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Valve: Handbook for New Employees
In 1996, we set out to make great games, but we knew back then that we had to first create a place that was designed to foster that greatness. A place where incredibly talented individuals are empowered to put their best work into the hands of millions of people, with very little in their way.
This book is an abbreviated encapsulation of our guiding principles. As Valve continues to grow, we hope that these principles will serve each new person joining our ranks. If you are new to Valve, welcome. Although the goals in this book are important, it’s really your ideas, talent, and energy that will keep Valve shining in the years ahead. Thanks for being here. Let’s make great things.
This book is an abbreviated encapsulation of our guiding principles. As Valve continues to grow, we hope that these principles will serve each new person joining our ranks. If you are new to Valve, welcome. Although the goals in this book are important, it’s really your ideas, talent, and energy that will keep Valve shining in the years ahead. Thanks for being here. Let’s make great things.
72 pages, ebook
First published March 1, 2012
13 people are currently reading
400 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
January 3, 2023
Here's the thing: this is not a book, in the normal sense, but it should be studied carefully, nonetheless. This is, from what has been suggested around the internet, the basic guide that's given to new hires at Valve, a well established and successful entertainment (i.e., games) software company (though, they are apparently about to break out of just being a software company). It describes the somewhat unique structure Valve uses for its company hierarchy, direction and community. I won't give away and spoilers by describing how Valve works (come on, it's talked about all over the place, anyway!), but I admire their approach and plan to keep a close eye on their longterm success (they've already been around since 1996, so you could say they've already accomplished success). If you want to get ideas about how a non-traditionally structured company can work, this is one to read and learn from. It probably won't work everywhere (I'm not sure if a very large company could do this, for instance), but that's really a matter for debate and, ideally, trial in the real world.
August 31, 2015
It's not a book in a normal sense but a parallel reality for a white collar.
July 24, 2012
Valve's Handbook for New Employees is a wonderful company work statement in an extremely competitive industry (computers, software design and engineering, entertainment software, computer and video games). Valve is a leader of the PC gaming industry, with its own excellent games (Half-Life, Portal), great support for modders (Counter-Strike) and the indie community, and innovations in the gaming industry as a whole (esp. distribution channels such as Steam for PC games). With this booklet, Valve presents a refreshing statement of how big business in creative industries can be organized. The main message is that a flat organization, carefully managed and with a focus on top individuals who may be friends or rel, can deliver excellent results. A must-read for startups in the gaming industry.
August 8, 2016
It seems so obvious, yet the thinking of this book, is rarely seen.
Employees are a company's most valuable asset, and also has the highest potential of adding more value to the company, it the company invests and nourish their employees.
An employee should do what gives most value to the company, not necessarily what is on their to do list.
If you work somewhere and you find yourself working with tasks you don't feel is what you can do best, the company you work at, is blocking you from working with something that good benefit the company more. It is not your fault, it is the setting, and probably hierarchy of the company you work at, who is at fault.
This free, short manifesto is a must read for all managers and people, who think they could be more valuable to the company, than they currently are.
Employees are a company's most valuable asset, and also has the highest potential of adding more value to the company, it the company invests and nourish their employees.
An employee should do what gives most value to the company, not necessarily what is on their to do list.
If you work somewhere and you find yourself working with tasks you don't feel is what you can do best, the company you work at, is blocking you from working with something that good benefit the company more. It is not your fault, it is the setting, and probably hierarchy of the company you work at, who is at fault.
This free, short manifesto is a must read for all managers and people, who think they could be more valuable to the company, than they currently are.
June 3, 2016
It's not a real book afterall. It's a guide Valve has made to new employees to help them know some key values and its organizational structure.
It shows a very fascinating mode of running a company (some people may think it's impracticable).
A must-read for everyone who wants to make the difference!
It shows a very fascinating mode of running a company (some people may think it's impracticable).
A must-read for everyone who wants to make the difference!
April 19, 2017
I love the internet. This is an employee handbook and it has over 20 reviews (in 2017, when I wrote this). That is so amazing. Thank you, the internet, you brightened my day.
August 22, 2024
would love to read a more recent edition, incorporating how it went during/post covid times.
nice read either-way, with some innovative ideas; like the flatland organization, the cabals (read referenced article for more insight), and choose your own project way of working. bit shallow thought, would have enjoyed some more real stories.
