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+### HANDBOOK FOR
+
+### NEW EMPLOYEES
+
+_============================================================_
+
+
+## HANDBOOK FOR
+
+## NEW EMPLOYEES
+
+#### A fearless adventure
+
+#### in knowing what to do
+
+#### when no one’s there
+
+#### telling you what to do
+
+```
+FIRST EDITION
+2012
+```
+_========================================================_
+
+
+```
+Dedicated to the families
+of all Valve employees.
+```
+Thank you for helping us make
+such an incredible place.
+
+### Table of Contents
+
+```
+Preface .....................................................vii
+How to Use This Book .........................................viii
+Part 1: Welcome to Valve ........................................ 1
+Your First Day
+Valve Facts That Matter
+Welcome to Flatland
+Part 2: Settling In .................................................... 7
+Your First Month
+What to Work On
+Why do I need to pick my own projects?, But how do I decide which things to
+work on?, How do I find out what projects are under way?, Short-term vs. long-
+term goals, What about all the things that I’m not getting done?, How does
+Valve decide what to work on? Can I be included the next time Valve is
+deciding X?
+Teams, Hours, and the Office
+Cabals, Team leads, Structure happens, Hours, The office
+Risks
+What if I screw up?, But what if we ALL screw up?
+Part 3: How Am I Doing? ............................................ 25
+Your Peers and Your Performance
+Peer reviews, Stack ranking (and compensation)
+Part 4: Choose Your Own Adventure .................................. 35
+Your First Six Months
+Roles, Advancement vs. growth, Putting more tools in your toolbox
+Part 5: Valve Is Growing ............................................. 41
+Your Most Important Role
+Hiring, Why is hiring well so important at Valve?, How do we choose
+the right people to hire?, We value “T-shaped” people, We’re looking
+for people stronger than ourselves, Hiring is fundamentally the same
+across all disciplines
+Part 6: Epilogue .................................................... 51
+What Is Valve Not Good At?
+What Happens When All This Stuff Doesn’t Work?
+Where Will You Take Us?
+Glossary ............................................................ 55
+```
+
+- vii –
+
+_© 2012 Valve Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
+This handbook does not constitute an employment contract or binding policy and is subject to change at any time. Either Valve or an employee can terminate the employment relationship
+at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Employment with Valve is at-will, and nothing in this handbook will alter that status._
+
+_First edition: March 2012_
+Valve CorporationBellevue, Washington USA
+[http://www.valvesoftware.com](http://www.valvesoftware.com)
+_Designed by ValveTypeface: ITC New Baskerville_
+
+_10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1_
+
+## Preface
+
+```
+In 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.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- viii –
+
+## How to Use This Book
+
+```
+This book 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 hand-
+book 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.
+```
+```
+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.
+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.
+```
+==================================================
+
+## ================================================== Welcome to Valve
+
+# 1
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 2 – – 3 –
+
+```
+WELCOME TO VALVE
+```
+## Your First Day
+
+So you’ve gone through the interview process, you’ve
+signed the contracts, and you’re finally here at Valve.
+Congratulations, and welcome.
+Valve 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
+book 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.
+
+## Valve Facts That Matter
+
+```
+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.
+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.
+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,
+```
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 4 –
+
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+and we’ve also been able to diversify. We’re an entertain-
+ment company. A software company. A platform company.
+But mostly, a company full of passionate people who love
+the products we create.
+
+## Welcome to Flatland
+
+Hierarchy 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.
+But when you’re an entertainment company that’s spent
+the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most
+intelligent, innovative, t alented 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.
+That’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.
+A flat structure removes every organizational barrier
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 6 –
+
+```
+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 stop-
+ping you from figuring out for yourself what our customers
+want, and then giving it to them.
+If 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 ,” on page 43). 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.
+```
+==================================================
+**Why does your desk have wheels?** 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.
+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.
+The fact that everyone is always moving around within the company
+makes people hard to find. That’s why we have **[http://user](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.
+
+==================================================
+
+## Settling In
+
+# 2
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 8 – – 9 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+## Your First Month
+
+So you’ve decided where you put your desk. You know
+where the coffee machine is. 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?
+This 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.
+
+## What to Work On
+
+##### Why do I need to pick my own projects?
+
+We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a
+percentage of their time to self- directed projects. At Valve,
+that percentage is 100.
+Since 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.
+
+```
+If 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.)
+```
+##### But how do I decide which things to work on?
+
+```
+Deciding 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.
+There’s no rule book for choosing a project or task at
+Valve. But it’s useful to answer questions like these:
+```
+- Of all the projects currently under way, what’s the
+most valuable thing I can be working on?
+- Which project will have the highest direct impact
+on our customers? How much will the work I ship
+benefit them?
+- Is Valve not doing something that it should be doing?
+- What’s interesting? What’s rewarding? What leverages
+my individual strengths the most?
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 10 – – 11 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+##### How do I find out what projects are under way?
+
+There 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.
+Got 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.
+
+##### Short-term vs. long-term goals
+
+Because we all are 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.
+This sounds like a good thing, and it often is, but it has
+some downsides that are worth keeping in mind. Specifi-
+cally, 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.
+So 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 com-
+pany should be.
+```
+##### Someone told me to (or not to) work on X. And
+
+##### they’ve been here a long time!
+
+```
+Well, 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 decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they
+probably have valuable experience to draw from, or infor-
+mation/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 custom-
+ers are who you’re serving. Do what’s right for them.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 12 – – 13 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+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.)
+```
+==================================================
+
+==================================================
+
+```
+Whatever 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.
+```
+##### What about all the things that I’m not getting done?
+
+```
+It’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.
+```
+##### How does Valve decide what to work on?
+
+```
+The 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.
+But 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 would like to admit.
+We’ve found it vitally important to, whenever possible,
+not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or
+folk wisdom.
+This 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 learn-
+ing. 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.
+Accepted truisms about sales, marketing, regionality, sea-
+sonality, the Internet, purchasing behavior, game design,
+economics, and recruiting, etc., have proven wrong surpris-
+ingly 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.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 14 – – 15 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+Recruiting can be a difficult process to instrument and
+measure. Although we have always tried to be highly ratio-
+nal 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 predict-
+ability, 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 ,” on page 43)_.
+
+##### Can I be included the next time Valve is deciding X?
+
+Yes. 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) Start 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.
+
+## Teams, Hours, and the Office
+
+##### Cabals
+
+```
+Cabals 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.
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+```
+For reference, read the article on cabals by Ken Birdwell. It describes
+where cabals came from and what they meant to us early on:
+http://tinyurl.com/ygam86p.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 16 – – 17 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+##### Team leads
+
+Often, 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 informa-
+tion. 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.
+
+##### Structure happens
+
+Project 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 struc-
+ture 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 com-
+pletely different role according to the new requirements.
+Valve 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.
+```
+##### 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 plan-
+ning 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.
+If you find yourself working long hours, or just generally
+feel like that balance is out of whack, be sure to raise the
+(cont’d on page 19 )
+```
+
+#### A Timeline of Valve’s History
+
+```
+Valve is formed in Kirkland, WA,
+by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
+```
+```
+1996
+```
+```
+Formation papers are signed on the
+same day as Gabe’s wedding.
+Quake engine license is acquired
+from id Software.
+Production commences on the game
+soon to be known as Half-Life (HL).
+```
+```
+Production commences on Valve’s
+second game, Prospero.
+Valve recruits and hires two game
+teams, including the first international
+employee from the UK.
+```
+```
+1997
+```
+```
+Gabe promises that if HL becomes
+the #1- selling game, the company
+will take everyone on vacation.
+After internal review, HL deemed
+not good enough to ship.
+```
+(^) and essentially starts over. **_HL_** team returns to the drawing board
+**_Prospero_** permanently shelved.
+
+- 19 – HFNE:96:97::01 **VALVE**
+
+```
+step 1. Unplug cords from wall
+step 2. Move your desk
+step 3. Plug cords back into wall
+step 4. Get back to work
+```
+### Fig. 2-2 Method to move your desk
+
+```
+1.
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 1
+
+
+```
+1999 2000 2001
+```
+```
+Valve establishes a pattern
+of supporting the best
+mods and occasionally
+acquiring them.
+```
+```
+Half-Life: Opposing Force
+is released.
+Expansion pack follows events in Black Mesa
+from the viewpoint of an invading soldier.
+```
+```
+Team Fortress Classic
+is released.
+```
+```
+Mike Harrington amicably
+dissolves his partnership
+with Gabe Newell, leaving
+Newell as the sole head of
+Valve Corporation.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike (CS)
+is released.
+```
+```
+Ricochet is released.
+```
+Robin Walker demonstrates to the mod community how (^)
+a game can be created quickly and easily with
+Valve’s SDK.
+**_CS_** soon becomes the
+world’s #1 premier online
+action game.
+**_Half-Life: Deathmatch
+Classic_** is released.
+**_Half-Life: Blue Shift_**
+is released.
+HFNE:99:00:01::03 **VALVE**
+**_Half-Life: Day One_** OEM demo is released.
+Following a certain Black Mesa Incident, the world is never the same again.
+**_Half-Life_** is released.
+Released as a demo bundled with the Voodoo Banshee graphics card, the OEM
+release circulates far beyond its original intended audience. Valve realizes the level
+of anticipation for the full game.
+**1998**
+TeamFortress Software Pty. Ltd. is acquired.
+Creators of **_Team Fortress (TF)_** join Valve and commence work
+on **_Team Fortress Classic_**.
+Valve’s first company vacation to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
+# of employees: **30**
+# of children: **0
+VALVE** HFNE:98::
+
+
+```
+Source engine is unveiled.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike: Source (CSS) is released.
+Years of work on Valve’s new Source engine technology finally come to light.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
+is released.
+```
+```
+Half-Life 2 (HL2) is released.
+The world’s first (legal) look at the Source engine, along with the game it powers: HL.
+HL2 through Steam and in retail locations. appears as the first game available both
+```
+(^) **_HL2_** second Xbox title. also becomes Valve’s
+**2004**
+**_Half-Life: Source_** is released.
+The original **_HL_** gets a visual upgrade.
+HFNE:04::05 **VALVE**
+Valve outgrows its original Kirkland
+office space and moves to down-
+town Bellevue, WA.
+**2002**
+Steam is announced at GDC.
+Valve’s Steam offers to third parties its new suite of tools and services, which
+it had originally built to service its own games like **_HL_** and **_CS_**.
+**_Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)_** is released.
+In a field where rampant online cheating ruins the experience for many customers,
+Valve aggressively addresses the issue.
+**2003**
+**_Half-Life 2 (HL2)_** source code
+is stolen.
+(^) steal and disperse the code base for A thief infiltrates Valve’s network to
+the still-in-production **_HL_**.
+Years of speculation regarding the Borealis and Kraken Base begin...
+Steam is released.
+**_Day of Defeat_** is released.
+A popular mod gets full Valve support, becoming one of its stalwart products.
+**_CS_** is released as Valve’s first Xbox title.
+**VALVE** HFNE:02:03::
+
+
+```
+Steamworks is unveiled, making the
+business and technical tools of the
+Steam platform available to third-
+party developers free of charge.
+Steam hits over 20 million users
+and over 500 games.
+```
+```
+2008
+```
+```
+TF2 gets major class updates for Medic,
+Pyro, and Heavy characters.
+These updates are delivered via Steam to all TF2 customers.
+```
+```
+2009
+```
+```
+Steam ships its first downloadable
+content update for indie game
+The Maw.
+Steam Cloud is released, offering
+seamless online storage of any file
+types, including saved games,
+configuration files, etc.
+```
+```
+LEFT 4 DEAD 2
+is released.
+Presale numbers are the biggest yet for a
+Valve game.
+```
+```
+Steam hits over 25 million users
+and over 1,000 games.
+TF2 releases The Sniper vs Spy Update ,
+followed by outright WAR!
+```
+(^) increase rapidly: more than 280 After this release, the **_TF2_** updates
+have shipped in total.
+**_TF2_** ships its first hat.
+HFNE:08:09::07 **VALVE**
+(^20052006) **_Left 4 Dead_** is released.
+**2007**
+First third-party games are
+released on Steam.
+A landmark in digital distribution, Steam
+gives PC developers an alternative to retail
+for their games.
+**_Half-Life 2: Lost Coast_**
+tech demo is released.
+Supported by the first version of Valve’s popular
+developer commentary.
+**_Half-Life 2: Episode One_**
+is released.
+Valve’s first experiment in episodic storytelling.
+**_Half-Life Deathmatch:
+Source_** is released.
+**_Team Fortress 2 (TF2)_** long-awaited sequel to the , the
+classic multiplayer game.
+**_Half Life 2: Episode Two_** raising the bar for emotional —
+storytelling.
+**_Portal_** an instant classic.—hailed worldwide as
+**_The Orange Box_** is released
+with two previously-released
+titles and three new products:
+**_Day of Defeat: Source_**
+is released.
+Valve hires six students
+from DigiPen Institute of
+Technology after seeing
+their demo of the game,
+_Narbacular Drop_.
+Steam Community is released
+with the first wave of features
+designed to help friends
+connect and socialize via
+the Steam platform.
+Steam reaches 15 million
+active users, playing over
+200 games.
+**VALVE** HFNE:05:06:07::
+
+
+```
+In 2012, Valve heads to the
+Big Island of Hawaii for its
+10th company vacation.
+# of employees: 293
+# of children: 185
+```
+```
+2010 2011 2012
+```
+```
+Valve moves to a more
+expansive location in
+Bellevue, WA.
+```
+```
+Valve announces that
+Steam and Source will be
+available for Macintosh.
+```
+```
+Portal 2 debuts on multiple
+platforms to critical acclaim.
+```
+```
+Valve’s 44th international hire
+clears immigration—this time
+from Germany.
+```
+```
+Q1: New employee handbook
+rolls off press.
+```
+```
+Valve announces Portal 2
+is launching in 2011.
+```
+```
+Valve begins development
+of Dota 2.
+```
+```
+Dota 2 premieres at
+Gamescom in Cologne,
+Germany, with the
+first annual Dota 2
+championship.
+```
+```
+What’s next? You tell us...
+```
+**VALVE** HFNE:10:11:12::08 – 19 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+issue with whomever you feel would help. Dina loves to force
+people to take vacations, so you can make her your first stop.
+```
+##### The office
+
+```
+Sometimes 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 Stump-
