Valve Interview: Gabe Newell Isn’t The Boss of Me
The employee handbook that hit the internet earlier this year pulled the curtain back on Valve, suggesting staff float about the company’s Seattle offices working at desks made of gold and sitting on chairs made of clouds. Games seem to emerge from the bowels of Gabe Newell’s tower not because someone decided they would be a good thing to do and then told others to make it happen, but because someone decided they would be a good thing to do and others heard about it in the kitchen or toilet and thought, that sounds like fun, I’ll help out, I’ve always fancied making augmented reality glasses that know when I’m happy or sad. When business development director Jason Holtman took to the stage at the Develop conference in Brighton last week, I expected him to say something along the lines of, yeah, it’s not quite like the way the handbook describes. That bit about us not having any bosses? That was a joke. Yes, we like to do things a bit different, but if we operated exactly how it’s described in the handbook, there would be chaos. Read more…