But...it's just a handbook (:
nice read either-way, with some innovative ideas; like the flatland organization, the cabals (read referenced article for more insight), and choose your own project way of working. bit shallow thought, would have enjoyed some more real stories.
But...it's just a handbook (:
November 10, 2019
It's a great description of Valve's values and internal organization. Main takeaways:
* Valve has a completely flat organization.
* They practice radical responsibility - only you decide how to prioritize what to work on.
* Overtime is discouraged.
* For performance evaluation they have annual peer reviews and stack ranking for choosing appropriate compensation. Metrics for ranking: Technical Ability, Productivity, Group Contribution, Company Contribution.
* The company encourages learning from other disciplines (engineers from artists and vice versa).
* Hiring the right people is the most important part of your job. The idea is that everything else will emerge naturally, as long as hired people are really good.
They also list some existing drawbacks of the organization, such as difficulties with mentoring and missing out on some talent due to unusual structure.
* Valve has a completely flat organization.
* They practice radical responsibility - only you decide how to prioritize what to work on.
* Overtime is discouraged.
* For performance evaluation they have annual peer reviews and stack ranking for choosing appropriate compensation. Metrics for ranking: Technical Ability, Productivity, Group Contribution, Company Contribution.
* The company encourages learning from other disciplines (engineers from artists and vice versa).
* Hiring the right people is the most important part of your job. The idea is that everything else will emerge naturally, as long as hired people are really good.
They also list some existing drawbacks of the organization, such as difficulties with mentoring and missing out on some talent due to unusual structure.
August 9, 2012
Fascinating corporate organizational structure.
August 5, 2014
Suprising attitude to employee policy, that even works in that large company. Short lecture that broads one's horizons.
May 21, 2015
This is not a book, but a guide to new employees (As its name states). It shows that Valve has quite a peculiar and interesting corporate organizational structure.
March 4, 2025
The book explains why there are 40 different button styles in Steam UI.
February 8, 2019
Beautiful illustrations, amazingly written. My favourite titbits:
- Your desk has wheels — you vote on projects by using those wheels, i.e. join what you will.
- 'Don’t believe that anyone holds authority over the decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they probably have valuable experience to draw from, or infor-mation/data that you don’t have, or insight that’s new. When considering the outcome, don’t believe that anyone but you is the “stakeholder”. You’re it.'
- 'We’ve found it vitally important to, whenever possible, not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or folk wisdom.'
- 'We believe [the organisational structures persisting for a long time] inevitably begin to serve their own needs rather than those of Valve’s customers.'
- 'It helps to make predictions and anticipate nasty out-comes. Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m right?” Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m wrong?” Then ask yourself “what do I see?” If something totally unexpected happens, try to figure out why.'
- Mistakes are an integral part of learning, and a necessary corollary of innovation. Not learning from your mistakes, i.e. not updating your model when you screw up, is problematic, not mistakes themselves.
- How do you know how you're performing at Valve? Peer reviews allowing others to give you valuable feedback on how to best grow as an individual are the first chunk. Stack ranking, the second pillar of the process, sets your value relative to your peers, making it possible to adjust your compensation accordingly. This happens based on skill level / technical ability, productivity / output, group contribution, and product contribution.
- 'The most successful people at Valve are both (1) highly skilled at a broad set of things and (2) world-class experts within a more narrow discipline.' Isn't that what everyone's looking for?
- 'Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breath-ing. So when you’re working on hiring—participating in an interview loop or innovating in the general area of recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid and should be ignored!'
- 'Here are some questions we always ask ourselves when evaluating candidates: Would I want this person to be my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from him or her? What if this person went to work for our competition?'
- 'Across the board, we value highly collaborative people. That means people who are skilled in all the things that are integral to high-bandwidth collaboration—people who can deconstruct problems on the fly, and talk to others as they do so, simultaneously being inventive, iterative, creative, talkative, and reactive. These things actually matter far more than deep domain-specific knowledge or highly developed skills in narrow areas. This is why we’ll often pass on candidates who, narrowly defined, are the “best” at their chosen discipline.'
And the entire thing can be found online here.
- Your desk has wheels — you vote on projects by using those wheels, i.e. join what you will.
