Reporters? Who? Kotaku? The very same site and people that bitch when their wife becomes pregnant because they couldn't attend PAX, and several times had fights with members from Polycount when they tried and voice their opinion from a professional area of things?
Also, what exactly was achieved once the Foxconn and Apple drama came about? Nothing, it wasn't even Kotaku that got the news and reported on it, other 'bigger' sites got the news, and even then nothing happened. The ONLY reason the situation got slightly better was because the workers later on staged strikes and actually did something about it, however, in terms of 'external' help, they got nothing, just a bunch of Facebook likes.
I'm sorry to say this, but pity isn't going to help me solve issues nor help me get a decent job, actions are on the other hand, and considering Apple didn't even get slapped with a Settlement Case for the entire issue, I would 'caring' about someone else issue has long sailed the port.
Umm, No. It was the consumer feedback and attention brought to it with the focus on Foxconn practices. That was the major push for Apple to hire the third party organization on factory worker practices/rights. To be frank, the workers wanted more hours because they could get overtime.. even though it was really illegal and too much mentally/physically, while showing they should have been paid more initially.
So again your speaking without a foothold. It was because it was brought to the attention to the consumer and public, that what was hidden was shown. That things actually started to change.
I find assuming everything is going to happen internally and people on the outside need to shut up to be a ludicrous proposition. We live in a interconnected world/society and knowledge does effect the outcome.
I wasn't speaking about Kot specifically with the Apple bit, I was making a general point about how reporting wrong doings at companies to the public can make a larger difference than relying on the employees alone. Whether you or I think they are full on reporters at Kot or not does not matter. It is how they are perceived by the larger community. For better or worse they have the attention of readers. At least they are using this to make the (lets face it), ignorant gaming community more aware that not everything is a Westwood "tighten up those graphics" fantasy for us.
We do have problems and keeping it to ourselves does no good.
Every company in every industry will have unhappy employees. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Glassdoors tends to attract the bad reviews just like game forums attract the unhappy gamers. Not everyone will get along with everyone, and a lot of people, especially in our industry, have different ideas of how it should be. People who are happy with their jobs don't tend to go looking to tell the entire internet. It's the unhappy people that do. I garentee every single one of those companies has some VERY happy employees as well.
Every company in every industry will have unhappy employees. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Glassdoors tends to attract the bad reviews just like game forums attract the unhappy gamers. Not everyone will get along with everyone, and a lot of people, especially in our industry, have different ideas of how it should be. People who are happy with their jobs don't tend to go looking to tell the entire internet. It's the unhappy people that do. I garentee every single one of those companies has some VERY happy employees as well.
So there no such thing as bad companies? Just bad employees??
So there no such thing as bad companies? Just bad employees??
Bad employees have more motivation to post negative comments than employees with positive experiences. They don't necessarily need to be bad employees, just have a bad experience that might be out of control of both the employee and employer such as the company losing money and having to lay off workers. The employee might internalize that and think they where fired or picked on.
The employer might have a HR person or manager that really bad at letting people go but fine in every other aspect (typically firing someone isn't an every day occurrence and rarely pleasant for anyone involved).
That experience taints the persons precipitation of their entire time there. It's kind of like when people break up, for months or years they could be happy and carefree then suddenly they break up and all of that time is replaced with bitter resentment. All of the ex's can't be crazy but somehow they are...
So there no such thing as bad companies? Just bad employees??
Actually, yes.... Companies are made up of employees. Management are still employees. Bad ones just suck at their job.
But seriously, you`ll always find unhappy employees in every company. And you`ll always find people who are happy. and those who are indifferent. You have to find the right company for you... Some people can handle the politics and dont mind it. keep their head down and are happy. some people get in the middle of it and hate it. *Shrug*
Ok getting serious...
Ok you work for one of the most monolithic game studios of all time, Blizzard isn't a nursery and they don't hire saplings.
This is like walking into Koticks office and demanding that he create a new studio, install you as head and let you do whatever you want because well you worked in the mail room for 8 years.
You want to be a rockstar? You don't get there through osmosis, go get some skills. Don't blame the company for not inventing an entire educational pipeline so employees can flow from coffee boy/QA to designer to CEO over night.
This just isn't a fair statement; going from tools programming to game programming is a very natural transition that a lot of people do. It's not like this is a dramatic change of discipline, and it does very much suggest that the company just isn't interested in the growth of their employees - which is absolutely critical to any career path, especially if you're an engineer.
