I have come to really dislike lessons - love anecdotes, though. A 'lesson' taken from a specific context and applied under different circumstances is, in my opinion, just as likely to harm than help. Some of the 'rules' may be completely arbitrary but work because Valve has some great people. Others work because Valve is Valve and wouldn't work anywhere else.
I wish sometimes people would just tell the story, and not try to distill it down to lessons for everyone to follow.
I finished my contract at Valve a couple of months ago. I'm still fairly early in my design career, and work with a contracting agency in Seattle. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not quite well-rounded and seasoned enough to be a true Valve hire, but I also think I was there to fulfill a short-term need.
Still, it was a great experience. I learned more in that contract than any other, by far. Just thought I'd share some of it!
It's a great post and I think your/Valves observations about letting designers design are spot on. Thanks for the follow up on your reasons for leaving.
From this http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gab... it sounds like their employees shuffle between projects and teams pretty frequently. I imagine some employees are more mobile than others, but from the sounds of most things about that studio, people are rarely locked down spatially unless they want to be.
Those desks are surreal. They have their own built-in power distribution and wiring looms, so all of the cords for monitors, the PC, sound, and so on are bundled out of sight. You only need to unplug one AC cord, trundle the whole thing down the hall, and plug it in when you get where you're going.
There are many similarities, but the nature of the products each produces introduces some differences. Valve creates occasional monolithic products that depend heavily on art direction and experience design. Google produces a complex, interconnected system where Everything Must Scale.
I imagine their digital distribution system (Steam) is very much like what you described (complex, interconnected, scalable systems). Valve is quite diverse.
In some ways, Valve manages to be more extreme, because it's smaller. 250 employees could conceivably be totally flat, if they are all committed and the boss is ... brilliant.
Google has a few more employees.
The idea that everything is shared, and people do pretty much whatever they want is nice, but doesn't work if you want as many heads as Google has.
I wish sometimes people would just tell the story, and not try to distill it down to lessons for everyone to follow.