Even Valve is having layoffs
polycounter lvl 7
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/186592/Several_out_of_work_as_Valve_makes_large_decisions_about_its_future.php#.URvc56VX23l
Kind of a surprise, don't hear news like this from Valve.
Kind of a surprise, don't hear news like this from Valve.
Replies
That or they're actually decided against doing hardware at all(seems unlikely with how much time and money they've poured into it)?
Maybe whatever it is, is done?
There is no way Valve is strapped for cash.
They may have tried some stuff in these departments and just didn't like the results/didn't see the use.
Link to article:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/3983348/valve-fires-jeri-ellsworth-who-was-developing-steam-box-game
"Hey we just fired Joe Doe and are moving on other stuff".
Shows the difference between their job page this month compared to last month
no more Bay Raitt?!
notice how firing wasn't part of the employee handbook? Working for valve is awesome, come define your job with us, etc etc, but what happens when it doesn't work out? I'm surprised there hasn't been more of this. Its an experimental kind of work place and there are bound to be LOTs of people who just can't function in that kind of environment, not everyone is going to be awesome and work out. If Valve want to keep their culture and the way they're working they have to be diligent with letting people who don't fit their model go, otherwise they'll lose what they're all about. Its true for any other company, but probably more so with Valve.
This, 25 or so people?, vs. the hundreds they have there sounds more like "trimming the fat". Which, IMO, should happen at every studio about once a year. Newell has gone on record as to saying they need to be more aggressive with cutting people who hurt the culture. This reads like nothing more than that, considering the multitude of disciplines being cut.
I also remember reading that Valve experiments in-house, but at the end of the day, for hardware in this case and Steambox, they partnered up with an outside company to get the finale on their project done (I don't recall the company name, but they're a hardware company alright).
Hopefully this doesn't become another case of Mike Sacco, where a person under contract decided to use Twitter to say "I got fire, woe is me, media pick me up", vs. "Contract is up, welp, look for a new job" to generate self-pity points from other people in the industry via Reddit or Kotaku.
- Moby Francke, Half-Life 2 character designer and Team Fortress 2 art lead
- Jason Holtman, director of business development for Steam and Steamworks
- Keith Huggins, character animator and animator for Team Fortress 2 “Meet the” video series
- Tom Leonard, software engineer for Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead
- Realm Lovejoy, artist for Half-Life 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. She was also part of the original DigiPen-turned-Valve team that created Narbacular Drop, the inspiration for Portal
- Marc Nagel, test lead for Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and patch updates
- Bay Raitt, animator for Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal
- Elan Ruskin, engine programmer for Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Matthew Russell, animator for Team Fortress 2 “Meet the” video series
More than just 'Hardware' guys are gone.Looks suspiciously like a small dev team! I wonder if they left to start their own thing......
I was wondering the same.
Good luck for them.
yeah, but even if that wasn't the intention, they certainly could.
Shhhhiiii........
It smells a bit like a crushed rebellion.
Project was canned and everyone on it disagrees with the decision and is leaving out of spite?
Well, after 9 years of helping build the SourceFilmmaker, working on animated short films, games, comics, characters and hats for Valve's franchises, it's time for me to start making some new worlds of my own.
End of an era for me, but what a ride.
Oh man I hope they are starting something.....
Now that the names are released, there is a new perspective, isn't there?
I think this is definitely unilaterally true. But, I've always gotten the impression that Valve fires people fairly often, and it's just not in the news normally.
From an article on Polygon recently:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/1/3941274/gabe-newell-steam-box-talk-ut
That being said, I think most of the people he's talking about are those who haven't been at the company very long, so maybe these layoffs are something different. And I agree that the people Hazardous listed don't seem like underperformers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some say in their own departure.
you may all go back about your day.
Bay Raitt is my hero, he did a great talk at FMX, come and work for us Bay Raitt! - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68766
Letting go such extremely talented people who's been at the company for nearly a decade (in case of Bay Raitt) doesn't fit with this policy. The guy suddenly can't contribute to Valve any longer in any meaningful way? Or they've let him do non-profitable stuff for all those years?
Doesn't add up in any way. Gabe should discuss it in the open because it goes against everything they've communicated Valve to be.
There could be other mitigating factors instead of it being a performance based culling, and keeping that possibility alive is why you do not comment on the departures of employees that are not explicitly leaving under good terms. If it is anything less than a positive and congratulatory time on both sides for an employee departure, you absolutely don't comment on it.
It can be one of many things, but it probably isn't an indicator of the steam ship sinking or anything drastic like that.
Under normal circumstances I'd say this is the case, but after looking at the names I think it's something else. I highly doubt the person that made Gollum's facial model in the LOTR was in the bottom 10%.
I'm sure they're all great at what they do, and there could likely be some other reason (which is why you don't comment on it - to keep that possibility available and to keep from ruining those people). But just because you are good at something, doesn't mean you're doing it well, at a high enough productivity level, in the way the company wants you to do things.
Someone who is amazing at doing cinematic characters isn't going to be as productive in an environment that is asking them to animate 100 pixel tall characters for Dota. There are a dozen different reasons, which do not necessarily reflect on the failure of either the employee or the employer, for why there could be performance issues with a company. Especially since so many of these people are senior, important people, I think it is easy to see a place where a conflict of values, rather than a failure of ability, could keep people from being able to be productive.
Or it could be something else entirely. My point was that the ability to speculate is important to maintaining everyone's reputation. To remove that is at best damaging to one party, and unprofessional to do so.
You should always celebrate people's achievements publicly, and keep private on their misgivings in a professional environment.
In the end, I can understand all of these layoffs. Because of just being highly talented, and so on... Its more understood that a workday at Valve, is really all self-guided. You wake up, go to work, and put your desk in a cabal project office area that you can contribute your expertise to.
being from ^ that, if you are getting up and day by day doing the same thing...but pretty much walk in...and are yeah, putting yourself with people in project groups that suite your interests and are doing not much more than twiddling thumbs, possibly not adding your input to a projects direction, and not much work getting done by yourself. While the next cabal talent beside you is banging out incredible results or is dependable to get the job done and can start and stop and resume at anytime.....
Yeah, you probably wont make it at valve. But, if you are keen to push yourself in engaging a projects focus. Well, you are definitely more than likely molded for valves culture and work structure.
In any case, I think most of the talent that was let go. It wasn't because they aren't great. Because they are. It was probably a matter of them feeling more to want to do something else than what valve's inner workings had been offering.
From my understanding of the place, its very much "you jump right in". There are no real set goals or projects that everyone is working on. Its all independent teams that may come up with something awesome and then everyone kinda joins in.
Must be such an open and free place to work but if you are not in sync with everyone around you, I can imagine its very isolating almost.
The more I think about it, and the more I look at the people who left, I think we might see an attempt to blur the lines between games and movies a bit more. For several reasons it probably makes sense to put them in their own space and even split them off as their own entity.
Although I did watch a video where Gabe basically intimated Valve isnt the Utopia everyone believes. They want high productivity\exceptional people, you have to measure your productivity or it is measured, so it seems staff have to perform highly all of the time, maybe they didnt like the pressure or couldnt stand some changes.
http://www.gameguzzler.com/listings/3d-character-artist--4