Well, shouldn't the companies then take the opportunity and encourage their current employees to post on the website, instead of just ignoring it? It's with all PR, good and bad, you have to work for it.
This just isn't a fair statement; going from tools programming to game programming is a very natural transition that a lot of people do. It's not like this is a dramatic change of discipline, and it does very much suggest that the company just isn't interested in the growth of their employees - which is absolutely critical to any career path, especially if you're an engineer.
I don't know enough about the persons skill set or the job he/she was looking to jump into, to say it was a natural transition that was bricked by the company, even if I want to strongly sympathize with that point of view. It probably is possible but it really depends on what they where doing and what they wanted to do.
If someone wants to move to a position they can't do, its not up the company to help educate and equip them to get there. If they do stuff like tuition assistance or allow employees to straddle two departments while they transition. That's great but it is up to the person to deliver the needed skills.
It's more likely the company would rather not focus on creating some kind of educational subway for its employees but focus its resources on hiring people who have the skills they need and doing their job.
Lets say they did have some kind of Blizzard-University and employees enrolled and there was some expectation that at the end they graduate and get whatever job they where training for even if someone outside the company has more skill and is better qualified because they have been doing it in a production setting for years. It sets the person up for failure and gives them a false sense of hope.
He was asking if he could incubate into another position and the answer was no, we need people who can hit the ground running and I don't see that in your current skill set.
I agree with Mark on this one. Yes, it may be a natural transition for some. But if they don't know what they are doing, it's not very natural, now is it. So, what, the company is going to spend the time and money training them, all while trying to find someone else to replace the job they just lost cause a guy moved?
It's cheaper and more effective to educate your staff than it is to hire new people, and I'd argue that it is the responsibility of the company to provide access to materials - by not doing so in this instance they lose the person anyway as they move on to do a job elsewhere; so they still have to make a new hire. It's very likely that at the time, mid-project they have no need for additional gameplay guys, but I wouldn't expect that the internal processes for transition are such that it's unlikely you'd be able to move without first leaving the company.
I'm not saying people should be able to just jump in and out of any role they so see fit, however when it comes to the end of one project life cycle I would expect to be able to review my position and potentially move into a new one (or at least be given some guidance as to how to get there, and not get stonewalled).
As for this particular transition, if you're coming from tools to gameplay, there's no real retraining required. Tools are the common graduate / junior staple position and generally those people move on into more specific fields later down the line. The entry requirements for both roles are frequently the same, so you really cannot say that one does not have the relevant experience if they are already programming in a studio environment.
It's cheaper and more effective to educate your staff than it is to hire new people.
I don't think that is necessarily the case. No instead of one position open you have two, do you start knocking on office doors and asking who wants that job?
There might even be some legal requirements for having to post open positions for the public to see and not giving preferential treatment to "insiders".
If the guy wants to apply with all of the other people and he turns out to be the best great they should pick him. But the company shouldn't be forced to promote him because he's been warming a chair the longest. That's how you get bad people in high places and companies fall part.
and I'd argue that it is the responsibility of the company to provide access to materials - by not doing so in this instance they lose the person anyway as they move on to do a job elsewhere; so they still have to make a new hire.
I don't think a company has to go out of their way to help employees understand materials that are outside the scope of their job. If someone wants to spend their lunch helping the guy out, great but people shouldn't have to take time out of their day, stop working and help train someone looking to position jump. "I know you're busy and working 18hr days but can you also mentor this guy, oh and no we aren't giving you more money".
It's very likely that at the time, mid-project they have no need for additional gameplay guys, but I wouldn't expect that the internal processes for transition are such that it's unlikely you'd be able to move without first leaving the company.
I don't know the specifics of the guys skill set but the person giving him advice was telling him to go get some experience, its quite possible that he could do the job but just needed to prove it first and he wasn't going to prove it without having something to show. Maybe he could have worked in his off time and pulled something together, I don't know. Maybe that experience only really works when you're plugged into a team working with other people who specialize in other things.
I'm not saying people should be able to just jump in and out of any role they so see fit, however when it comes to the end of one project life cycle I would expect to be able to review my position and potentially move into a new one (or at least be given some guidance as to how to get there, and not get stonewalled).
It sure seem like you're saying they should ignore other people who might be better qualified so they can take a chance that this guy might grow into something amazing.
He should be allowed to apply along with everyone else.
