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Valve Leak 2020
- Thread starter Turtle-Zone 3000
- Start date
That's the idea, but they all know who the bosses are.
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2015
- Messages
- 20,646
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
if your mod on nexusmods gets enough downloads you get access to the super sekrit developer forum
and it's full of nothing but whining and petty fighting between developers.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
AFAIk working at Valve is kinda shit unless things changed recently. I remember reading this a few years back
https://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-cabal-rooms-suck.html
tl;dr: badIn case it wasn't clear: I really dislike large open office spaces. (Not 2-3 person offices, but large industrial scale 20-100 person open office spaces of doom.) Valve's was absolutely the worst expression of the concept I've ever experienced. I can understand doing the open office thing for a while at a startup, where every dollar counts, but at an established company I just won't tolerate this craziness anymore. (See the scientific research below if you think I feel too strongly about this trend.)
As an engineer I can force myself to function in them, but only with large headphones on and a couple huge monitors to block visual noise. I do my best to mentally block out the constant audio/visual (and sometimes olfactory!) interruptions, but it's tough. It's not rocket science people: engineers cannot function at peak efficiency in Romper Room-like environments.
In case you've never seen or worked in one of these horrible office spaces before, here's a public shot showing a small fraction of the Dota 2 cabal room:
I heard the desks got packed in so tightly that occasionally a person would lower or raise their desks and it would get caught against other nearby desks. One long-time Valve dev would try to make himself a little cubicle of sorts by parking himself into a corner with a bunch of huge monitors on his desk functioning as walls, kind of like this extreme example:
He also had little mirrors on the top of a couple monitors, so he could see what people were doing behind him. At first I thought he was a little eccentric, but I now understand.
After a while I realized "Cabal rooms" (Valve's parlance for a project-specific open office space) resembled panopticon prisons:
See that little cell in the back left there? That's your desk. Now concentrate and code!
Here's the list of issues I encountered while working in cabal (open office layout) rooms:
1. North Korea-like atmosphere of self-censorship:
Now at a place like my previous company, pretty much everyone is constantly trying to climb the stack rank ladders to get a good bonus, and everyone is trying to protect their perceived turf. Some particularly nasty devs will do everything they can to lead you down blind alleys, or just give you bad information or bogus feedback, to prevent you from doing something that could make you look good (or make something they claimed previously be perceived by the group as wrong or boneheaded).
Anyhow, in an environment like this, even simple conversations with other coworkers can be difficult, because all conversations are broadcasted into the room and you've got to be careful not to step on the toes of 10-20 other people at all times. Good luck with that.
2. Constant background noise: visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.
As an engineer, I do my best (highest value) work while in the "flow". Background noise raises the mental cost of getting into and staying in this state.
3. Bad physical cabal room placement: Don't put a cabal room next to the barber or day care rooms people (!).
4. Constant random/unstructured interruptions.
It's can be almost impossible to concentrate on (for example) massive restructurings of the Source1 graphics engine, or debugging the vogl GL debugger with UE4 while the devs next to you are talking about their gym lessons while the other dude is bragging about the new Porsche he just bought with the stock he sold back to the company.
5. Hyper-proximity to sick co-workers.
Walls make good neighbors, especially after they've caught a cold but feel pressured to be seen working so they come in anyway.
6. Noise spike in the afternoon in one cabal room, as everyone all the sudden decides to start chatting (usually about inane crap honestly) for 30-60 minutes. There's a feedback effect at work here, as everyone needs to chat louder to be heard, causing the background noise to go up, causing everyone to speak louder etc. Good luck if you're trying to concentrate on something.
7. Environmental issues: Temperature either too high or too low, lighting either too bright, too dark, or wrong color spectrum. Nobody is ever really happy with this arrangement except the locally optimizing bean counters.
8. Power issues or fire hazards due to extreme desk density.
9. Mixing electrical or mechanical engineers (who operate power tools, solder, destruct shit, etc.) next to developers trying their best to concentrate on code.
Related: Don't put smelly 3D printers etc. right next to where devs are trying to code.
10. Guest developers causing trouble:
Hyper-competitive graphics card vendors would watch the activity on our huge monitors and get pissed off when we emailed or chatted, even about inane crap, with other vendors.
Some guest developers treated coming to Valve like an excuse to party. We learned the hard way to always separate these devs into separate mini-cabal rooms.
11. No (or bad access to) white boards.
At Ensemble Studios (Microsoft), each 2-3 person office had a huge whiteboard on one wall. This was awesome for collaboration, planning, etc.
Irata
Scholar
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2018
- Messages
- 304
Nothing he complains about necessarily makes Valve a bad place to work. The vast majority of them are just his personal problems with the office layout. I wouldn't like that environment either, but he's just whinging. "Boo hoo. Our conference room is next to the barber. There's too much background noise. People talk too much. I don't have a cubicle." Doesn't sound like the guy who just bought a Porsche is crying about not having walls.
A bad place to work is low pay, long hours and a boss who is on your balls all day long. Add in a constant threat that you might be let go at any moment too. One of his complaints was that Valve doesn't use whiteboards... Those slave drivers over at Valve.
Plus, he's not an engineer.
The mirror thing made me laugh though because I knew a guy who did that so he could see if the department head was coming up behind him. Time to look busy!
Dexter
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
- Messages
- 15,655
This part at least is absolute and utter made-up bullshit, so I'm assuming the rest is too:
They just released the GOTY like a month ago:
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2017
- Messages
- 6,116
This doesn't help your case.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2017
- Messages
- 31,773
I'm surprised Valve HAS any plans that can get leaked.
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2015
- Messages
- 3,544
just give it time
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
- Messages
- 28,568
Yes, lugging heavy flamers around is a memorable experience.
you know what time it is
Arcane
According to multiple sources over the last decade - it's quite a shitshow, pays well though.
karoliner
Arcane
Can we please stop talking about furries?
PrettyDeadman
Guest
What this leak is about again?
alighieri
Educated
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2020
- Messages
- 89
Nothing. It's literally a nothing burger and next week nobody will give a shit.
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
- Messages
- 917
Melcar
Arcane
So this is a no news designed to get morons talking about the non-company that is Valve?
stop intermittently deleting your fucking posts
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
Seems like more retarded trannycord drama.
Archwizard Hank
Learned
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2017
- Messages
- 94
I don't really give a shit about the retarded drama surrounding the genesis of the leaks, but I feel obligated to point out that a lot of idiots on Discord and journalism sites have been responding to this by telling people to completely uninstall TF2 and CS:GO to avoid the remote code execution.
Like, that's not how software works. Hackers can't magically telefrag your machine just because the games are in your library, you have to actually run them
Like, that's not how software works. Hackers can't magically telefrag your machine just because the games are in your library, you have to actually run them
vortex
Fabulous Optimist
https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell...development-that-were-going-to-be-announcing/
Gaben announces he be doing announcements.
Also Cyberpunk is fun.
Gaben announces he be doing announcements.
Also Cyberpunk is fun. 
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2017
- Messages
- 6,116
No, just experimenting with the Valve engine, making Alyx on the side, and living off that sweet, sweet Steam money.
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