- 'Don’t believe that anyone holds authority over the decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they probably have valuable experience to draw from, or infor-mation/data that you don’t have, or insight that’s new. When considering the outcome, don’t believe that anyone but you is the “stakeholder”. You’re it.'
- 'We’ve found it vitally important to, whenever possible, not operate by using assumptions, unproven theories, or folk wisdom.'
- 'We believe [the organisational structures persisting for a long time] inevitably begin to serve their own needs rather than those of Valve’s customers.'
- 'It helps to make predictions and anticipate nasty out-comes. Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m right?” Ask yourself “what would I expect to see if I’m wrong?” Then ask yourself “what do I see?” If something totally unexpected happens, try to figure out why.'
- Mistakes are an integral part of learning, and a necessary corollary of innovation. Not learning from your mistakes, i.e. not updating your model when you screw up, is problematic, not mistakes themselves.
- How do you know how you're performing at Valve? Peer reviews allowing others to give you valuable feedback on how to best grow as an individual are the first chunk. Stack ranking, the second pillar of the process, sets your value relative to your peers, making it possible to adjust your compensation accordingly. This happens based on skill level / technical ability, productivity / output, group contribution, and product contribution.
- 'The most successful people at Valve are both (1) highly skilled at a broad set of things and (2) world-class experts within a more narrow discipline.' Isn't that what everyone's looking for?
- 'Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breath-ing. So when you’re working on hiring—participating in an interview loop or innovating in the general area of recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid and should be ignored!'
- 'Here are some questions we always ask ourselves when evaluating candidates: Would I want this person to be my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from him or her? What if this person went to work for our competition?'
- 'Across the board, we value highly collaborative people. That means people who are skilled in all the things that are integral to high-bandwidth collaboration—people who can deconstruct problems on the fly, and talk to others as they do so, simultaneously being inventive, iterative, creative, talkative, and reactive. These things actually matter far more than deep domain-specific knowledge or highly developed skills in narrow areas. This is why we’ll often pass on candidates who, narrowly defined, are the “best” at their chosen discipline.'
And the entire thing can be found online here.
Read
July 21, 2022getting the lay of the land
Don’t believe that anyone holds authority over the decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they probably have valuable experience to draw from, or information/data that you don’t have, or insight that’s new.
Team leads. Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re 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.
bowl of fresh fruit and Stumptown-roasted espresso, dropping off your laundry to be washed, and heading into one of the massage rooms, darts or work out in the Valve gym
Nobody has ever been fired at Valve for making a mistake.
we believe that if we’re careful, it will work better and better the larger we get. This might seem counterintuitive, but it’s a direct consequence of hiring great, accomplished, capable people. our profitability per employee is going up, so by that measure, we’re certainly scaling correctly
Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing.
Missing out on hiring that great person is likely the most expensive kind of mistake we can make.
here are some questions we always ask ourselves when evaluating candidates: • Would I want this person to be my boss? • Would I learn a significant amount from him or her? • What if this person went to work for our competition?
self-imposed limitation
Every year, the company gathers all the employees and our families, flies us somewhere tropical, and gives us a free weeklong vacation. Popular pastimes include beard contests
Due to the power of compounding without interruption, an asset held for a long period of time (assuming its value increased) would grow at a higher compounded annual rate of return by paying one tax at the end versus lots of little taxes in between.
Don’t believe that anyone holds authority over the decision you’re trying to make. They don’t; but they probably have valuable experience to draw from, or information/data that you don’t have, or insight that’s new.
Team leads. Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re 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.
bowl of fresh fruit and Stumptown-roasted espresso, dropping off your laundry to be washed, and heading into one of the massage rooms, darts or work out in the Valve gym
Nobody has ever been fired at Valve for making a mistake.
we believe that if we’re careful, it will work better and better the larger we get. This might seem counterintuitive, but it’s a direct consequence of hiring great, accomplished, capable people. our profitability per employee is going up, so by that measure, we’re certainly scaling correctly
Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing.
Missing out on hiring that great person is likely the most expensive kind of mistake we can make.
here are some questions we always ask ourselves when evaluating candidates: • Would I want this person to be my boss? • Would I learn a significant amount from him or her? • What if this person went to work for our competition?
self-imposed limitation
Every year, the company gathers all the employees and our families, flies us somewhere tropical, and gives us a free weeklong vacation. Popular pastimes include beard contests
Due to the power of compounding without interruption, an asset held for a long period of time (assuming its value increased) would grow at a higher compounded annual rate of return by paying one tax at the end versus lots of little taxes in between.