The advice he got was more than likely honest. You aren't going to get the experience they are looking for working in tools dev and they aren't going to carve out of the schedule hours for you to prove you can do it.
As for this particular transition, if you're coming from tools to gameplay, there's no real retraining required. Tools are the common graduate / junior staple position and generally those people move on into more specific fields later down the line. The entry requirements for both roles are frequently the same, so you really cannot say that one does not have the relevant experience if they are already programming in a studio environment.
I don't know enough about Blizzard's departments to say he could be a rockstar at the job or not. I'm not sure you do either. It seems like they would be taking a gamble and something tells me there is a line of overly qualified people with a lot of proof that they can do the job just waiting to get in, where this guy is long on "I think I can" and short on proof.
All I can say is that I'm really glad I don't work where you do. Having nil prospects for personal growth or career progression without upping and moving is a pretty dire situation to be in when you're on the lowest rung. I'm not saying the company should be training the guy entirely on company time, but there needs to be some kind of infrastructure. This isn't about the individual, this is about the policy.
Skilled professional creative staff are an investment. Without any of the above you're just a factory assembly line, and a high degree of staff churn is extremely bad for big studio culture. People don't work to their best when they have no encouragement to do so and have nothing to gain by being anything other than adequate. It's also a good way to stifle otherwise passionate individuals.
Maybe this is just a Microsoft thing, but I'm glad that there's some manner of training available should I ask for it, and that I do get to do work outside of what my specific doctrine demands of me when I can schedule the time to do so.
All I can say is that I'm really glad I don't work where you do. Having nil prospects for personal growth or career progression without upping and moving is a pretty dire situation to be in when you're on the lowest rung. I'm not saying the company should be training the guy entirely on company time, but there needs to be some kind of infrastructure. This isn't about the individual, this is about the policy.
1st you assume thing about my job and the way I see advancement that aren't true.
I really like my job, the company is small enough that I can jump around and wear a lot of hats if I want to. Everyone knows everyone else and if someone shows some interest in another department, learning something new, blazing a new trail everyone in the company will help support them in that effort. The company has offered me programing classes because I have shown interest in maxscript. That was great! I didn't expect it or demand it, they just saw me growing in an area and wanted to see if I thought it would help. They have also offered art classes to other artists, they've brought training DVD when people ask and when someone figures out some cool new thing they can set up a lunch workshop and anyone interested can come, watch and toss in their 2 cents, again great but not expected. I don't expect the programing department to drop what they are doing and tech me everything they know because I show an interest in maxscript. It would suck for them to be forced to do their regular job and then mentor me.
I'm not a fan of a structured career path where everyone is doing it and if you don't, you're falling behind and you don't want to fall behind because: "we're all moving forward in the same direction... join us... no? NOT ONE OF US!!! UNCLEAN! Cleanse it with FIRE!"
My personal path and why I like small companies and think they offer the most room for growth:
When I started working at HI I was a jr environment artist and they gave me an incredible amount of freedom and it felt like way too much too soon but I pulled it off and I came up with a few ideas that helped everyone out, they loved it.
At that time 100% of their character art and animation was outsourced costing them quite a bit of money. It also was a VERY inflexible character art pipeline and often cost big to have changes made and the results where often mixed, characters and animation where hardly consistent from game to game and the animation was worse than animatronic. A co-worker and I came up with a plan to bring characters back in house, he would do the characters and I would do the animation. We did a dry run in our spare time and it worked out great, we saved money, brought the characters in house, improved quality in all areas and we had new jobs and raises to go along with it. At a bigger company it would have been much harder with a lot more red tape.
In my spare time I've been tinkering with kinect motion capture and training other people to do my job in case we want to switch positions someday or we want to change the scope of one of our games, have 15 characters and less environments, no problem reshuffle the titles and away we go, before we where locked in at 4 characters.
Even through I'm an animator I write a lot of maxscript and do a lot of art pipeline stuff, I don't have to, but it helps everyone out so I do it when I have time. I talk to our programers I've learned enough about their job to be able to stitch scenes together and I could fill in if needed or help squash bugs. When we had an opening they made comments to see if I was interested in jumping but I declined, to me code is a necessary evil to busting up creative roadblocks.
I learned all of this in my down time and by just being friends with the people I work with and wanting to see things improve like they did. I never expected the company to give me a break from my regular duties find me a teacher, provide me with a curriculum and train me to do all of that with the expectation that at the end a new position was waiting for me.
