{"id":1540,"date":"2012-04-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwneu.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2012\/04\/29\/1485\/"},"modified":"2012-04-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T22:00:00","slug":"1485","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2012\/04\/29\/1485\/","title":{"rendered":"My favourite quotes from the Valve Handbook for new employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Valve\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.valvesoftware.com\/company\/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf\">Handbook for new employees [PDF]<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs individuals we tend to gravitate toward projects that have a high, measurable, and predictable return for the company. So when there\u2019s a clear opportunity on the table to succeed at a near-term business goal with a clear return, we all want to take it. [\u2026] This sounds like a good thing, and it often is, but it has some downsides that are worth keeping in mind. Specifically, if we\u2019re not careful, these traits can cause us to race back and forth between short-term opportunities and threats, being responsive rather than proactive. [\u2026] It\u2019s up to all of us to spend effort focusing on what we think the long-term goals of the company should be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s natural in this kind of environment to constantly feel like you\u2019re failing because for every one task you decide to work on, there will be dozens that aren\u2019t getting your attention. Trust us, this is normal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan I be included the next time Valve is deciding X?<\/p>\n<p>Yes. There\u2019s no secret decision-making cabal. No matter what project, you\u2019re already invited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOften, someone will emerge as the \u201clead\u201d for a project. This person\u2019s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they\u2019re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow much shippable (not necessarily shipped to outside customers), valuable, finished work did you get done?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow 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\u2019re making?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe believe that high-performance people are generally self-improving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 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\u2019s actually a huge mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Valve\u2019s Handbook for new employees [PDF]: \u201cAs individuals we tend to gravitate toward projects that have a high, measurable, and predictable return for the company. So when there\u2019s a clear opportunity on the table to succeed at a near-term business goal with a clear return, we all want to take it. [\u2026] This sounds like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}