April 7, 2020
A good short book to brainstorm about designing organizations around hiring the best people.
Valve builds an internal structure that nurtures strong individual freedom and forces projects to compete over contributors - thus creating a natural mechanism for valuing both projects (whichever have more contributors) and contributors (whoever has more project invitation).
Valve also measures contributors's values according to four dimensions. "Which dimensions" is not as relevant as "how to implement dimensions effectively", which Valve answers by a combination of a) high relevance between dimensions and company's goals; b) transparent feedback mechanisms for individuals to know their own valuation and others' within the company.
Many of these tactics won't be applicable to remote companies but are a great food for thoughts nonetheless.
Valve builds an internal structure that nurtures strong individual freedom and forces projects to compete over contributors - thus creating a natural mechanism for valuing both projects (whichever have more contributors) and contributors (whoever has more project invitation).
Valve also measures contributors's values according to four dimensions. "Which dimensions" is not as relevant as "how to implement dimensions effectively", which Valve answers by a combination of a) high relevance between dimensions and company's goals; b) transparent feedback mechanisms for individuals to know their own valuation and others' within the company.
Many of these tactics won't be applicable to remote companies but are a great food for thoughts nonetheless.
October 5, 2024
I'd read this book ages ago but felt due a refresher given that I needed to think about novel organizational structures.
Valve is an invaluable company to the games ecosystem. From Steam to the Half-Life games to its Steam deck, this company is the definition of innovation.
Rereading this I'm consistently surprised by the decentralized structure of its operations. I'm surprised at its desire for T-shaped generalists. Above all else, I'm inspired by the fact that all this works at all.
It's an anarcho-liberatarian's wet dream and a Marxist-stalinist's worst nightmare. That a company like this exists today is so beautiful.
Would recommend this "handbook" to anyone who wants to think about how else they could be working with other people. Or perhaps even those who want to work at the company.
Valve is an invaluable company to the games ecosystem. From Steam to the Half-Life games to its Steam deck, this company is the definition of innovation.
Rereading this I'm consistently surprised by the decentralized structure of its operations. I'm surprised at its desire for T-shaped generalists. Above all else, I'm inspired by the fact that all this works at all.
It's an anarcho-liberatarian's wet dream and a Marxist-stalinist's worst nightmare. That a company like this exists today is so beautiful.
Would recommend this "handbook" to anyone who wants to think about how else they could be working with other people. Or perhaps even those who want to work at the company.
August 21, 2020
A guide how to on how to work at Valve which is very interesting considering how the culture has created the success of gaming store- Steam and the legacy from the game Half Life to the latest development of the biggest prize pool of game- Dota 2.
November 3, 2022
It's more like a small brochure than a book, which gives a peek at life in the company in 2012. Though it was fun reading, I'm more interested in how the company lives now and if the organizational structure has changed during these ~10 years.
March 15, 2018
Best employee manual ever. Every HR group should seriously take a good look at how Valve was able to simplify things and get rid of the white elephant in employee engagement.
August 12, 2018
This book will show you how valve work. It might surprise you.
June 23, 2019
A humble intro to a near-perfect but a real work environment, and hiring comes again as the most important value somebody can add to a company.
February 19, 2021
found out, that this whole book was made by Valve's marketing team to acquire more developers
July 17, 2021
A practical account of how horizontal workplace exists and what is required to keep it democratic.
Also a must read for any Valve fan to understand why their support ticket takes time.
Also a must read for any Valve fan to understand why their support ticket takes time.
October 16, 2021
Great reading about non-typical company structure
May 31, 2022
It's an entertaining introduction to Valve's flat hierarchy, where they've forgone formally handing your roles and leaders.
September 1, 2024
Quick read for a day and definitely worth it if you’ve ever wondered how the company who made Half Life operates. Very impressive given only around 300 employees work there.
May 10, 2025
It's 13 years old now. I wonder if it's still relevant these days.
August 25, 2025
Very interesting book. If there's one that analyzes the results of this approach, that'd be even better, so if anyone has seen such a book, let me know.
November 1, 2025
Most of the book is dedicated to hiring, so it looks more like an advertising for potential employees.
November 28, 2025
God, I wish.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews