dave “You can be fired for not creating enough of what they call ‘shippable’ content on a monthly basis” Still, if she couldn’t do her job she deserved to be fired, I can’t feel bad for her at all. I will imagine she will find new work somewhere pretty quickly.

I’m sure she’ll love that you used that photo.
How does getting fired work in a flat hierarchy?

Or maybe realized they overstimated her knowledge because is hot, and not really worth her salary.

@8 They cut fat whenever an area of the business isn’t required I’m guessing. It seems really cut-throat. Your colleagues essentially vote how much you should be paid at the end of each month based on the vale you’ve brought to the company. Their company handbook calls it ‘compensation’, not ‘wage’.

So if they feel you’re no longer needed, you get nothing. Or the chop it seems.

@9 Or perhaps wearable computing tech isn’t going anywhere.

@10

Come on Dave, you know that’s all bullshit, right?

Everyone there has a salary negotiated when they join, just like any other job. They don’t work on different wage every month (unless bonuses are involved), although they do have an annual peer review.

The handbook is a fun read, but it’s mostly fiction designed to make things sound more interesting.

@12 How do any of us know if it’s bullshit or not? Do you have a source dude? I’m just keeping an open mind to the possibilities here

I’d really love to know the reason for this

Nobody will get sacked for not producing “shippable” content, especially if they are responsible for prototypes (which aren’t shippable product anyway!)

I don’t know about the US, but in the UK I see useless plebs get promoted to managers because it’s easier than sacking them due to all our protection laws. I guess the US doesn’t have those, and maybe they can sack useless people “just because”?

So she was sacked because she was useless or because she was snogging someone at work. Place your bets! Oh that reminds me, we once had a dude get sacked because he was caught giving a BJ in the carpark, lul.

@16 I’m not sure dude, if I just stopped doing news on the site, I’d get sacked. Isn’t that still the same workload issue? I’m not sure. Not arguing with you btw, just exploring the possibilities with the group

And that’s pretty funny Why would anyone do that in the carpark?

@Dave

A wage/salary is often called compensation. As in you are compensated for giving your time, effort and energy to the company. That doesn’t mean it’s negotiated monthly, unless you’re on a non-guaranteed contract/freelance rate.

Valve isn’t insane – it wouldn’t be able to get as many staff as it has if it didn’t offer people guaranteed salaries.

@18 That makes perfect sense man, I didn’t know that was a term used widely in the States

@18 They could just give them minimum wage and the rest is bonus based. If what I understand is true a Valve employee would almost always get a bonus as long as you are seen to be doing work / providing value. The amount of bonus money and benefits will be very high, well above industry norms even on a bad month, enough to ensure staff don’t have to worry about financial security etc.

Just because its not normal doesn’t mean it cant exist, isn’t that the whole thing about Valve, the way they were funded in the beginning meant they could setup shop in a totally different way to everyone else.

Hm, and here I thought Valve was the bastion of awesomeness.

I seem to remember Gabe talking about this VERY recently (maybe on Nerdist?) where he said one of the down-sides of their ‘anarchic’ business practices was that everybody was assessed regularly in terms of their productivity (which could be measured in terms of amount of code written, or perceived consumer value or whatever) and that as a consequence, the firing process was pretty brutal, sink or swim…

He also said that a lot of people don’t survive the adjustment period…

@22 Yep I remember he said all of this himself. It was in his University of Texas lecture a few weeks ago. It sounds like a crazy / daunting place to work.

I really don’t care. Valve fires one employee, so?
@Dave,
Silk is not dude

@24 I call everyone ‘dude’, regardless of gender It’s silly I know.

@silkvg247
Depending on the State I think US employment law can be very favourable to the employer rather than the employee. So yes you can be sacked “just because”.

Dave, I work with Valve (not for them) on a fairly regular basis.

The constant assessment thing is more about development staff than commercial staff. You can’t really assess how much value a busdev manager is bringing to the company by presenting a slideshow (for example), but they still keep their job.

I think it’s more the case that people are called to account for being slow, unproductive, lazy, or generally just carry a negative attitude about what they’re doing – not uncommon in games companies where productivity goes largely unchecked.

And, like any company, there are leads for each area, and they are compensated for being in that role – the difference is that it isn’t necessarily a permanent position – making the lead positions flexible/temporary keeps everyone on their toes and means that in order to remain in a senior position you have to work your nuts off.

It’s different, sure, but not as unusual as it first sounds.

@27 thanks for clarifying dude, that’s very interesting. it’s hard to know what’s what with so many rumours flying around about the way Valve works internally

i know Jeri Ellsworth and she ain’t no a4 personality. she is very smart and have some very wacky ideas, she always think outside the box. she is definite not a person you would call a ‘normal’ employee with ‘normal’ working hours. i guess jeri’s ‘playing’ have just become to expensive for valve. but if you want greatness you cant put a budget on prototype engineering.

i guess gabe have got cold feet and don’t want to take over the world with his steambox anymore….

I didn’t realize Kaylee Frye worked for Valve…what a shame.

I think we all can learn a lesson from this:

Gabe always gets the last six donuts.

Neat. Discussion about reasons for her firing have descended into such gems as implying she was useless, lazy or got on the bad side of someone she was sleeping with.

We don’t know why she was fired. While it IS fun to speculate, unless we actively know what she’s been working on over the past several months and how she’s gone about it, it’s a little soon to assume her firing was entirely her fault. The only reason we’re able to condemn the likes of Motomu Toriyama is that we actually have projects he’s completed and comments he’s made in interviews to back them up.

@silkvg247

In Texas we have a right to work law which gives the employer the power to fire you for any reason. It is one of the reasons why lot of companies flock to this state not to mention this state has the least laws for worker rights.

@2 Valve is a “flat” organization, which means there’s no hierarchy, no bosses, and no real titles.

You can work on whatever you want, but you have to be able to put yourself to work and perform to a certain standard, so there’s nothing holding back your creativity and productivity, but you have a big responsibility to make use of yourself.

Gabe Newell recently said in a lecture that one of the keys to making that work is firing people if they can’t adapt to it.

Post updated. Still no word from Valve, yet.

… and the post has, again, been updated

Wow. Pretty big deal that.

First comment is gold

Apple to buy Valve rumours in 3… 2… 1…

Apple to buy Valve.

Rumours.

iSteam? The New Counterstrike? Team Fortress mini perhaps? Or maybe, just maybe Left For Dead 2s?

RUMOURS AND SPECULATIONS ARE UNNECESSARY. ALL OF YOU GUYS ARE GIRLS.

More importantly, Black Hole – spill the HL3 beans!

Man… How can they fire the woman who made a commodore 64 bass guitar, seriously this woman is so awesome!