It's the difference between top down:
"Management knows the best path for you. we know the future. Do THIS!"
and ground up:
"You guys are nimble, diverse and smart enough to handle whatever the future holds. We have a vision and we want to give you the creative freedom to innovate and try new things whatever those might be, we support you. Lets make cool stuff".
Honestly it breaks down to, Valve's egalitarian system VS Microsoft's ladder system.
I'm not saying where I work it's exactly like Valve but very close and started by people who left Microsoft with a similar vision of how a work place should be structured. The main difference being Valve is Valve and I work on PC adventure games that cater to a very loyal niche market.
Now there is a difference between being forced to wear a lot of hats and having the opportunity to do it. Just like bigger companies can easily fall prey to an over structured environment small companies can fall prey to forcing a few people to do everything. The difference being management and at a small company you have less managers and its easier find out of they are good or not. At a bigger company you have more managers and more opportunity to have bad eggs who have a much easier time hiding.
Skilled professional creative staff are an investment. Without any of the above you're just a factory assembly line, and a high degree of staff churn is extremely bad for big studio culture. People don't work to their best when they have no encouragement to do so and have nothing to gain by being anything other than adequate. It's also a good way to stifle otherwise passionate individuals.
High turn over is bad at any company, it's a sign of serious problems. Based on my experience at other companies outside of the industry big and small, small companies are more devastated by high turn over. A bigger company can tightly control employee freedom to make mistakes, they can lock down jobs and make things very simple, almost George Jetson simple so turn over becomes a pain in the butt for HR by keeping them busy but it also gives them the freedom to say "press this button 200 times a day, if you don't out you go and here comes someone who can". They can work it so it's not a devastating loss of talent, of course it kills creativity and squashes growth, personal and company but it can be effective...
At bigger companies it's easier to get stuck on a prescribed career path out of that button pushing position and not be allowed to leave or take a break from the unrelenting advancement path.
Maybe this is just a Microsoft thing, but I'm glad that there's some manner of training available should I ask for it, and that I do get to do work outside of what my specific doctrine demands of me when I can schedule the time to do so.
Ahh that explains it. I have friends that work at Microsoft and they have moaned about the push for more education, that it's more of a unwritten requirement than it is an opportunity.
Personal story of a close friend who worked at Microsoft:
I had one friend who was about to have a baby and was told in no uncertain terms to take classes outside of work or the next review wasn't going to be as rosy as the last, "you're in danger of falling off of your career path... make sure you stay on" It was put in nicer terms but that was the basic thrust of the review...
Falling off the career path by having a baby? WTF!?
Relax and lets not push pregnant women to do too many things at once. Do you want her to have a developmentally disadvantaged child and spend more time away from work and fall farther off her career path? Just relax, let her do her job, take her leave and after a while she will be able to get back to career advancement. Pause, let her reshuffle her life and then get back to advancement.
She actually felt like work wasn't supportive, didn't understand and was forcing her to choose career advancement over family, so she left. They pushed it and they lost her. She later went back to school on her own and now freelances because she really can't stand working under that kind of culture.
For some people (I call them career students) it's absolutely what they want and prefect for their life, the company leads and they are happy to follow. They like the structure and knowing that they are on a good path to something better. It may not be like that at some of the other departments or in the more independent creative studios but a big company really has to be careful that by providing what they think are tools to grow their employees they aren't stifling them or forcing them down a path they don't want to take.
I absolutely reject the "do your job monkey. Don't look me in the eye or ask me where the bathroom is" I've worked that, it sucks I'll do everything I can to avoid it and a structured career path can be just another form of that if they aren't careful.
If someone wants to put the time in outside of work and help the guy switch jobs great, but he still needs to apply with everyone else and if he's the best so be it, if not, best of luck next time. With some kind of structured program you have to be careful not to set expectations at "if you do these things you WILL have this job". The employee can think they are entitled to that job because they put in a lot of work, even if they aren't the best qualified candidate for the job. It can put management in an awkward position:
"Do we hurt the company by hiring this guy even though he isn't the best, or do we hurt our relationship with the employee that we invested in?"
An investment in an employee doesn't necessarily guarantee greatness. It's a gamble and it's really easy for the employee to think its a sure bet.
Congratulations to anyone who made it through that without blood pouring from your eyes. How a workplace operates is something I'm very passionate about, as you probably guessed.
