Google has a company-wide index of satisfaction which they try to maximise.
Microsoft is the only company I've heard of that has (or had) "Morale Budgets", completely within the control of the programmers. In the 90s, according to McConnell, Microsoft would go to any lengths to protect and improve morale.
I can't speak for Shell or Apple.
The point is that people are mixing correlation and causation. There's no reason to think that Valve's self-directed model is the cause of their success, just as there's no reason to think Google are successful because of how they manage their people. In all these cases the massive profitability is pretty much exogenous.
I agree about mixing correlation and causation. I don't think Valve's model should just be blindly applied to everyone. But it does offer some hope as a kind of alternative style of corporate governance.
I also stand by what I said about Google and Microsoft. I know people give Michael Church a hard time here, but from my own friends I've heard anecdotes that confirm his sentiments regarding the amount of bullshit that goes down there. Sure, it's a good company and people are happy - as long as they play the politics game. I'm sure a company-wide "index of satisfaction" looks good on the HR handbook, but when your manager blacklists you without your knowledge and prevents your transfer or promotion, that's kind of shitty.
Same thing with Microsoft, which is known for its legendary corporate bureaucracy and political in-fighting. And Apple, which is by all accounts a very high-stress environment to work in.
If you think ostensibly "flat" social structures can't be gamed in stunningly unpleasant ways, then I have a bridge to every 1970s anarcho-syndicalist commune in Brooklyn for sale.
The difference here is that there is a high barrier of entry. The people accepted to work at Valve are allegedly elite and compatible with this flat structure.
I don't think communes are as rigorous about admission.
>The difference here is that there is a high barrier of entry.
An even bigger difference might be that the financial goals Valve has as a community are more clear than the goal of "build a good anarcho-syndicalist commune". In my experience communities that have a goal to pursue that's external to the existence of the community are the ones that last while those that don't tend to descend into high school-like popularity contests and fail because of that.
BTW, is there anything HN would recommend reading on 1960s-1970s communes and, especially, ways in which they failed?
>The people accepted to work at Valve are allegedly elite and compatible with this flat structure.
That or the people that have niched themselves into positions of unwritten-but-assumed authority have decided to hire quiet followers.
Just because someone calls an environment a 'flat system' doesn't make it true. There exists just as likely, a very defined system controlled by seniority.
More like "the private office with a view and your selection of furnishings and gear, free food, unlimited and unquestioned requisitions policy, Friday sports, renting of whole movie theatres for teams to watch their favourite films, changing of schedules, embarrassing displays by senior executives for the amusement of staff etc etc etc will continue until morale improves".
Microsoft has, of course, changed. But in the 90s it was probably the best place in the industry to actually work, if the articles and books written about that period are even vaguely accurate.
Much less so now. Open space plans (I call them "Moo Towns") are killing the ability to concentrate at Microsoft.
The interesting thing is that Valve has similar open space areas. You could substituate a photo of one for another. The big difference at Valve is that people have /self selected/ into the other people they are working with, and can move any time.
The ability to choose is worth any likely amount of "morale budget."
Microsoft is the only company I've heard of that has (or had) "Morale Budgets", completely within the control of the programmers. In the 90s, according to McConnell, Microsoft would go to any lengths to protect and improve morale.
I can't speak for Shell or Apple.
The point is that people are mixing correlation and causation. There's no reason to think that Valve's self-directed model is the cause of their success, just as there's no reason to think Google are successful because of how they manage their people. In all these cases the massive profitability is pretty much exogenous.