+town-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 start-
+up. If we ever institute caviar-catered lunches, though, then
+maybe something’s wrong. Definitely panic if there’s caviar.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 20 – – 21 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+## Risks
+
+##### What if I screw up?
+
+Nobody 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 penal-
+ized 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.
+Screwing up is a great way to find out that your assump-
+tions 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 ex-
+periment or to collect more data.
+It helps to make predictions and anticipate nasty out-
+comes. 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.
+There 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.
+
+
+- 23 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+##### But what if we ALL screw up?
+
+```
+So 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.
+Over 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.
+We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with
+our customers. They watch us, sometimes very publicly,
+```
+### Fig. 2-4 Methods to find out what’s going on
+
+```
+step 1. Talk to someone in a meeting
+step 2. Talk to someone in the elevator
+step 3. Talk to someone in the kitchen
+step 4. Talk to someone in the bathroom
+```
+```
+1.
+```
+```
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+```
+```
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 2
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 24 –
+
+## How Am I Doing?
+
+# 3
+
+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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 26 – – 27 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+prescriptive, and designed to be put to use by the person
+you’re talking about.
+The feedback is then gathered, collated, anonymized,
+and delivered to each reviewee. Making the feedback
+anonymous definitely has pros and cons, but we think it’s
+the best way to get the most useful information to each
+person. There’s no reason to keep your feedback about
+someone to yourself until peer review time if you’d like to
+deliver it sooner. In fact, it’s much better if you do so often,
+and outside the constraints of official peer reviews.
+When delivering peer review feedback, it’s useful to keep
+in mind the same categories used in stack ranking because
+they concretely measure how valuable we think someone is.
+```
+##### Stack ranking (and compensation)
+
+```
+The other evaluation we do annually is to rank each other
+against our peers. Unlike peer reviews, which generate
+information for each individual, stack ranking is done in
+order to gain insight into who’s providing the most value at
+the company and to thereby adjust each person’s compen-
+sation to be commensurate with his or her actual value.
+Valve pays people very well compared to industry norms.
+Our profitability per employee is higher than that of
+Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly
+that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum
+```
+## Your Peers and Your Performance
+
+We have two formalized methods of evaluating each other:
+peer reviews and stack ranking. Peer reviews are done in
+order to give each other useful feedback on how to best
+grow as individual contributors. Stack ranking is done
+primarily as a method of adjusting compensation. Both
+processes are driven by information gathered from each
+other—your peers.
+
+##### Peer reviews
+
+We all need feedback about our performance—in order
+to improve, and in order to know we’re not failing. Once
+a year we all give each other feedback about our work.
+Outside of these formalized peer reviews, the expectation
+is that we’ll just pull feedback from those around us when-
+ever we need to.
+There is a framework for how we give this feedback to
+each other. A set of people (the set changes each time)
+interviews everyone in the whole company, asking who
+each person has worked with since the last round of peer
+reviews and how the experience of working with each
+person was. The purpose of the feedback is to provide
+people with information that will help them grow. That
+means that the best quality feedback is directive and
+
+
+- 29 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+amount of money back into each employee’s pocket. Valve
+does not win if you’re paid less than the value you create.
+And people who work here ultimately don’t win if they get
+paid more than the value they create.
+So Valve’s goal is to get your compensation to be “cor-
+rect.” We tend to be very flexible when new employees are
+joining the company, listening to their salary requirements
+and doing what we can for them. Over time, compensation
+gets adjusted to fit an employee’s internal peer-driven valu-
+ation. That’s what we mean by “correct”—paying someone
+what they’re worth (as best we can tell using the opinions
+of peers).
+```
+```
+The removal of bias is of the utmost importance to Valve in
+this process. We believe that our peers are the best judges
+of our value as individuals. Our flat structure eliminates
+some of the bias that would be present in a peer-ranking
+system elsewhere. The design of our stack-ranking process
+is meant to eliminate as much as possible of the remainder.
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+If you think your compensation isn’t right for the work you do, then
+you should raise the issue. At Valve, these conversations are surprisingly
+easy and straightforward. Adjustments to compensation usually occur
+within the process described here. But talking about it is always the
+right thing if there’s any issue. Fretting about your level of compensa-
+tion without any outside information about how it got set is expensive
+for you and for Valve.
+```
+### Fig. 3-1 Method to working without a boss
+
+```
+step 1. Come up with a bright idea
+step 2. Tell a coworker about it
+step 3. Work on it together
+step 4. Ship it!
+```
+```
+1.
+```
+```
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+```
+```
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 3
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 30 – Fig. 3-2
+
+Each project/product group is asked to rank its own
+members. (People are not asked to rank themselves, so we
+split groups into parts, and then each part ranks people
+other than themselves.) The ranking itself is based on the
+following four metrics:
+
+**1. Skill Level/Technical Ability**
+How difficult and valuable are the kinds of problems
+you solve? How important/critical of a problem can you
+be given? Are you uniquely capable (in the company?
+industry?) of solving a certain class of problem, deliver-
+ing a certain type of art asset, contributing to design,
+writing, or music, etc.?
+**2. Productivity/Output**
+How much shippable (not necessarily shipped to outside
+customers), valuable, finished work did you get done?
+Working a lot of hours is generally not related to produc-
+tivity and, after a certain point, indicates inefficiency.
+It is more valuable if you are able to maintain a sensible
+work/life balance and use your time in the office effi-
+ciently, rather than working around the clock.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 32 – – 33 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+By choosing these categories and basing the stack ranking
+on them, the company is explicitly stating, “This is what
+is valuable.” We think that these categories offer a broad
+range of ways you can contribute value to the company.
+Once the intra-group ranking is done, the information
+gets pooled to be company-wide. We won’t go into that
+methodology here. There is a wiki page about peer feedback
+and stack ranking with some more detail on each process.
+```
+**3. Group Contribution**
+How much do you contribute to studio process, hiring,
+integrating people into the team, improving workflow,
+amplifying your colleagues, or writing tools used by
+others? Generally, being a group contributor means
+that you are making a tradeoff versus an individual
+contribution. Stepping up and acting in a leadership
+role can be good for your group contribution score,
+but being a leader does not impart or guarantee a
+higher stack rank. It is just a role that people adopt
+from time to time.
+**4. Product Contribution**
+How much do you contribute at a larger scope than your
+core skill? How much of your work matters to the prod-
+uct? How much did you influence correct prioritization
+of work or resource trade-offs by others? Are you good
+at predicting how customers are going to react to deci-
+sions we’re making? Things like being a good playtester
+or bug finder during the shipping cycle would fall into
+this category.
+
+
+## Choose Your
+
+## Own Adventure
+
+# 4
+
+```
+step 1. Find someone to watch your cats
+step 2. Board our chartered flight
+step 3. Relax by the pool
+step 4. Relax by the pool some more
+```
+### Fig. 3-3 Method to taking the company trip
+
+```
+1.
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 4
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 36 – – 37 –
+
+```
+CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
+```
+```
+who interact with others outside the company call them-
+selves by various titles because doing so makes it easier to
+get their jobs done.
+Inside the company, though, we all take on the role that
+suits the work in front of us. Everyone is a designer. Every-
+one 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.
+One 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.
+```
+##### Advancement vs. growth
+
+```
+Because 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?”
+Working at Valve provides an opportunity for extremely
+efficient and, in many cases, very accelerated, career
+```
+Fig. 4-1
+
+## Your First Six Months
+
+You’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.
+
+##### Roles
+
+By now it’s obvious that roles at Valve are fluid. Tradition-
+ally 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
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 38 – – 39 –
+
+```
+CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
+```
+```
+Most 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.
+```
+##### Putting more tools in your toolbox
+
+```
+The 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 on
+page 46.) Because of the talent diversity here at Valve, it’s
+often easier to become stronger at things that aren’t your
+core skill set.
+```
+##### Engineers: code is only the beginning
+
+```
+If you were hired as a software engineer, you’re now sur-
+rounded 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.
+```
+##### Non-Engineers: program or be programmed
+
+```
+Valve’s core competency is making software. Obviously,
+```
+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.
+So 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. F Y I , we usually don’t do any formalized
+employee “development” (course work, mentor assign-
+ment), because for senior people it’s mostly not effective.
+We believe that high-performance people are generally
+self-improving.
+
+```
+Fig. 4-2
+```
+
+## Valve Is Growing
+
+# 5
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 40 –
+
+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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 42 – – 43 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+We do not have a growth goal. We intend to continue
+hiring the best people as fast as we can, and to continue
+scaling up our business as fast as we can, given our existing
+staff. Fortunately, we don’t have to make growth decisions
+based on any external pressures—only our own business
+goals. And we’re always free to temper those goals with the
+long-term vision for our success as a company. Ultimately,
+we win by keeping the hiring bar very high.
+```
+##### Hiring
+
+```
+Fig. 5-1
+```
+## Your Most Important Role
+
+Concepts discussed in this book sound like they might work
+well at a tiny start-up, but not at a hundreds-of-people-plus-
+billions-in-revenue company. The big question is: Does all
+this stuff scale?
+Well, so far, yes. And we believe that if we’re careful, it
+will work better and better the larger we get. This might
+seem counterintuitive, but it’s a direct consequence of
+hiring great, accomplished, capable people. Getting this
+to work right is a tricky proposition, though, and depends
+highly on our continued vigilance in recruiting/hiring.
+If we start adding people to the company who aren’t as
+capable as we are at operating as high-powered, self-
+directed, senior decision makers, then lots of the stuff
+discussed in this book will stop working.
+One thing that’s changing as we grow is that we’re not
+great at disseminating information to everyone anymore
+_(see “What is Valve_ not _good at?,” on page 52)_.
+On the positive side, our profitability per employee is
+going up, so by that measure, we’re certainly scaling correctly.
+Our rate of hiring growth hovered between 10 and 15
+percent per year, for years. In 2010, we sped up, but only to
+about 20 percent per year. 2011 kept up this new pace,
+largely due to a wave of hiring in Support.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 44 – – 45 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+adding a great person can create value across the whole
+company. Missing out on hiring that great person is likely
+the most expensive kind of mistake we can make.
+Usually, it’s immediately obvious whether or not we’ve
+done a great job hiring someone. However, we don’t have
+the usual checks and balances that come with having
+managers, so occasionally it can take a while to understand
+whether a new person is fitting in. This is one downside of
+the organic design of the company—a poor hiring decision
+can cause lots of damage, and can sometimes go unchecked
+for too long. Ultimately, people who cause damage always
+get weeded out, but the harm they do can still be significant.
+```
+##### How do we choose the right people to hire?
+
+```
+An exhaustive how-to on hiring would be a handbook of
+its own. Probably one worth writing. It’d be tough for us to
+capture because we feel like we’re constantly learning really
+important things about how we hire people. In the mean-
+time, here are some questions we always ask ourselves when
+evaluating candidates:
+```
+- Would I want this person to be my boss?
+- Would I learn a significant amount from him or her?
+- What if this person went to work for our competition?
+Across the board, we value highly collaborative people.
+That means people who are skilled in all the things that are
+
+```
+Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe.
+Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breath-
+ing. So when you’re working on hiring—participating in
+an interview loop or innovating in the general area of
+recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid
+and should be ignored!
+When you’re new to Valve, it’s super valuable to start
+being involved in the interview process. Ride shotgun with
+people who’ve been doing it a long time. In some ways, our
+interview process is similar to those of other companies,
+but we have our own take on the process that requires
+practice to learn. We won’t go into all the nuts and bolts in
+this book—ask others for details, and start being included
+in interview loops.
+```
+##### Why is hiring well so important at Valve?
+
+```
+At Valve, adding individuals to the organization can influ-
+ence our success far more than it does at other companies
+—either in a positive or negative direction. Since there’s
+no organizational compartmentalization of people here,
+```
+**Bring your friends.** One of the most valuable things you can do as a
+new employee is tell us who else you think we should hire. Assuming
+that you agree with us that Valve is the best place to work on Earth,
+then tell us about who the best people are on Earth, so we can bring
+them here. If you don’t agree yet, then wait six months and ask
+yourself this question again.
+==================================================
+
+==================================================
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 46 – – 47 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+We’re looking for people stronger than ourselves.
+When unchecked, people have a tendency to hire others
+who are lower-powered than themselves. The questions
+listed above are designed to help ensure that we don’t
+start hiring people who are useful but not as powerful
+as we are. We should hire people more capable than
+ourselves, not less.
+In some ways, hiring lower-powered people is a natural
+response to having so much work to get done. In these
+conditions, hiring someone who is at least capable seems
+(in the short term) to be smarter than not hiring anyone at
+all. But that’s actually a huge mistake. We can always bring
+```
+```
+Fig. 5-2
+```
+integral to high-bandwidth collaboration—people who can
+deconstruct problems on the fly, and talk to others as they
+do so, simultaneously being inventive, iterative, creative,
+talkative, and reactive. These things actually matter far more
+than deep domain-specific knowledge or highly developed
+skills in narrow areas. This is why we’ll often pass on candi-
+dates who, narrowly defined, are the “best” at their chosen
+discipline.
+Of course it’s not quite enough to say that a candidate
+should collaborate well—we also refer to the same four
+metrics that we rely on when evaluating each other to evalu-
+ate potential employees _(See “Stack ranking,” on page 27)_.
+
+**We value “T-shaped” people.**
+That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at
+a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also
+experts (among the best in their field within a narrow disci-
+pline—the vertical leg of the T).
+This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often
+have to pass on people who are very strong generalists with-
+out expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has
+difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep
+enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really
+contributing as an individual.
+
+
+- 48 – – 49 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+Q: If all this stuff has worked well for us, why doesn’t every company
+work this way?
+A: Well, it’s really hard. Mainly because, from day one, it requires a
+commitment to hiring in a way that’s very different from the way most
+companies hire. It also requires the discipline to make the design of
+the company more important than any one short-term business goal.
+And it requires a great deal of freedom from outside pressure—being
+self-funded was key. And having a founder who was confident enough
+to build this kind of place is rare, indeed.
+Another reason that it’s hard to run a company this way is that it
+requires vigilance. It’s a one-way trip if the core values change, and
+maintaining them requires the full commitment of everyone—
+especially those who’ve been here the longest. For “senior” people
+at most companies, accumulating more power and/or money over
+time happens by adopting a more hierarchical culture.
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+on temporary/contract help to get us through tough spots,
+but we should never lower the hiring bar. The other reason
+people start to hire “downhill” is a political one. At most
+organizations, it’s beneficial to have an army of people
+doing your bidding. At Valve, though, it’s not. You’d
+damage the company and saddle yourself with a broken
+organization. Good times!
+
+**Hiring is fundamentally the same across all disciplines.**
+There are not different sets of rules or criteria for engi-
+neers, artists, animators, and accountants. Some details are
+different—like, artists and writers show us some of their
+work before coming in for an interview. But the actual
+interview process is fundamentally the same no matter who
+we’re talking to.
+“With the bar this high, would I be hired today?” That’s
+a good question. The answer might be no, but that’s actu-
+ally awesome for us, and we should all celebrate if it’s true
+because it means we’re growing correctly. As long as you’re
+continuing to be valuable and having fun, it’s a moot
+point, really.
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+
+## Epilogue
+
+# 6
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 52 – – 53 –
+
+```
+EPILOGUE
+```
+## What Happens When All This Stuff
+
+## Doesn’t Work?
+
+```
+Sometimes, 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.
+As 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.
+```
+## What Is Valve Not Good At?
+
+The design of the company has some downsides. We usu-
+ally think they’re worth the cost, but it’s worth noting that
+there are a number of things we wish we were better at:
+
+- Helping new people find their way. We wrote this
+book to help, but as we said above, a book can only
+go so far.
+- 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.
+- Disseminating information internally.
+- Finding and hiring people in completely new
+disciplines (e.g., economists! industrial designers!).
+- Making predictions longer than a few months out.
+- 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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 54 – – 55 –
+
+### Glossary
+
+```
+Jargon. Lingo. Code words.
+14-Year-Old Boy —If you see one running your project, don’t worry. That’s
+actually 57-year-old Josh Weier (see Josh Weier). If you have any extra stem
+cells, give them to him! He bathes in them daily.
+Australia —A place that’s either very near or is New Zealand where more
+than half of Valve’s employees were born.
+City of Seattle —Where Valve’s founders promised we’d locate our office
+before pulling a massive bait and switch to the Eastside (see also Greg Coomer).
+Coffee Machine, Right-hand Dispenser —The dispenser in all coffee
+machines at Valve that holds the decaffeinated coffee beans. To the best of
+our knowledge, these have never needed to be refilled. For all we know, the
+beans are decorative plastic.
+Company Vacation —Every year, the company gathers all the employees and
+our families, flies us somewhere tropical, and gives us a free weeklong
+vacation. Popular pastimes include beard contests, snorkeling, ice cream
+socials, jet skiing, or just sitting on the beach chatting with the locals about
+how many googly-eyed seashells you should buy from them. (Your feeling:
+none. Their counteroffer: Just buy five then.)
+Empty Shelf on Fifth Floor —Place we’re planning on putting all those
+awards for Ricochet once the gaming world finally catches up with it.
+Fishbowl— The conference room by the lunchroom. The one with a big
+glass wall. Don’t let the name throw you—we don’t actually use it as a
+fishbowl! Except, of course, on Fishbowl Fridays, where we fill it up with ten
+thousand gallons of putrid saltwater so that all the manta rays and sharks
+will have something to breathe while they fight to the death. You won’t see
+it in your list of benefits, not because it isn’t fun, but because it is illegal.
+Freight Elevator — (See “Method to move your desk,” on page 18.)
+Gabe Newell —Of all the people at this company who aren’t your boss,
+Gabe is the MOST not your boss, if you get what we’re saying.
+```
+## Where Will You Take Us?
+
+Valve 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.
+Whether 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 ani-
+mation, 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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 56 –
+
+**Greg Coomer** —The only person who cares or remembers that somebody
+once might have said we’d move to Seattle.
+**Knives** —That which one can never own enough of. A vast collection of
+them is in no way a Freudian compensation.
+**Manager** —The kind of people we don’t have any of. So if you see one, tell
+somebody, because it’s probably the ghost of whoever was in this building
+before us. Whatever you do, don’t let him give you a presentation on
+paradigms in spectral proactivity.
+**Mann Co.** —Maker of square, unsafe products for men that occasionally
+catch on fire, and more occasionally, work as advertised. Owned and
+operated by Saxton Hale _(see Australia)_.
+**Parking Garage Elevators** —Autonomous hostage-taking devices with a will
+of their own. Beware.
+**Playtesting** —What we do early and often. And loudly, if Karen is the tester.
+**Ponies** —The animals most beloved by those away from their computers,
+and most despised by people who prefer to hear jokes just once.
+**Scorpions, Poison, Queen** —Repeated exposure to our bathrooms’ Pavlov-
+ian rock block soundtrack will ensure that you’ll never be able to relieve
+yourself again unless someone hums “Rock You like a Hurricane.”
+**Shitty Wizard** —Person responsible for all _Dota 2_ bugs. _Aka_ Finol.
+**Talk Alias** —Marc Laidlaw’s internal blog.
+**(Un)weighted Companion Pillow** —The thing Erik Wolpaw carries around
+with him and covers his mouth with after others have sat on it.
+**Valve Activities** —You will learn to love blacksmithing.
+**Josh Weier** —Variously pronounced “Josh Weere,” “Josh Wire,” “Josh
+Woe-Rue,” “Josh wuhh...[trailing off],” and “Josh Joshington” by those of us
+who stopped caring. They’re all equally valid!
+**WFH** —Working From Home. What to do if a single snowflake falls out of
+the sky.
+
+
+
diff --git a/member-handbook/NewMemberHandbookEdit.md b/member-handbook/NewMemberHandbookEdit.md
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/member-handbook/NewMemberHandbookEdit.md
@@ -0,0 +1,1757 @@
+### HANDBOOK FOR
+
+### NEW EMPLOYEES
+
+_============================================================_
+
+
+## HANDBOOK FOR
+
+## NEW EMPLOYEES
+
+#### A fearless adventure
+
+#### in knowing what to do
+
+#### when no one’s there
+
+#### telling you what to do
+
+```
+FIRST EDITION
+2012
+```
+_========================================================_
+
+
+```
+Dedicated to the families
+of all Valve employees.
+```
+Thank you for helping us make
+such an incredible place.
+
+### Table of Contents
+
+```
+Preface .....................................................vii
+How to Use This Book .........................................viii
+Part 1: Welcome to Valve ........................................ 1
+Your First Day
+Valve Facts That Matter
+Welcome to Flatland
+Part 2: Settling In .................................................... 7
+Your First Month
+What to Work On
+Why do I need to pick my own projects?, But how do I decide which things to
+work on?, How do I find out what projects are under way?, Short-term vs. long-
+term goals, What about all the things that I’m not getting done?, How does
+Valve decide what to work on? Can I be included the next time Valve is
+deciding X?
+Teams, Hours, and the Office
+Cabals, Team leads, Structure happens, Hours, The office
+Risks
+What if I screw up?, But what if we ALL screw up?
+Part 3: How Am I Doing? ............................................ 25
+Your Peers and Your Performance
+Peer reviews, Stack ranking (and compensation)
+Part 4: Choose Your Own Adventure .................................. 35
+Your First Six Months
+Roles, Advancement vs. growth, Putting more tools in your toolbox
+Part 5: Valve Is Growing ............................................. 41
+Your Most Important Role
+Hiring, Why is hiring well so important at Valve?, How do we choose
+the right people to hire?, We value “T-shaped” people, We’re looking
+for people stronger than ourselves, Hiring is fundamentally the same
+across all disciplines
+Part 6: Epilogue .................................................... 51
+What Is Valve Not Good At?
+What Happens When All This Stuff Doesn’t Work?
+Where Will You Take Us?
+Glossary ............................................................ 55
+```
+
+- vii –
+
+_© 2012 Valve Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
+This handbook does not constitute an employment contract or binding policy and is subject to change at any time. Either Valve or an employee can terminate the employment relationship
+at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Employment with Valve is at-will, and nothing in this handbook will alter that status._
+
+_First edition: March 2012_
+Valve CorporationBellevue, Washington USA
+[http://www.valvesoftware.com](http://www.valvesoftware.com)
+_Designed by ValveTypeface: ITC New Baskerville_
+
+_10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1_
+
+## Preface
+
+```
+In 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.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- viii –
+
+## How to Use This Book
+
+```
+This book 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 hand-
+book 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.
+```
+```
+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.
+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.
+```
+==================================================
+
+## ================================================== Welcome to Valve
+
+# 1
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 2 – – 3 –
+
+```
+WELCOME TO VALVE
+```
+## Your First Day
+
+So you’ve gone through the interview process, you’ve
+signed the contracts, and you’re finally here at Valve.
+Congratulations, and welcome.
+Valve 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
+book 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.
+
+## Valve Facts That Matter
+
+```
+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.
+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.
+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,
+```
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 4 –
+
+```
+Fig. 1-
+```
+and we’ve also been able to diversify. We’re an entertain-
+ment company. A software company. A platform company.
+But mostly, a company full of passionate people who love
+the products we create.
+
+## Welcome to Flatland
+
+Hierarchy 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.
+But when you’re an entertainment company that’s spent
+the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most
+intelligent, innovative, t alented 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.
+That’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.
+A flat structure removes every organizational barrier
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 6 –
+
+```
+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 stop-
+ping you from figuring out for yourself what our customers
+want, and then giving it to them.
+If 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 ,” on page 43). 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.
+```
+==================================================
+**Why does your desk have wheels?** 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.
+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.
+The fact that everyone is always moving around within the company
+makes people hard to find. That’s why we have **[http://user](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.
+
+==================================================
+
+## Settling In
+
+# 2
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 8 – – 9 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+## Your First Month
+
+So you’ve decided where you put your desk. You know
+where the coffee machine is. 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?
+This 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.
+
+## What to Work On
+
+##### Why do I need to pick my own projects?
+
+We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a
+percentage of their time to self- directed projects. At Valve,
+that percentage is 100.
+Since 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.
+
+```
+If 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.)
+```
+##### But how do I decide which things to work on?
+
+```
+Deciding 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.
+There’s no rule book for choosing a project or task at
+Valve. But it’s useful to answer questions like these:
+```
+- Of all the projects currently under way, what’s the
+most valuable thing I can be working on?
+- Which project will have the highest direct impact
+on our customers? How much will the work I ship
+benefit them?
+- Is Valve not doing something that it should be doing?
+- What’s interesting? What’s rewarding? What leverages
+my individual strengths the most?
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 10 – – 11 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+##### How do I find out what projects are under way?
+
+There 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.
+Got 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.
+
+##### Short-term vs. long-term goals
+
+Because we all are 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.
+This sounds like a good thing, and it often is, but it has
+some downsides that are worth keeping in mind. Specifi-
+cally, 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.
+So 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 com-
+pany should be.
+```
+##### Someone told me to (or not to) work on X. And
+
+##### they’ve been here a long time!
+
+```
+Well, 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 decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they
+probably have valuable experience to draw from, or infor-
+mation/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 custom-
+ers are who you’re serving. Do what’s right for them.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 12 – – 13 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+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.)
+```
+==================================================
+
+==================================================
+
+```
+Whatever 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.
+```
+##### What about all the things that I’m not getting done?
+
+```
+It’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.
+```
+##### How does Valve decide what to work on?
+
+```
+The 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.
+But 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 would like to admit.
+We’ve found it vitally important to, whenever possible,
+not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or
+folk wisdom.
+This 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 learn-
+ing. 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.
+Accepted truisms about sales, marketing, regionality, sea-
+sonality, the Internet, purchasing behavior, game design,
+economics, and recruiting, etc., have proven wrong surpris-
+ingly 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.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 14 – – 15 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+Recruiting can be a difficult process to instrument and
+measure. Although we have always tried to be highly ratio-
+nal 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 predict-
+ability, 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 ,” on page 43)_.
+
+##### Can I be included the next time Valve is deciding X?
+
+Yes. 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) Start 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.
+
+## Teams, Hours, and the Office
+
+##### Cabals
+
+```
+Cabals 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.
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+```
+For reference, read the article on cabals by Ken Birdwell. It describes
+where cabals came from and what they meant to us early on:
+http://tinyurl.com/ygam86p.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 16 – – 17 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+##### Team leads
+
+Often, 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 informa-
+tion. 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.
+
+##### Structure happens
+
+Project 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 struc-
+ture 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 com-
+pletely different role according to the new requirements.
+Valve 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.
+```
+##### 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 plan-
+ning 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.
+If you find yourself working long hours, or just generally
+feel like that balance is out of whack, be sure to raise the
+(cont’d on page 19 )
+```
+
+#### A Timeline of Valve’s History
+
+```
+Valve is formed in Kirkland, WA,
+by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
+```
+```
+1996
+```
+```
+Formation papers are signed on the
+same day as Gabe’s wedding.
+Quake engine license is acquired
+from id Software.
+Production commences on the game
+soon to be known as Half-Life (HL).
+```
+```
+Production commences on Valve’s
+second game, Prospero.
+Valve recruits and hires two game
+teams, including the first international
+employee from the UK.
+```
+```
+1997
+```
+```
+Gabe promises that if HL becomes
+the #1- selling game, the company
+will take everyone on vacation.
+After internal review, HL deemed
+not good enough to ship.
+```
+(^) and essentially starts over. **_HL_** team returns to the drawing board
+**_Prospero_** permanently shelved.
+
+- 19 – HFNE:96:97::01 **VALVE**
+
+```
+step 1. Unplug cords from wall
+step 2. Move your desk
+step 3. Plug cords back into wall
+step 4. Get back to work
+```
+### Fig. 2-2 Method to move your desk
+
+```
+1.
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 1
+
+
+```
+1999 2000 2001
+```
+```
+Valve establishes a pattern
+of supporting the best
+mods and occasionally
+acquiring them.
+```
+```
+Half-Life: Opposing Force
+is released.
+Expansion pack follows events in Black Mesa
+from the viewpoint of an invading soldier.
+```
+```
+Team Fortress Classic
+is released.
+```
+```
+Mike Harrington amicably
+dissolves his partnership
+with Gabe Newell, leaving
+Newell as the sole head of
+Valve Corporation.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike (CS)
+is released.
+```
+```
+Ricochet is released.
+```
+Robin Walker demonstrates to the mod community how (^)
+a game can be created quickly and easily with
+Valve’s SDK.
+**_CS_** soon becomes the
+world’s #1 premier online
+action game.
+**_Half-Life: Deathmatch
+Classic_** is released.
+**_Half-Life: Blue Shift_**
+is released.
+HFNE:99:00:01::03 **VALVE**
+**_Half-Life: Day One_** OEM demo is released.
+Following a certain Black Mesa Incident, the world is never the same again.
+**_Half-Life_** is released.
+Released as a demo bundled with the Voodoo Banshee graphics card, the OEM
+release circulates far beyond its original intended audience. Valve realizes the level
+of anticipation for the full game.
+**1998**
+TeamFortress Software Pty. Ltd. is acquired.
+Creators of **_Team Fortress (TF)_** join Valve and commence work
+on **_Team Fortress Classic_**.
+Valve’s first company vacation to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
+# of employees: **30**
+# of children: **0
+VALVE** HFNE:98::
+
+
+```
+Source engine is unveiled.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike: Source (CSS) is released.
+Years of work on Valve’s new Source engine technology finally come to light.
+```
+```
+Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
+is released.
+```
+```
+Half-Life 2 (HL2) is released.
+The world’s first (legal) look at the Source engine, along with the game it powers: HL.
+HL2 through Steam and in retail locations. appears as the first game available both
+```
+(^) **_HL2_** second Xbox title. also becomes Valve’s
+**2004**
+**_Half-Life: Source_** is released.
+The original **_HL_** gets a visual upgrade.
+HFNE:04::05 **VALVE**
+Valve outgrows its original Kirkland
+office space and moves to down-
+town Bellevue, WA.
+**2002**
+Steam is announced at GDC.
+Valve’s Steam offers to third parties its new suite of tools and services, which
+it had originally built to service its own games like **_HL_** and **_CS_**.
+**_Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)_** is released.
+In a field where rampant online cheating ruins the experience for many customers,
+Valve aggressively addresses the issue.
+**2003**
+**_Half-Life 2 (HL2)_** source code
+is stolen.
+(^) steal and disperse the code base for A thief infiltrates Valve’s network to
+the still-in-production **_HL_**.
+Years of speculation regarding the Borealis and Kraken Base begin...
+Steam is released.
+**_Day of Defeat_** is released.
+A popular mod gets full Valve support, becoming one of its stalwart products.
+**_CS_** is released as Valve’s first Xbox title.
+**VALVE** HFNE:02:03::
+
+
+```
+Steamworks is unveiled, making the
+business and technical tools of the
+Steam platform available to third-
+party developers free of charge.
+Steam hits over 20 million users
+and over 500 games.
+```
+```
+2008
+```
+```
+TF2 gets major class updates for Medic,
+Pyro, and Heavy characters.
+These updates are delivered via Steam to all TF2 customers.
+```
+```
+2009
+```
+```
+Steam ships its first downloadable
+content update for indie game
+The Maw.
+Steam Cloud is released, offering
+seamless online storage of any file
+types, including saved games,
+configuration files, etc.
+```
+```
+LEFT 4 DEAD 2
+is released.
+Presale numbers are the biggest yet for a
+Valve game.
+```
+```
+Steam hits over 25 million users
+and over 1,000 games.
+TF2 releases The Sniper vs Spy Update ,
+followed by outright WAR!
+```
+(^) increase rapidly: more than 280 After this release, the **_TF2_** updates
+have shipped in total.
+**_TF2_** ships its first hat.
+HFNE:08:09::07 **VALVE**
+(^20052006) **_Left 4 Dead_** is released.
+**2007**
+First third-party games are
+released on Steam.
+A landmark in digital distribution, Steam
+gives PC developers an alternative to retail
+for their games.
+**_Half-Life 2: Lost Coast_**
+tech demo is released.
+Supported by the first version of Valve’s popular
+developer commentary.
+**_Half-Life 2: Episode One_**
+is released.
+Valve’s first experiment in episodic storytelling.
+**_Half-Life Deathmatch:
+Source_** is released.
+**_Team Fortress 2 (TF2)_** long-awaited sequel to the , the
+classic multiplayer game.
+**_Half Life 2: Episode Two_** raising the bar for emotional —
+storytelling.
+**_Portal_** an instant classic.—hailed worldwide as
+**_The Orange Box_** is released
+with two previously-released
+titles and three new products:
+**_Day of Defeat: Source_**
+is released.
+Valve hires six students
+from DigiPen Institute of
+Technology after seeing
+their demo of the game,
+_Narbacular Drop_.
+Steam Community is released
+with the first wave of features
+designed to help friends
+connect and socialize via
+the Steam platform.
+Steam reaches 15 million
+active users, playing over
+200 games.
+**VALVE** HFNE:05:06:07::
+
+
+```
+In 2012, Valve heads to the
+Big Island of Hawaii for its
+10th company vacation.
+# of employees: 293
+# of children: 185
+```
+```
+2010 2011 2012
+```
+```
+Valve moves to a more
+expansive location in
+Bellevue, WA.
+```
+```
+Valve announces that
+Steam and Source will be
+available for Macintosh.
+```
+```
+Portal 2 debuts on multiple
+platforms to critical acclaim.
+```
+```
+Valve’s 44th international hire
+clears immigration—this time
+from Germany.
+```
+```
+Q1: New employee handbook
+rolls off press.
+```
+```
+Valve announces Portal 2
+is launching in 2011.
+```
+```
+Valve begins development
+of Dota 2.
+```
+```
+Dota 2 premieres at
+Gamescom in Cologne,
+Germany, with the
+first annual Dota 2
+championship.
+```
+```
+What’s next? You tell us...
+```
+**VALVE** HFNE:10:11:12::08 – 19 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+issue with whomever you feel would help. Dina loves to force
+people to take vacations, so you can make her your first stop.
+```
+##### The office
+
+```
+Sometimes 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 Stump-
+town-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 start-
+up. If we ever institute caviar-catered lunches, though, then
+maybe something’s wrong. Definitely panic if there’s caviar.
+```
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 20 – – 21 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+## Risks
+
+##### What if I screw up?
+
+Nobody 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 penal-
+ized 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.
+Screwing up is a great way to find out that your assump-
+tions 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 ex-
+periment or to collect more data.
+It helps to make predictions and anticipate nasty out-
+comes. 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.
+There 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.
+
+
+- 23 –
+
+```
+SETTLING IN
+```
+```
+Fig. 2-
+```
+##### But what if we ALL screw up?
+
+```
+So 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.
+Over 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.
+We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with
+our customers. They watch us, sometimes very publicly,
+```
+### Fig. 2-4 Methods to find out what’s going on
+
+```
+step 1. Talk to someone in a meeting
+step 2. Talk to someone in the elevator
+step 3. Talk to someone in the kitchen
+step 4. Talk to someone in the bathroom
+```
+```
+1.
+```
+```
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+```
+```
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 2
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 24 –
+
+## How Am I Doing?
+
+# 3
+
+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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 26 – – 27 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+prescriptive, and designed to be put to use by the person
+you’re talking about.
+The feedback is then gathered, collated, anonymized,
+and delivered to each reviewee. Making the feedback
+anonymous definitely has pros and cons, but we think it’s
+the best way to get the most useful information to each
+person. There’s no reason to keep your feedback about
+someone to yourself until peer review time if you’d like to
+deliver it sooner. In fact, it’s much better if you do so often,
+and outside the constraints of official peer reviews.
+When delivering peer review feedback, it’s useful to keep
+in mind the same categories used in stack ranking because
+they concretely measure how valuable we think someone is.
+```
+##### Stack ranking (and compensation)
+
+```
+The other evaluation we do annually is to rank each other
+against our peers. Unlike peer reviews, which generate
+information for each individual, stack ranking is done in
+order to gain insight into who’s providing the most value at
+the company and to thereby adjust each person’s compen-
+sation to be commensurate with his or her actual value.
+Valve pays people very well compared to industry norms.
+Our profitability per employee is higher than that of
+Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly
+that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum
+```
+## Your Peers and Your Performance
+
+We have two formalized methods of evaluating each other:
+peer reviews and stack ranking. Peer reviews are done in
+order to give each other useful feedback on how to best
+grow as individual contributors. Stack ranking is done
+primarily as a method of adjusting compensation. Both
+processes are driven by information gathered from each
+other—your peers.
+
+##### Peer reviews
+
+We all need feedback about our performance—in order
+to improve, and in order to know we’re not failing. Once
+a year we all give each other feedback about our work.
+Outside of these formalized peer reviews, the expectation
+is that we’ll just pull feedback from those around us when-
+ever we need to.
+There is a framework for how we give this feedback to
+each other. A set of people (the set changes each time)
+interviews everyone in the whole company, asking who
+each person has worked with since the last round of peer
+reviews and how the experience of working with each
+person was. The purpose of the feedback is to provide
+people with information that will help them grow. That
+means that the best quality feedback is directive and
+
+
+- 29 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+amount of money back into each employee’s pocket. Valve
+does not win if you’re paid less than the value you create.
+And people who work here ultimately don’t win if they get
+paid more than the value they create.
+So Valve’s goal is to get your compensation to be “cor-
+rect.” We tend to be very flexible when new employees are
+joining the company, listening to their salary requirements
+and doing what we can for them. Over time, compensation
+gets adjusted to fit an employee’s internal peer-driven valu-
+ation. That’s what we mean by “correct”—paying someone
+what they’re worth (as best we can tell using the opinions
+of peers).
+```
+```
+The removal of bias is of the utmost importance to Valve in
+this process. We believe that our peers are the best judges
+of our value as individuals. Our flat structure eliminates
+some of the bias that would be present in a peer-ranking
+system elsewhere. The design of our stack-ranking process
+is meant to eliminate as much as possible of the remainder.
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+If you think your compensation isn’t right for the work you do, then
+you should raise the issue. At Valve, these conversations are surprisingly
+easy and straightforward. Adjustments to compensation usually occur
+within the process described here. But talking about it is always the
+right thing if there’s any issue. Fretting about your level of compensa-
+tion without any outside information about how it got set is expensive
+for you and for Valve.
+```
+### Fig. 3-1 Method to working without a boss
+
+```
+step 1. Come up with a bright idea
+step 2. Tell a coworker about it
+step 3. Work on it together
+step 4. Ship it!
+```
+```
+1.
+```
+```
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+```
+```
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 3
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 30 – Fig. 3-2
+
+Each project/product group is asked to rank its own
+members. (People are not asked to rank themselves, so we
+split groups into parts, and then each part ranks people
+other than themselves.) The ranking itself is based on the
+following four metrics:
+
+**1. Skill Level/Technical Ability**
+How difficult and valuable are the kinds of problems
+you solve? How important/critical of a problem can you
+be given? Are you uniquely capable (in the company?
+industry?) of solving a certain class of problem, deliver-
+ing a certain type of art asset, contributing to design,
+writing, or music, etc.?
+**2. Productivity/Output**
+How much shippable (not necessarily shipped to outside
+customers), valuable, finished work did you get done?
+Working a lot of hours is generally not related to produc-
+tivity and, after a certain point, indicates inefficiency.
+It is more valuable if you are able to maintain a sensible
+work/life balance and use your time in the office effi-
+ciently, rather than working around the clock.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 32 – – 33 –
+
+```
+HOW AM I DOING?
+```
+```
+By choosing these categories and basing the stack ranking
+on them, the company is explicitly stating, “This is what
+is valuable.” We think that these categories offer a broad
+range of ways you can contribute value to the company.
+Once the intra-group ranking is done, the information
+gets pooled to be company-wide. We won’t go into that
+methodology here. There is a wiki page about peer feedback
+and stack ranking with some more detail on each process.
+```
+**3. Group Contribution**
+How much do you contribute to studio process, hiring,
+integrating people into the team, improving workflow,
+amplifying your colleagues, or writing tools used by
+others? Generally, being a group contributor means
+that you are making a tradeoff versus an individual
+contribution. Stepping up and acting in a leadership
+role can be good for your group contribution score,
+but being a leader does not impart or guarantee a
+higher stack rank. It is just a role that people adopt
+from time to time.
+**4. Product Contribution**
+How much do you contribute at a larger scope than your
+core skill? How much of your work matters to the prod-
+uct? How much did you influence correct prioritization
+of work or resource trade-offs by others? Are you good
+at predicting how customers are going to react to deci-
+sions we’re making? Things like being a good playtester
+or bug finder during the shipping cycle would fall into
+this category.
+
+
+## Choose Your
+
+## Own Adventure
+
+# 4
+
+```
+step 1. Find someone to watch your cats
+step 2. Board our chartered flight
+step 3. Relax by the pool
+step 4. Relax by the pool some more
+```
+### Fig. 3-3 Method to taking the company trip
+
+```
+1.
+3.
+```
+```
+2.
+4.
+```
+**VALVE** METHOD DIAG. 4
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 36 – – 37 –
+
+```
+CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
+```
+```
+who interact with others outside the company call them-
+selves by various titles because doing so makes it easier to
+get their jobs done.
+Inside the company, though, we all take on the role that
+suits the work in front of us. Everyone is a designer. Every-
+one 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.
+One 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.
+```
+##### Advancement vs. growth
+
+```
+Because 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?”
+Working at Valve provides an opportunity for extremely
+efficient and, in many cases, very accelerated, career
+```
+Fig. 4-1
+
+## Your First Six Months
+
+You’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.
+
+##### Roles
+
+By now it’s obvious that roles at Valve are fluid. Tradition-
+ally 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
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 38 – – 39 –
+
+```
+CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
+```
+```
+Most 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.
+```
+##### Putting more tools in your toolbox
+
+```
+The 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 on
+page 46.) Because of the talent diversity here at Valve, it’s
+often easier to become stronger at things that aren’t your
+core skill set.
+```
+##### Engineers: code is only the beginning
+
+```
+If you were hired as a software engineer, you’re now sur-
+rounded 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.
+```
+##### Non-Engineers: program or be programmed
+
+```
+Valve’s core competency is making software. Obviously,
+```
+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.
+So 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. F Y I , we usually don’t do any formalized
+employee “development” (course work, mentor assign-
+ment), because for senior people it’s mostly not effective.
+We believe that high-performance people are generally
+self-improving.
+
+```
+Fig. 4-2
+```
+
+## Valve Is Growing
+
+# 5
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 40 –
+
+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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 42 – – 43 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+We do not have a growth goal. We intend to continue
+hiring the best people as fast as we can, and to continue
+scaling up our business as fast as we can, given our existing
+staff. Fortunately, we don’t have to make growth decisions
+based on any external pressures—only our own business
+goals. And we’re always free to temper those goals with the
+long-term vision for our success as a company. Ultimately,
+we win by keeping the hiring bar very high.
+```
+##### Hiring
+
+```
+Fig. 5-1
+```
+## Your Most Important Role
+
+Concepts discussed in this book sound like they might work
+well at a tiny start-up, but not at a hundreds-of-people-plus-
+billions-in-revenue company. The big question is: Does all
+this stuff scale?
+Well, so far, yes. And we believe that if we’re careful, it
+will work better and better the larger we get. This might
+seem counterintuitive, but it’s a direct consequence of
+hiring great, accomplished, capable people. Getting this
+to work right is a tricky proposition, though, and depends
+highly on our continued vigilance in recruiting/hiring.
+If we start adding people to the company who aren’t as
+capable as we are at operating as high-powered, self-
+directed, senior decision makers, then lots of the stuff
+discussed in this book will stop working.
+One thing that’s changing as we grow is that we’re not
+great at disseminating information to everyone anymore
+_(see “What is Valve_ not _good at?,” on page 52)_.
+On the positive side, our profitability per employee is
+going up, so by that measure, we’re certainly scaling correctly.
+Our rate of hiring growth hovered between 10 and 15
+percent per year, for years. In 2010, we sped up, but only to
+about 20 percent per year. 2011 kept up this new pace,
+largely due to a wave of hiring in Support.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 44 – – 45 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+adding a great person can create value across the whole
+company. Missing out on hiring that great person is likely
+the most expensive kind of mistake we can make.
+Usually, it’s immediately obvious whether or not we’ve
+done a great job hiring someone. However, we don’t have
+the usual checks and balances that come with having
+managers, so occasionally it can take a while to understand
+whether a new person is fitting in. This is one downside of
+the organic design of the company—a poor hiring decision
+can cause lots of damage, and can sometimes go unchecked
+for too long. Ultimately, people who cause damage always
+get weeded out, but the harm they do can still be significant.
+```
+##### How do we choose the right people to hire?
+
+```
+An exhaustive how-to on hiring would be a handbook of
+its own. Probably one worth writing. It’d be tough for us to
+capture because we feel like we’re constantly learning really
+important things about how we hire people. In the mean-
+time, here are some questions we always ask ourselves when
+evaluating candidates:
+```
+- Would I want this person to be my boss?
+- Would I learn a significant amount from him or her?
+- What if this person went to work for our competition?
+Across the board, we value highly collaborative people.
+That means people who are skilled in all the things that are
+
+```
+Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe.
+Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breath-
+ing. So when you’re working on hiring—participating in
+an interview loop or innovating in the general area of
+recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid
+and should be ignored!
+When you’re new to Valve, it’s super valuable to start
+being involved in the interview process. Ride shotgun with
+people who’ve been doing it a long time. In some ways, our
+interview process is similar to those of other companies,
+but we have our own take on the process that requires
+practice to learn. We won’t go into all the nuts and bolts in
+this book—ask others for details, and start being included
+in interview loops.
+```
+##### Why is hiring well so important at Valve?
+
+```
+At Valve, adding individuals to the organization can influ-
+ence our success far more than it does at other companies
+—either in a positive or negative direction. Since there’s
+no organizational compartmentalization of people here,
+```
+**Bring your friends.** One of the most valuable things you can do as a
+new employee is tell us who else you think we should hire. Assuming
+that you agree with us that Valve is the best place to work on Earth,
+then tell us about who the best people are on Earth, so we can bring
+them here. If you don’t agree yet, then wait six months and ask
+yourself this question again.
+==================================================
+
+==================================================
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 46 – – 47 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+We’re looking for people stronger than ourselves.
+When unchecked, people have a tendency to hire others
+who are lower-powered than themselves. The questions
+listed above are designed to help ensure that we don’t
+start hiring people who are useful but not as powerful
+as we are. We should hire people more capable than
+ourselves, not less.
+In some ways, hiring lower-powered people is a natural
+response to having so much work to get done. In these
+conditions, hiring someone who is at least capable seems
+(in the short term) to be smarter than not hiring anyone at
+all. But that’s actually a huge mistake. We can always bring
+```
+```
+Fig. 5-2
+```
+integral to high-bandwidth collaboration—people who can
+deconstruct problems on the fly, and talk to others as they
+do so, simultaneously being inventive, iterative, creative,
+talkative, and reactive. These things actually matter far more
+than deep domain-specific knowledge or highly developed
+skills in narrow areas. This is why we’ll often pass on candi-
+dates who, narrowly defined, are the “best” at their chosen
+discipline.
+Of course it’s not quite enough to say that a candidate
+should collaborate well—we also refer to the same four
+metrics that we rely on when evaluating each other to evalu-
+ate potential employees _(See “Stack ranking,” on page 27)_.
+
+**We value “T-shaped” people.**
+That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at
+a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also
+experts (among the best in their field within a narrow disci-
+pline—the vertical leg of the T).
+This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often
+have to pass on people who are very strong generalists with-
+out expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has
+difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep
+enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really
+contributing as an individual.
+
+
+- 48 – – 49 –
+
+```
+VALVE IS GROWING
+```
+```
+Q: If all this stuff has worked well for us, why doesn’t every company
+work this way?
+A: Well, it’s really hard. Mainly because, from day one, it requires a
+commitment to hiring in a way that’s very different from the way most
+companies hire. It also requires the discipline to make the design of
+the company more important than any one short-term business goal.
+And it requires a great deal of freedom from outside pressure—being
+self-funded was key. And having a founder who was confident enough
+to build this kind of place is rare, indeed.
+Another reason that it’s hard to run a company this way is that it
+requires vigilance. It’s a one-way trip if the core values change, and
+maintaining them requires the full commitment of everyone—
+especially those who’ve been here the longest. For “senior” people
+at most companies, accumulating more power and/or money over
+time happens by adopting a more hierarchical culture.
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+```
+==================================================
+```
+on temporary/contract help to get us through tough spots,
+but we should never lower the hiring bar. The other reason
+people start to hire “downhill” is a political one. At most
+organizations, it’s beneficial to have an army of people
+doing your bidding. At Valve, though, it’s not. You’d
+damage the company and saddle yourself with a broken
+organization. Good times!
+
+**Hiring is fundamentally the same across all disciplines.**
+There are not different sets of rules or criteria for engi-
+neers, artists, animators, and accountants. Some details are
+different—like, artists and writers show us some of their
+work before coming in for an interview. But the actual
+interview process is fundamentally the same no matter who
+we’re talking to.
+“With the bar this high, would I be hired today?” That’s
+a good question. The answer might be no, but that’s actu-
+ally awesome for us, and we should all celebrate if it’s true
+because it means we’re growing correctly. As long as you’re
+continuing to be valuable and having fun, it’s a moot
+point, really.
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+
+## Epilogue
+
+# 6
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 52 – – 53 –
+
+```
+EPILOGUE
+```
+## What Happens When All This Stuff
+
+## Doesn’t Work?
+
+```
+Sometimes, 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.
+As 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.
+```
+## What Is Valve Not Good At?
+
+The design of the company has some downsides. We usu-
+ally think they’re worth the cost, but it’s worth noting that
+there are a number of things we wish we were better at:
+
+- Helping new people find their way. We wrote this
+book to help, but as we said above, a book can only
+go so far.
+- 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.
+- Disseminating information internally.
+- Finding and hiring people in completely new
+disciplines (e.g., economists! industrial designers!).
+- Making predictions longer than a few months out.
+- 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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 54 – – 55 –
+
+### Glossary
+
+```
+Jargon. Lingo. Code words.
+14-Year-Old Boy —If you see one running your project, don’t worry. That’s
+actually 57-year-old Josh Weier (see Josh Weier). If you have any extra stem
+cells, give them to him! He bathes in them daily.
+Australia —A place that’s either very near or is New Zealand where more
+than half of Valve’s employees were born.
+City of Seattle —Where Valve’s founders promised we’d locate our office
+before pulling a massive bait and switch to the Eastside (see also Greg Coomer).
+Coffee Machine, Right-hand Dispenser —The dispenser in all coffee
+machines at Valve that holds the decaffeinated coffee beans. To the best of
+our knowledge, these have never needed to be refilled. For all we know, the
+beans are decorative plastic.
+Company Vacation —Every year, the company gathers all the employees and
+our families, flies us somewhere tropical, and gives us a free weeklong
+vacation. Popular pastimes include beard contests, snorkeling, ice cream
+socials, jet skiing, or just sitting on the beach chatting with the locals about
+how many googly-eyed seashells you should buy from them. (Your feeling:
+none. Their counteroffer: Just buy five then.)
+Empty Shelf on Fifth Floor —Place we’re planning on putting all those
+awards for Ricochet once the gaming world finally catches up with it.
+Fishbowl— The conference room by the lunchroom. The one with a big
+glass wall. Don’t let the name throw you—we don’t actually use it as a
+fishbowl! Except, of course, on Fishbowl Fridays, where we fill it up with ten
+thousand gallons of putrid saltwater so that all the manta rays and sharks
+will have something to breathe while they fight to the death. You won’t see
+it in your list of benefits, not because it isn’t fun, but because it is illegal.
+Freight Elevator — (See “Method to move your desk,” on page 18.)
+Gabe Newell —Of all the people at this company who aren’t your boss,
+Gabe is the MOST not your boss, if you get what we’re saying.
+```
+## Where Will You Take Us?
+
+Valve 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.
+Whether 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 ani-
+mation, 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.
+
+
+```
+VALVE: HANDBOOK FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
+```
+- 56 –
+
+**Greg Coomer** —The only person who cares or remembers that somebody
+once might have said we’d move to Seattle.
+**Knives** —That which one can never own enough of. A vast collection of
+them is in no way a Freudian compensation.
+**Manager** —The kind of people we don’t have any of. So if you see one, tell
+somebody, because it’s probably the ghost of whoever was in this building
+before us. Whatever you do, don’t let him give you a presentation on
+paradigms in spectral proactivity.
+**Mann Co.** —Maker of square, unsafe products for men that occasionally
+catch on fire, and more occasionally, work as advertised. Owned and
+operated by Saxton Hale _(see Australia)_.
+**Parking Garage Elevators** —Autonomous hostage-taking devices with a will
+of their own. Beware.
+**Playtesting** —What we do early and often. And loudly, if Karen is the tester.
+**Ponies** —The animals most beloved by those away from their computers,
+and most despised by people who prefer to hear jokes just once.
+**Scorpions, Poison, Queen** —Repeated exposure to our bathrooms’ Pavlov-
+ian rock block soundtrack will ensure that you’ll never be able to relieve
+yourself again unless someone hums “Rock You like a Hurricane.”
+**Shitty Wizard** —Person responsible for all _Dota 2_ bugs. _Aka_ Finol.
+**Talk Alias** —Marc Laidlaw’s internal blog.
+**(Un)weighted Companion Pillow** —The thing Erik Wolpaw carries around
+with him and covers his mouth with after others have sat on it.
+**Valve Activities** —You will learn to love blacksmithing.
+**Josh Weier** —Variously pronounced “Josh Weere,” “Josh Wire,” “Josh
+Woe-Rue,” “Josh wuhh...[trailing off],” and “Josh Joshington” by those of us
+who stopped caring. They’re all equally valid!
+**WFH** —Working From Home. What to do if a single snowflake falls out of
+the sky.
+
+
+
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+Member Handbook
+
+============================================================
+
+HAN DB O OK FO R
+N E W E MPL OYE E S
+========================================================
+
+A fearless adventure
+in knowing what to do
+when no one’s there
+telling you what to do
+FIRST EDITION
+
+2012
+
+Table of Contents		
+			
+Preface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
+How to Use This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  viii
+
+Part 1: Welcome to Valve  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
+Your First Day
+Valve Facts That Matter
+Welcome to Flatland
+
+Part 2: Settling In  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
+
+Dedicated to the families
+of all Valve employees.
+Thank you for helping us make
+such an incredible place.
+
+Your First Month
+What to Work On
+		 Why do I need to pick my own projects?, But how do I decide which things to
+		 work on?, How do I find out what projects are under way?, Short-term vs. long		 term goals, What about all the things that I’m not getting done?, How does
+		 Valve decide what to work on? Can I be included the next time Valve is
+		 deciding X?
+Teams, Hours, and the Office
+		 Cabals, Team leads, Structure happens, Hours, The office
+Risks
+		 What if I screw up?, But what if we ALL screw up?
+
+Part 3: How Am I Doing?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
+Your Peers and Your Performance
+		 Peer reviews, Stack ranking (and compensation)
+
+Part 4: Choose Your Own Adventure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
+Your First Six Months
+		 Roles, Advancement vs. growth, Putting more tools in your toolbox
+
+Part 5: Valve Is Growing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
+Your Most Important Role
+		 Hiring, Why is hiring well so important at Valve?, How do we choose
+		 the right people to hire?, We value “T-shaped” people, We’re looking
+		 for people stronger than ourselves, Hiring is fundamentally the same
+		 across all disciplines
+
+Part 6: Epilogue  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
+What Is Valve Not Good At?
+What Happens When All This Stuff Doesn’t Work?
+Where Will You Take Us?
+
+Glossary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
+
+Preface
+In 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.
+
+© 2012 Valve Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
+This handbook does not constitute an employment contract or binding policy and is subject
+to change at any time. Either Valve or an employee can terminate the employment relationship
+at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Employment with Valve is at-will,
+and nothing in this handbook will alter that status.
+First edition: March 2012
+Valve Corporation
+Bellevue, Washington USA
+www.valvesoftware.com
+Designed by Valve
+Typeface: ITC New Baskerville
+10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
+
+– vii –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+How to Use This Book
+This book 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 handbook 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.
+==================================================
+
+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.
+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.
+==================================================
+
+– viii –
+
+1
+Welcome to Valve
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Your First Day
+
+W E L CO M E TO VALV E
+
+Valve Facts That Matter
+
+Fig. 1-2
+
+Fig. 1-1
+
+So you’ve gone through the interview process, you’ve
+signed the contracts, and you’re finally here at Valve.
+Congratulations, and welcome.
+Valve 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
+book 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.
+
+–2–
+
+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.
+Valve owns its intellectual property. This is far from the
+norm, in our industry or at most entertainment contentproducing 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.
+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,
+–3–
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEES
+
+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.
+
+Welcome to Flatland
+
+Fig. 1-3
+
+Hierarchy 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.
+But 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.
+That’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.
+A flat structure removes every organizational barrier
+
+–4–
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+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.
+If 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 ,” on page 43). 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.
+
+2
+
+==================================================
+
+Why does your desk have wheels? 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.
+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.
+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.
+==================================================
+
+–6–
+
+Settling In
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Your First Month
+So you’ve decided where you put your desk. You know
+where the coffee machine is. 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?
+This 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.
+
+What to Work On
+Why do I need to pick my own projects?
+We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a
+percentage of their time to self-directed projects. At Valve,
+that percentage is 100.
+Since 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.
+–8–
+
+S ettling in
+
+If 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.)
+
+But how do I decide which things to work on?
+Deciding 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.
+There’s no rule book for choosing a project or task at
+Valve. But it’s useful to answer questions like these:
+• Of all the projects currently under way, what’s the
+		 most valuable thing I can be working on?
+• Which project will have the highest direct impact
+		 on our customers? How much will the work I ship
+		 benefit them?
+• Is Valve not doing something that it should be doing?
+• What’s interesting? What’s rewarding? What leverages
+		 my individual strengths the most?
+–9–
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+How do I find out what projects are under way?
+There 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.
+Got 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.
+
+S ettling in
+
+problem or a threat, and it’s one with a clear cost, it’s hard
+not to address it immediately.
+This 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.
+So 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.
+
+Someone told me to (or not to) work on X. And
+they’ve been here a long time!
+
+Because we all are 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
+
+Well, 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 decision 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.
+
+– 10 –
+
+– 11 –
+
+Short-term vs. long-term goals
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+==================================================
+
+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.)
+==================================================
+
+Whatever group you’re in, whether you’re building Steam
+servers, translating support articles, or making the tenthousandth 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.
+
+What about all the things that I’m not getting done?
+It’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.
+
+– 12 –
+
+S ettling in
+
+How does Valve decide what to work on?
+The 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.
+But 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 would like to admit.
+We’ve found it vitally important to, whenever possible,
+not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or
+folk wisdom.
+This 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.
+Accepted 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.
+
+– 13 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Recruiting 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 ,” on page 43).
+
+S ettling in
+
+Teams, Hours, and the Office
+Cabals
+
+Can I be included the next time Valve is deciding X?
+Yes. 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) Start 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.
+
+Fig. 2-1
+
+Cabals 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.
+==================================================
+
+For reference, read the article on cabals by Ken Birdwell. It describes
+where cabals came from and what they meant to us early on:
+http://tinyurl.com/ygam86p.
+==================================================
+
+– 14 –
+
+– 15 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Team leads
+Often, 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.
+
+Structure happens
+Project 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.
+Valve 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
+
+S ettling in
+
+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.
+
+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.
+If you find yourself working long hours, or just generally
+feel like that balance is out of whack, be sure to raise the
+(cont’d on page 19)
+
+– 16 –
+
+– 17 –
+
+A Timeline of Valve’s History
+Fig. 2-2
+
+Method to move your desk
+1996
+
+1997
+
+1.
+
+2.
+
+3.
+
+4.
+
+Valve is formed in Kirkland, WA,
+by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
+
+Gabe promises that if HL becomes
+the #1- selling game, the company
+will take everyone on vacation.
+
+Formation papers are signed on the
+same day as Gabe’s wedding.
+
+After internal review, HL deemed
+not good enough to ship.
+HL team returns to the drawing board
+and essentially starts over.
+
+Quake engine license is acquired
+from id Software.
+Production commences on the game
+soon to be known as Half-Life (HL).
+
+step 1.
+step 2.
+step 3.
+step 4.
+
+Unplug cords from wall
+Move your desk
+Plug cords back into wall
+Get back to work
+
+VA LV E ME THOD D IA G . 1
+
+Prospero permanently shelved.
+
+Production commences on Valve’s
+second game, Prospero.
+Valve recruits and hires two game
+teams, including the first international
+employee from the UK.
+
+– 19 –
+
+H F N E :96:97::01 V A LV E
+
+19 9 8
+
+Half-Life: Day One OEM demo is released.
+
+Released as a demo bundled with the
+Voodoo Banshee graphics card, the OEM
+release circulates far beyond its original
+intended audience. Valve realizes the level
+of anticipation for the full game.
+
+Half-Life is released.
+Following a certain Black Mesa Incident,
+the world is never the same again.
+
+TeamFortress Software Pty. Ltd. is acquired.
+Creators of Team Fortress (TF) join Valve and commence work
+on Team Fortress Classic.
+Valve’s first company vacation to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
+# of employees: 30
+# of children: 0
+
+V A LV E HF NE:9 8 ::0 2
+
+1999
+
+2000
+
+2001
+
+Valve establishes a pattern
+of supporting the best
+mods and occasionally
+acquiring them.
+
+Mike Harrington amicably
+dissolves his partnership
+with Gabe Newell, leaving
+Newell as the sole head of
+Valve Corporation.
+
+Half-Life: Opposing Force
+is released.
+
+Counter-Strike (CS)
+is released.
+
+CS soon becomes the
+world’s #1 premier online
+action game.
+
+Ricochet is released.
+
+Half-Life: Deathmatch
+Classic is released.
+
+Expansion pack follows
+events in Black Mesa
+from the viewpoint of
+an invading soldier.
+
+Team Fortress Classic
+is released.
+
+Robin Walker demonstrates
+to the mod community how
+a game can be created
+quickly and easily with
+Valve’s SDK.
+
+Half-Life: Blue Shift
+is released.
+
+H F N E :99:00:01::03 V A LV E
+
+2004
+Source engine is unveiled.
+
+2002
+
+2003
+
+Half-Life 2 (HL2) source code
+is stolen.
+A thief infiltrates Valve’s network to
+steal and disperse the code base for
+the still-in-production HL2.
+
+Valve outgrows its original Kirkland
+office space and moves to downtown Bellevue, WA.
+Steam is announced at GDC.
+
+Years of speculation regarding the
+Borealis and Kraken Base begin…
+
+Steam is released.
+
+Half-Life 2 (HL2) is released.
+The world’s first (legal) look at the Source engine,
+along with the game it powers: HL2.
+HL2 appears as the first game available both
+through Steam and in retail locations.
+		
+		
+
+HL2 also becomes Valve’s
+second Xbox title.
+
+Counter-Strike: Source (CSS) is released.
+Years of work on Valve’s new Source engine
+technology finally come to light.
+
+Valve’s Steam offers to third parties its
+new suite of tools and services, which
+it had originally built to service its own
+games like HL and CS.
+
+Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
+is released.
+CS is released as Valve’s first Xbox title.
+
+Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) is released.
+In a field where rampant online cheating
+ruins the experience for many customers,
+Valve aggressively addresses the issue.
+
+V A LV E HF NE:0 2 :03::04
+
+Day of Defeat is released.
+A popular mod gets full Valve support,
+becoming one of its stalwart products.
+
+Half-Life: Source is released.
+The original HL gets a visual upgrade.
+
+H F N E :04::05 V A LV E
+
+2008
+2007
+2005
+
+First third-party games are
+released on Steam.
+A landmark in digital
+distribution, Steam
+gives PC developers
+an alternative to retail
+for their games.
+
+2006
+
+Half-Life 2: Episode One
+is released.
+Valve’s first experiment in
+episodic storytelling.
+
+2009
+LEFT 4 DEAD 2
+is released.
+
+Left 4 Dead is released.
+
+Presale numbers are
+the biggest yet for a
+Valve game.
+
+Steam ships its first downloadable
+content update for indie game
+The Maw.
+
+The Orange Box is released
+with two previously-released
+titles and three new products:
+Steamworks is unveiled, making the
+business and technical tools of the
+Steam platform available to thirdparty developers free of charge.
+
+Steam Cloud is released, offering
+seamless online storage of any file
+types, including saved games,
+configuration files, etc.
+
+Steam hits over 20 million users
+and over 500 games.
+Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
+tech demo is released.
+
+Team Fortress 2 (TF2), the
+long-awaited sequel to the
+classic multiplayer game.
+
+Supported by the first
+version of Valve’s popular
+developer commentary.
+
+Half Life 2: Episode Two—
+raising the bar for emotional
+storytelling.
+Portal—hailed worldwide as
+an instant classic.
+
+Day of Defeat: Source
+is released.
+Valve hires six students
+from DigiPen Institute of
+Technology after seeing
+their demo of the game,
+Narbacular Drop.
+
+V A LV E HF NE:0 5 :06:0 7 ::0 6
+
+Half-Life Deathmatch:
+Source is released.
+
+Steam Community is released
+with the first wave of features
+designed to help friends
+connect and socialize via
+the Steam platform.
+
+TF2 gets major class updates for Medic,
+Pyro, and Heavy characters.
+These updates are delivered via Steam
+to all TF2 customers.
+
+Steam hits over 25 million users
+and over 1,000 games.
+TF2 releases The Sniper vs Spy Update,
+followed by outright WAR!
+After this release, the TF2 updates 
+increase rapidly: more than 280
+have shipped in total.
+
+TF2 ships its first hat.
+
+Steam reaches 15 million
+active users, playing over
+200 games.
+
+H F N E :08:09::07 V A LV E
+
+S ettling in
+
+issue with whomever you feel would help. Dina loves to force
+people to take vacations, so you can make her your first stop.
+
+The office
+2010
+
+2011
+
+2012
+
+Portal 2 debuts on multiple
+platforms to critical acclaim.
+
+Valve’s 44th international hire
+clears immigration—this time
+from Germany.
+
+Dota 2 premieres at
+Gamescom in Cologne,
+Germany, with the
+first annual Dota 2
+championship.
+
+In 2012, Valve heads to the
+Big Island of Hawaii for its
+10th company vacation.
+# of employees: 293
+# of children: 185
+
+Valve moves to a more
+expansive location in
+Bellevue, WA.
+Valve announces that
+Steam and Source will be
+available for Macintosh.
+
+Valve announces Portal 2
+is launching in 2011.
+
+Sometimes 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.
+
+Q1: New employee handbook
+rolls off press.
+
+Valve begins development
+of Dota 2.
+What’s next? You tell us…
+
+V A LV E HF NE:10:1 1 :12::08
+
+– 19 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+S ettling in
+
+Risks
+What if I screw up?
+Nobody 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.
+Screwing 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.
+It 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.
+There 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.
+– 20 –
+
+Fig. 2-3
+
+– 21 –
+
+S ettling in
+
+Fig. 2-4
+
+Methods to find out what’s going on
+
+1.
+
+But what if we ALL screw up?
+
+2.
+
+Fig. 2-5
+
+3.
+
+step 1.
+step 2.
+step 3.
+step 4.
+
+4.
+
+Talk to someone in a meeting
+Talk to someone in the elevator
+Talk to someone in the kitchen
+Talk to someone in the bathroom
+
+VA LV E ME THOD D IA G . 2
+
+So 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.
+Over 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.
+We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with
+our customers. They watch us, sometimes very publicly,
+
+– 23 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+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.
+
+3
+How Am I Doing?
+
+– 24 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEES
+
+Your Peers and Your Performance
+We have two formalized methods of evaluating each other:
+peer reviews and stack ranking. Peer reviews are done in
+order to give each other useful feedback on how to best
+grow as individual contributors. Stack ranking is done
+primarily as a method of adjusting compensation. Both
+processes are driven by information gathered from each
+other—your peers.
+
+Peer reviews
+We all need feedback about our performance—in order
+to improve, and in order to know we’re not failing. Once
+a year we all give each other feedback about our work.
+Outside of these formalized peer reviews, the expectation
+is that we’ll just pull feedback from those around us whenever we need to.
+There is a framework for how we give this feedback to
+each other. A set of people (the set changes each time)
+interviews everyone in the whole company, asking who
+each person has worked with since the last round of peer
+reviews and how the experience of working with each
+person was. The purpose of the feedback is to provide
+people with information that will help them grow. That
+means that the best quality feedback is directive and
+
+– 26 –
+
+H ow am I doing ?
+
+prescriptive, and designed to be put to use by the person
+you’re talking about.
+The feedback is then gathered, collated, anonymized,
+and delivered to each reviewee. Making the feedback
+anonymous definitely has pros and cons, but we think it’s
+the best way to get the most useful information to each
+person. There’s no reason to keep your feedback about
+someone to yourself until peer review time if you’d like to
+deliver it sooner. In fact, it’s much better if you do so often,
+and outside the constraints of official peer reviews.
+When delivering peer review feedback, it’s useful to keep
+in mind the same categories used in stack ranking because
+they concretely measure how valuable we think someone is.
+
+Stack ranking (and compensation)
+The other evaluation we do annually is to rank each other
+against our peers. Unlike peer reviews, which generate
+information for each individual, stack ranking is done in
+order to gain insight into who’s providing the most value at
+the company and to thereby adjust each person’s compensation to be commensurate with his or her actual value.
+Valve pays people very well compared to industry norms.
+Our profitability per employee is higher than that of
+Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly
+that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum
+
+– 27 –
+
+H ow am I doing ?
+
+Fig. 3-1
+
+Method to working without a boss
+
+1.
+
+2.
+
+3.
+
+4.
+
+amount of money back into each employee’s pocket. Valve
+does not win if you’re paid less than the value you create.
+And people who work here ultimately don’t win if they get
+paid more than the value they create.
+So Valve’s goal is to get your compensation to be “correct.” We tend to be very flexible when new employees are
+joining the company, listening to their salary requirements
+and doing what we can for them. Over time, compensation
+gets adjusted to fit an employee’s internal peer-driven valuation. That’s what we mean by “correct”—paying someone
+what they’re worth (as best we can tell using the opinions
+of peers).
+==================================================
+
+If you think your compensation isn’t right for the work you do, then
+you should raise the issue. At Valve, these conversations are surprisingly
+easy and straightforward. Adjustments to compensation usually occur
+within the process described here. But talking about it is always the
+right thing if there’s any issue. Fretting about your level of compensation without any outside information about how it got set is expensive
+for you and for Valve.
+==================================================
+
+step 1.
+step 2.
+step 3.
+step 4.
+
+Come up with a bright idea
+Tell a coworker about it
+Work on it together
+Ship it!
+
+VA LV E ME THOD D IA G . 3
+
+The removal of bias is of the utmost importance to Valve in
+this process. We believe that our peers are the best judges
+of our value as individuals. Our flat structure eliminates
+some of the bias that would be present in a peer-ranking
+system elsewhere. The design of our stack-ranking process
+is meant to eliminate as much as possible of the remainder.
+– 29 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Each project/product group is asked to rank its own
+members. (People are not asked to rank themselves, so we
+split groups into parts, and then each part ranks people
+other than themselves.) The ranking itself is based on the
+following four metrics:
+1. Skill Level/Technical Ability
+How difficult and valuable are the kinds of problems
