[zelon88]

I remember listening to some of their commentary tracks where the employees talk about how their desks had wheels, there's no managers, and there's no deadlines and no stress. They also at one time had higher profit per employee than Google! [1]

Turns out that all along having no accountability in your company would result in complacency and a critical lack of production. I'm curious to see how Valve Software as a company is going to climb over this security wall they've found themselves in front of if seemingly nobody has to answer to anyone and everybody gets to do what they want in a leisurely fashion. I mean we give Chinese IoT vendors crap all day long, and it turns out Steam might be just as bad!

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/27/a-glimp...

[caconym_]

I heard somewhere it's very stressful, toxic politics and so on. Not sure where but it's interesting to see a report to the contrary.

Personally I always thought it would be cool to work at Valve, but not anymore. I don't see them doing anything broadly relevant that doesn't involve coasting on the momentum/market share of ancient products. Their VR stuff is cool, but even there it feel like they're lagging behind e.g. Oculus in ways that matter.

[esyir]

Eh, every review of the index has put it head and shoulders over any rift version so far. I'm not sure if we'd consider that "lagging behind oculus"

[caconym_]

It's a premium product, and if I were going to buy a new VR headset right now it'd be the Index, but it's not a generational leap (it's basically a Vive++) and I've lost confidence in Valve to produce such a leap, let alone to bring VR gaming to the mainstream.

I'd love to be proven wrong, because I dislike Oculus. I am simply stating my observation that Valve seems to be in decline.