[ctvo]

> In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate.

Agreed. Creative, high performing people don't do well in a work environment that's structured like a regional bank.

Valve Software -- incredibly profitable, high performing and private company, did fun things like hire economists (and then later Greek prime minister) to study and simulate virtual, in-game economies [0].

Blizzard Entertainment had giant statues of orcs made and fan conventions before their downfall, ya know, in the ZIRP macro economic environment.

Google allowed their engineers 20% time. Before ZIRP.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis#Academic_care...

[drzaiusapelord]

Just a small correction, Yanis was the minister of finance, under the PM, who at the time was Alexis Tsipras.

[hyggetrold]

> Google allowed their engineers 20% time.

I once heard that this was more like 120% time? Meaning, 'extracurricular activities' on company infra was allowed and encouraged, but not at the expense of regular productivity/output.

[balls187]

> Valve Software ... high performing

Depends on how you measure performance. ARPU? Very high. Shipping software? Super low.

[wintogreen74]

what about the hardware that significantly leverages their non-game software? I think the full ramifications of what they're doing with mobile gaming have not yet been felt.