+you solve? How important/critical of a problem can you
+be given? Are you uniquely capable (in the company?
+industry?) of solving a certain class of problem, delivering a certain type of art asset, contributing to design,
+writing, or music, etc.?
+2. Productivity/Output
+How much shippable (not necessarily shipped to outside
+customers), valuable, finished work did you get done?
+Working a lot of hours is generally not related to productivity and, after a certain point, indicates inefficiency.
+It is more valuable if you are able to maintain a sensible
+work/life balance and use your time in the office efficiently, rather than working around the clock.
+
+– 30 –
+
+Fig. 3-2
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+H ow am I doing ?
+
+3. Group Contribution
+How much do you contribute to studio process, hiring,
+integrating people into the team, improving workflow,
+amplifying your colleagues, or writing tools used by
+others? Generally, being a group contributor means
+that you are making a tradeoff versus an individual
+contribution. Stepping up and acting in a leadership
+role can be good for your group contribution score,
+but being a leader does not impart or guarantee a
+higher stack rank. It is just a role that people adopt
+from time to time.
+
+By choosing these categories and basing the stack ranking
+on them, the company is explicitly stating, “This is what
+is valuable.” We think that these categories offer a broad
+range of ways you can contribute value to the company.
+Once the intra-group ranking is done, the information
+gets pooled to be company-wide. We won’t go into that
+methodology here. There is a wiki page about peer feedback
+and stack ranking with some more detail on each process.
+
+4. Product Contribution
+How much do you contribute at a larger scope than your
+core skill? How much of your work matters to the product? How much did you influence correct prioritization
+of work or resource trade-offs by others? Are you good
+at predicting how customers are going to react to decisions we’re making? Things like being a good playtester
+or bug finder during the shipping cycle would fall into
+this category.
+
+– 32 –
+
+– 33 –
+
+Fig. 3-3
+
+Method to taking the company trip
+
+1.
+
+2.
+
+3.
+
+4.
+
+4
+Choose Your
+Own Adventure
+
+step 1.
+step 2.
+step 3.
+step 4.
+
+Find someone to watch your cats
+Board our chartered flight
+Relax by the pool
+Relax by the pool some more
+
+VA LV E ME THOD D IA G . 4
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Your First Six Months
+You’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.
+
+Roles
+
+CH O O S E Y O U R O W N ADV E N TU RE
+
+who interact with others outside the company call themselves by various titles because doing so makes it easier to
+get their jobs done.
+Inside 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.
+One 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.
+
+Advancement vs. growth
+
+Fig. 4-1
+
+By 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
+
+– 36 –
+
+Because 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?”
+Working at Valve provides an opportunity for extremely
+efficient and, in many cases, very accelerated, career
+
+– 37 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+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.
+So the “growth ladder” is tailored to you. It operates
+exactly as fast as you can manage to grow. You’re in charge
+
+CH O O S E Y O U R O W N ADV E N TU RE
+
+Most people who fit well at Valve will be betterpositioned after their time spent here than they could
+have been if they’d spent their time pretty much
+anywhere else.
+
+Putting more tools in your toolbox
+The 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 on
+page 46.) Because of the talent diversity here at Valve, it’s
+often easier to become stronger at things that aren’t your
+core skill set.
+
+Engineers: code is only the beginning
+
+Fig. 4-2
+
+of your track, and you can elicit help with it anytime from
+those around you. F Y I , 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.
+
+– 38 –
+
+If 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.
+
+Non-Engineers: program or be programmed
+Valve’s core competency is making software. Obviously,
+
+– 39 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEES
+
+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.
+
+5
+Valve Is Growing
+
+– 40 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Your Most Important Role
+Concepts discussed in this book sound like they might work
+well at a tiny start-up, but not at a hundreds-of-people-plusbillions-in-revenue company. The big question is: Does all
+this stuff scale?
+Well, so far, yes. And we believe that if we’re careful, it
+will work better and better the larger we get. This might
+seem counterintuitive, but it’s a direct consequence of
+hiring great, accomplished, capable people. Getting this
+to work right is a tricky proposition, though, and depends
+highly on our continued vigilance in recruiting/hiring.
+If we start adding people to the company who aren’t as
+capable as we are at operating as high-powered, selfdirected, senior decision makers, then lots of the stuff
+discussed in this book will stop working.
+One thing that’s changing as we grow is that we’re not
+great at disseminating information to everyone anymore
+(see “What is Valve not good at?,” on page 52).
+On the positive side, our profitability per employee is
+going up, so by that measure, we’re certainly scaling correctly.
+Our rate of hiring growth hovered between 10 and 15
+percent per year, for years. In 2010, we sped up, but only to
+about 20 percent per year. 2011 kept up this new pace,
+largely due to a wave of hiring in Support.
+
+– 42 –
+
+Valve is growing
+
+We do not have a growth goal. We intend to continue
+hiring the best people as fast as we can, and to continue
+scaling up our business as fast as we can, given our existing
+staff. Fortunately, we don’t have to make growth decisions
+based on any external pressures—only our own business
+goals. And we’re always free to temper those goals with the
+long-term vision for our success as a company. Ultimately,
+we win by keeping the hiring bar very high.
+
+Hiring
+
+Fig. 5-1
+
+– 43 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Valve is growing
+
+Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe.
+Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing. So when you’re working on hiring—participating in
+an interview loop or innovating in the general area of
+recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid
+and should be ignored!
+When you’re new to Valve, it’s super valuable to start
+being involved in the interview process. Ride shotgun with
+people who’ve been doing it a long time. In some ways, our
+interview process is similar to those of other companies,
+but we have our own take on the process that requires
+practice to learn. We won’t go into all the nuts and bolts in
+this book—ask others for details, and start being included
+in interview loops.
+
+adding a great person can create value across the whole
+company. Missing out on hiring that great person is likely
+the most expensive kind of mistake we can make.
+Usually, it’s immediately obvious whether or not we’ve
+done a great job hiring someone. However, we don’t have
+the usual checks and balances that come with having
+managers, so occasionally it can take a while to understand
+whether a new person is fitting in. This is one downside of
+the organic design of the company—a poor hiring decision
+can cause lots of damage, and can sometimes go unchecked
+for too long. Ultimately, people who cause damage always
+get weeded out, but the harm they do can still be significant.
+
+Why is hiring well so important at Valve?
+At Valve, adding individuals to the organization can influence our success far more than it does at other companies
+—either in a positive or negative direction. Since there’s
+no organizational compartmentalization of people here,
+==================================================
+
+Bring your friends. One of the most valuable things you can do as a
+new employee is tell us who else you think we should hire. Assuming
+that you agree with us that Valve is the best place to work on Earth,
+then tell us about who the best people are on Earth, so we can bring
+them here. If you don’t agree yet, then wait six months and ask
+yourself this question again.
+
+How do we choose the right people to hire?
+An exhaustive how-to on hiring would be a handbook of
+its own. Probably one worth writing. It’d be tough for us to
+capture because we feel like we’re constantly learning really
+important things about how we hire people. In the meantime, here are some questions we always ask ourselves when
+evaluating candidates:
+• Would I want this person to be my boss?
+• Would I learn a significant amount from him or her?
+• What if this person went to work for our competition?
+Across the board, we value highly collaborative people.
+That means people who are skilled in all the things that are
+
+==================================================
+– 44 –
+
+– 45 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+integral to high-bandwidth collaboration—people who can
+deconstruct problems on the fly, and talk to others as they
+do so, simultaneously being inventive, iterative, creative,
+talkative, and reactive. These things actually matter far more
+than deep domain-specific knowledge or highly developed
+skills in narrow areas. This is why we’ll often pass on candidates who, narrowly defined, are the “best” at their chosen
+discipline.
+Of course it’s not quite enough to say that a candidate
+should collaborate well—we also refer to the same four
+metrics that we rely on when evaluating each other to evaluate potential employees (See “Stack ranking,” on page 27).
+
+Valve is growing
+
+Fig. 5-2
+
+We value “T-shaped” people.
+That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at
+a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also
+experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T).
+This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often
+have to pass on people who are very strong generalists without expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has
+difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep
+enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really
+contributing as an individual.
+
+We’re looking for people stronger than ourselves.
+When unchecked, people have a tendency to hire others
+who are lower-powered than themselves. The questions
+listed above are designed to help ensure that we don’t
+start hiring people who are useful but not as powerful
+as we are. We should hire people more capable than
+ourselves, not less.
+In some ways, hiring lower-powered people is a natural
+response to having so much work to get done. In these
+conditions, hiring someone who is at least capable seems
+(in the short term) to be smarter than not hiring anyone at
+all. But that’s actually a huge mistake. We can always bring
+
+– 46 –
+
+– 47 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEES
+
+on temporary/contract help to get us through tough spots,
+but we should never lower the hiring bar. The other reason
+people start to hire “downhill” is a political one. At most
+organizations, it’s beneficial to have an army of people
+doing your bidding. At Valve, though, it’s not. You’d
+damage the company and saddle yourself with a broken
+organization. Good times!
+Hiring is fundamentally the same across all disciplines.
+There are not different sets of rules or criteria for engineers, artists, animators, and accountants. Some details are
+different—like, artists and writers show us some of their
+work before coming in for an interview. But the actual
+interview process is fundamentally the same no matter who
+we’re talking to.
+“With the bar this high, would I be hired today?” That’s
+a good question. The answer might be no, but that’s actually awesome for us, and we should all celebrate if it’s true
+because it means we’re growing correctly. As long as you’re
+continuing to be valuable and having fun, it’s a moot
+point, really.
+
+– 48 –
+
+Valve is growing
+
+==================================================
+
+Q: If all this stuff has worked well for us, why doesn’t every company
+work this way?
+A: Well, it’s really hard. Mainly because, from day one, it requires a
+commitment to hiring in a way that’s very different from the way most
+companies hire. It also requires the discipline to make the design of
+the company more important than any one short-term business goal.
+And it requires a great deal of freedom from outside pressure—being
+self-funded was key. And having a founder who was confident enough
+to build this kind of place is rare, indeed.
+Another reason that it’s hard to run a company this way is that it
+requires vigilance. It’s a one-way trip if the core values change, and
+maintaining them requires the full commitment of everyone—
+especially those who’ve been here the longest. For “senior” people
+at most companies, accumulating more power and/or money over
+time happens by adopting a more hierarchical culture.
+==================================================
+
+– 49 –
+
+6
+Epilogue
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+What Is Valve Not Good At?
+The 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:
+• Helping new people find their way. We wrote this
+		 book to help, but as we said above, a book can only
+		 go so far.
+• 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.
+• Disseminating information internally.
+• Finding and hiring people in completely new
+		 disciplines (e.g., economists! industrial designers!).
+• Making predictions longer than a few months out.
+• 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.
+
+– 52 –
+
+E pilogue
+
+What Happens When All This Stuff
+Doesn’t Work?
+Sometimes, 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.
+As 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.
+
+– 53 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Where Will You Take Us?
+Valve 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.
+Whether 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.
+
+Glossary
+Jargon. Lingo. Code words.
+14-Year-Old Boy—If you see one running your project, don’t worry. That’s
+actually 57-year-old Josh Weier (see Josh Weier). If you have any extra stem
+cells, give them to him! He bathes in them daily.
+Australia—A place that’s either very near or is New Zealand where more
+than half of Valve’s employees were born.
+City of Seattle—Where Valve’s founders promised we’d locate our office
+before pulling a massive bait and switch to the Eastside (see also Greg Coomer).
+Coffee Machine, Right-hand Dispenser—The dispenser in all coffee
+machines at Valve that holds the decaffeinated coffee beans. To the best of
+our knowledge, these have never needed to be refilled. For all we know, the
+beans are decorative plastic.
+Company Vacation—Every year, the company gathers all the employees and
+our families, flies us somewhere tropical, and gives us a free weeklong
+vacation. Popular pastimes include beard contests, snorkeling, ice cream
+socials, jet skiing, or just sitting on the beach chatting with the locals about
+how many googly-eyed seashells you should buy from them. (Your feeling:
+none. Their counteroffer: Just buy five then.)
+Empty Shelf on Fifth Floor—Place we’re planning on putting all those
+awards for Ricochet once the gaming world finally catches up with it.
+Fishbowl—The conference room by the lunchroom. The one with a big
+glass wall. Don’t let the name throw you—we don’t actually use it as a
+fishbowl! Except, of course, on Fishbowl Fridays, where we fill it up with ten
+thousand gallons of putrid saltwater so that all the manta rays and sharks
+will have something to breathe while they fight to the death. You won’t see
+it in your list of benefits, not because it isn’t fun, but because it is illegal.
+Freight Elevator—(See “Method to move your desk,” on page 18.)
+Gabe Newell—Of all the people at this company who aren’t your boss,
+Gabe is the MOST not your boss, if you get what we’re saying.
+
+– 54 –
+
+– 55 –
+
+VALVE: H ANDBO O K FO R NEW EMP LO YEEs
+
+Greg Coomer—The only person who cares or remembers that somebody
+once might have said we’d move to Seattle.
+Knives—That which one can never own enough of. A vast collection of
+them is in no way a Freudian compensation.
+Manager—The kind of people we don’t have any of. So if you see one, tell
+somebody, because it’s probably the ghost of whoever was in this building
+before us. Whatever you do, don’t let him give you a presentation on
+paradigms in spectral proactivity.
+Mann Co.—Maker of square, unsafe products for men that occasionally
+catch on fire, and more occasionally, work as advertised. Owned and
+operated by Saxton Hale (see Australia).
+Parking Garage Elevators—Autonomous hostage-taking devices with a will
+of their own. Beware.
+Playtesting—What we do early and often. And loudly, if Karen is the tester.
+Ponies—The animals most beloved by those away from their computers,
+and most despised by people who prefer to hear jokes just once.
+Scorpions, Poison, Queen—Repeated exposure to our bathrooms’ Pavlovian rock block soundtrack will ensure that you’ll never be able to relieve
+yourself again unless someone hums “Rock You like a Hurricane.”
+Shitty Wizard—Person responsible for all Dota 2 bugs. Aka Finol.
+Talk Alias—Marc Laidlaw’s internal blog.
+(Un)weighted Companion Pillow—The thing Erik Wolpaw carries around
+with him and covers his mouth with after others have sat on it.
+Valve Activities—You will learn to love blacksmithing.
+Josh Weier—Variously pronounced “Josh Weere,” “Josh Wire,” “Josh
+Woe-Rue,” “Josh wuhh…[trailing off],” and “Josh Joshington” by those of us
+who stopped caring. They’re all equally valid!
+WFH—Working From Home. What to do if a single snowflake falls out of
+the sky.
+
+– 56 –
+
+
diff --git a/src/CIO/Systems/Admin-RandD/EngWorkstationBuildGuide.md b/src/CIO/Systems/Admin-RandD/EngWorkstationBuildGuide.md
index 0a02577..40a3416 100644
--- a/src/CIO/Systems/Admin-RandD/EngWorkstationBuildGuide.md
+++ b/src/CIO/Systems/Admin-RandD/EngWorkstationBuildGuide.md
@@ -52,15 +52,27 @@
 
 ## Introduction
 
-In 01/2021 , Charles purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 as his daily driver with the intent of evaluating it for use as the standard issue equipment for TSYS personnel. This document is the results of his experiments with it from 01/2021 to (as of time of writing) June 2021. The RPi4 has been approved as the standard/supported workstation for TSYS across all teams/products.
+In 01/2021 , Charles purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 as his daily driver with the intent of evaluating it for use as the standard issue equipment for TSYS personnel. This document is the results of his 
+experiments with it from 01/2021 to (as of time of writing) August 1st 2021. 
 
-Charles is the founder, CEO and acting CTO/CIO of TSYS Group. In his role, he does everything from business ops, to system administration to software/hardware engineering tasks. As such he was best positioned to evaluate the rPI for all workloads.
+Charles is the founder, CEO and acting CTO of TSYS Group. In his role, he does everything from business ops, to system administration to software/hardware engineering tasks. As such he was best 
+positioned to evaluate the rPI for all workloads.
 
-The software mentioned in this document is a long list, reflecting the myriad of tasks/projects Charles may engage with on a daily basis.  Most likely, you'll only need a subset of these tools, don't despair! Feel free to install all of them or a subset as you wish.
+The RPi4 has been approved as one of the standard/supported workstation for TSYS personnel across all teams/products.
 
-We hope this document is useful to everyone at TSYS who wants to maximize their productivity. TSYS fully supports Debian/Ubuntu GNU Linux for workstation use, both on rPI4 and x86 virtual/physical systems. We do occasionally test Mac OSX and Windows 10, but they aren't officially supported.  Ou experiments and daily use show that 85% or more of TSYS daily driver/workstation use (email/coding/research/browsing/document creation/discord/media editing/etc) can be done on an rPI4. The gaps (if any) can be done via an RDP session to an x86 vm for the few things that have x86 dependencies or need 64bit os (64bit on pi isn't yet fully ready in our opinion as of June 2021).
+The software mentioned in this document is a long list, reflecting the myriad of tasks/projects Charles may engage with on a daily basis.  Most likely, you'll only need a subset of these tools, 
+don't despair! Feel free to install all of them or a subset as you wish based on your mission objectives.
 
-## Workstation details - RPI4 8Gb
+We hope this document is useful to everyone at TSYS who wants to maximize their productivity. TSYS fully supports Debian/Ubuntu GNU Linux for workstation use, both on rPI4 and x86 virtual/physical 
+systems. 
+
+We do occasionally test Mac OSX and Windows 10, but they aren't officially supported.  
+
+Our experiments and daily use show that 85% or more of TSYS daily driver/workstation use (email/coding/research/browsing/document creation/discord/media editing/etc) can be done on an rPI4. 
+
+The few gaps can be done via an RDP session to an x86 system for the few things that have x86 dependencies or need 64bit os (64bit on pi isn't yet fully ready in our opinion as of August 2021).
+
+## Charles Workstation details - RPI4 8Gb
 
 - Operating System: RaspberryPi Os
 - Hardware:
@@ -162,12 +174,6 @@ sudo npm i -g decktape
 sudo add chrome-aws-lambda
 ```
 
-#### Docker
-
-```console
- curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh
-```
-
 #### RedNotebook (install from source, it just runs in place)
 
 <https://rednotebook.sourceforge.io/downloads.html>
@@ -175,37 +181,26 @@ sudo add chrome-aws-lambda
 
 #### OpenWebRx
 
+on pi:
+
 wget -O - <https://repo.openwebrx.de/debian/key.gpg.txt> | apt-key add
 echo "deb <https://repo.openwebrx.de/debian/> buster main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openwebrx.list
 apt-get update
 apt-get install openwebrx
 
+or (on x86)
+
+wget -O - https://repo.openwebrx.de/debian/key.gpg.txt | apt-key add
+echo "deb https://repo.openwebrx.de/ubuntu/ hirsute main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openwebrx.list
+apt-get update
+apt-get install openwebrx
+
 #### csv2md
 
 ```console
 npm install -g csv2md
 ```
 
-#### helm
-
-```console
-sudo snap install helm --classic
-```
-
-#### kubectl / k3s
-
-```console
-    curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
-```
-
-#### docker
-
-```console
-curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh
-```
-
-#### docker-compose
-
 #### metasploit
 
 ```console
@@ -221,6 +216,8 @@ Follow the readme
 
 #### Bitscope
 
+on pi
+
 ```console
 wget http://bitscope.com/download/files/bitscope-dso_2.8.FE22H_armhf.deb
 wget http://bitscope.com/download/files/bitscope-logic_1.2.FC20C_armhf.deb
@@ -236,9 +233,34 @@ sudo apt-get -y -f install
 
 ```
 
+on x86
+
+TBD
+
 #### docker based dev environment/pipeline
 
-Todo
+##### docker
+
+```console
+curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh
+```
+
+##### helm
+
+
+```console
+sudo snap install helm --classic
+```
+
+##### kubectl / k3s
+
+```console
+    curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
+```
+
+##### docker-compose
+
+##### Todo
 
 - local k0s (for gitops testing)
 - (container) local docker reg
@@ -252,7 +274,7 @@ apt-get -y install \
 kicad librecad freecad gimp blender shellcheck jq \
 ruby-full offlineimap zsh vim thunderbird enigmail \
 kleopatra zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting screen \
-mtr rpi-imager cifs-utils grass cubicsdr arduino jupyter-notebook \
+mtr cifs-utils grass cubicsdr arduino jupyter-notebook \
 dia basket vym code wings3d flatpak wireguard gnuplot \
 pandoc python3-blockdiag  texlive-fonts-extra clang \
 spice-client-gtk spice-html5 virt-viewer gnome-system-monitor \
@@ -261,11 +283,11 @@ ripgrep recoll poppler-utils  abiword wv antiword  unrtf  \
 libimage-exiftool-perl xsltproc davmail kphotoalbum opensc \
 yubikey-manager yubikey-personalization yubikey-personalization-gui \
 openshot kdenlive pitivi inkscape scribus scdaemon seafile-gui qgis \
-octave nodejs gpx2shp libreoffice calligra netbeans sigrok \
-nodejs audacity wireshark nmap tcpdump zenmap etherape ghostscript \
-geda ngspice graphicsmagick codeblocks scilab calibre paraview \
+octave nodejs libreoffice calligra netbeans sigrok \
+nodejs audacity wireshark nmap tcpdump ndiff etherape ghostscript \
+lepton-eda ngspice graphicsmagick codeblocks scilab calibre paraview \
 gnuradio build-essential libimobiledevice-utils libimobiledevice-dev \
-libgpod-dev python3-numpy python3-pandas python3-matplotlib bluez-firmware \
+libgpod-dev python3-numpy python3-pandas python3-matplotlib \
 curl git make binutils bison gcc build-essential openjdk-11-jre-headless \
 debootstrap cutecom minicom ser2net conman xsane gocr  tesseract-ocr \
 fonts-powerline build-essential zlib1g zlib1g-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev \
@@ -274,38 +296,13 @@ libyaml-dev openssl autoconf libtool ncurses-dev bison curl wget postgresql \
 postgresql-contrib libpq-dev libapr1 libaprutil1 libsvn1 libpcap-dev ruby-dev \
 openvas git-core postgresql curl nmap gem libsqlite3-dev cmake ninja-build libopenscap-dev \
 qt5-default libqt5widgets5 libqt5widgets5 libqwt-headers libqt5xmlpatterns5-dev asciidoc \
-lmms virt-manager gqrx-sdr multimon-ng rtl-sdr fldigi grads cdo zygrib zygrib-maps evince \
-openwebrx xscreensaver blueman bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth blueman bluewho
+lmms virt-manager gqrx-sdr multimon-ng rtl-sdr fldigi grads cdo xygrib xygrib-maps evince \
+openwebrx xscreensaver blueman bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth blueman texlive-fonts-extra \
+texlive-fonts-recommended 
 ```
 
 ### Configuration Tweaks
 
-#### chrome setup
-
-1) launch chrome
-2) change language to english
-3) enable dark mode (<https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/google/149866-how-to-enable-dark-mode-for-google-chrome>)
-4) login to pwvault.turnsys.com and obtain google account creds
-5) login to google account and enable sync
-6) (optional at this time) setup any extension configuration needed that results from logging in to google account/turning on sync
-7) ensure the following extensions are installed:
-   1) vimium
-   2) bitwarden
-   3) pushover
-
-#### passwords/bitwarden
-
-1) disable chrome password saving/autofill (actually this is done via settings sync by google login) (so only need to set it if not already set in your settings)
-2) set bitwarden extension to use pwvault.turnsys.com
-3) login to bitwarden via extension
-4) set vault to not lock ever (balance security/convenience (with locked workstation and using pin+yubi to unlock workstation)
-5) set match selection to host
-6) set auto fill on page load
-
-#### web apps
-
-1) login to discord.com
-2) login to office.com
 
 #### zsh
 
@@ -341,8 +338,18 @@ to see how I set it up VsCode for a myriad of tasks, see the VsCode guide for ts
 
 <https://git.turnsys.com/TSGTechops/docs-techops/src/branch/master/src/Systems/Admin-RandD/TSYS-DevEnv-VsCode.md>
 
+
+
 ### CTO Stuff
 
+#### mbed studio
+#### eclipse
+#### android studio
+#### dbeaver
+#### postman
+#### sweethome3d
+#### ghidra
+
 #### Upstream vendor software to checkout
 
 This is a massive work in progress , is mostly for Charles own notes only, really only applicable for large upstream packages that TSYS needs to support 
@@ -364,17 +371,6 @@ for/from you into our artifact repository and build process.
 
 ##### Special considerations for upstream
 
-## Workstation details - x86-64 vm
-
-- Operating System: Ubuntu Server 20.04 with xfce/xrdp
-- Hardware: KVM 4gb ram
-- Applications (limited, things that don't (easily) run on the rpi):
-  - mbed studio
-  - eclipse
-  - android studio
-  - dbeaver
-  - postman
-  - sweethome3d
 
 ## Workstation details - iPAD