Replies
Umm, No. It was the consumer feedback and attention brought to it with the focus on Foxconn practices. That was the major push for Apple to hire the third party organization on factory worker practices/rights. To be frank, the workers wanted more hours because they could get overtime.. even though it was really illegal and too much mentally/physically, while showing they should have been paid more initially.
So again your speaking without a foothold. It was because it was brought to the attention to the consumer and public, that what was hidden was shown. That things actually started to change.
I find assuming everything is going to happen internally and people on the outside need to shut up to be a ludicrous proposition. We live in a interconnected world/society and knowledge does effect the outcome.
I wasn't speaking about Kot specifically with the Apple bit, I was making a general point about how reporting wrong doings at companies to the public can make a larger difference than relying on the employees alone. Whether you or I think they are full on reporters at Kot or not does not matter. It is how they are perceived by the larger community. For better or worse they have the attention of readers. At least they are using this to make the (lets face it), ignorant gaming community more aware that not everything is a Westwood "tighten up those graphics" fantasy for us.
We do have problems and keeping it to ourselves does no good.
Its sort of an endemic decay.
So there no such thing as bad companies? Just bad employees??
The employer might have a HR person or manager that really bad at letting people go but fine in every other aspect (typically firing someone isn't an every day occurrence and rarely pleasant for anyone involved).
That experience taints the persons precipitation of their entire time there. It's kind of like when people break up, for months or years they could be happy and carefree then suddenly they break up and all of that time is replaced with bitter resentment. All of the ex's can't be crazy but somehow they are...
:thumbup: :icon60:
Actually, yes.... Companies are made up of employees. Management are still employees. Bad ones just suck at their job.
But seriously, you`ll always find unhappy employees in every company. And you`ll always find people who are happy. and those who are indifferent. You have to find the right company for you... Some people can handle the politics and dont mind it. keep their head down and are happy. some people get in the middle of it and hate it. *Shrug*
This just isn't a fair statement; going from tools programming to game programming is a very natural transition that a lot of people do. It's not like this is a dramatic change of discipline, and it does very much suggest that the company just isn't interested in the growth of their employees - which is absolutely critical to any career path, especially if you're an engineer.
If someone wants to move to a position they can't do, its not up the company to help educate and equip them to get there. If they do stuff like tuition assistance or allow employees to straddle two departments while they transition. That's great but it is up to the person to deliver the needed skills.
It's more likely the company would rather not focus on creating some kind of educational subway for its employees but focus its resources on hiring people who have the skills they need and doing their job.
Lets say they did have some kind of Blizzard-University and employees enrolled and there was some expectation that at the end they graduate and get whatever job they where training for even if someone outside the company has more skill and is better qualified because they have been doing it in a production setting for years. It sets the person up for failure and gives them a false sense of hope.
He was asking if he could incubate into another position and the answer was no, we need people who can hit the ground running and I don't see that in your current skill set.
I'm not saying people should be able to just jump in and out of any role they so see fit, however when it comes to the end of one project life cycle I would expect to be able to review my position and potentially move into a new one (or at least be given some guidance as to how to get there, and not get stonewalled).
As for this particular transition, if you're coming from tools to gameplay, there's no real retraining required. Tools are the common graduate / junior staple position and generally those people move on into more specific fields later down the line. The entry requirements for both roles are frequently the same, so you really cannot say that one does not have the relevant experience if they are already programming in a studio environment.
There might even be some legal requirements for having to post open positions for the public to see and not giving preferential treatment to "insiders".
If the guy wants to apply with all of the other people and he turns out to be the best great they should pick him. But the company shouldn't be forced to promote him because he's been warming a chair the longest. That's how you get bad people in high places and companies fall part.
I don't think a company has to go out of their way to help employees understand materials that are outside the scope of their job. If someone wants to spend their lunch helping the guy out, great but people shouldn't have to take time out of their day, stop working and help train someone looking to position jump.
"I know you're busy and working 18hr days but can you also mentor this guy, oh and no we aren't giving you more money".
I don't know the specifics of the guys skill set but the person giving him advice was telling him to go get some experience, its quite possible that he could do the job but just needed to prove it first and he wasn't going to prove it without having something to show. Maybe he could have worked in his off time and pulled something together, I don't know. Maybe that experience only really works when you're plugged into a team working with other people who specialize in other things.
It sure seem like you're saying they should ignore other people who might be better qualified so they can take a chance that this guy might grow into something amazing.
He should be allowed to apply along with everyone else.
The advice he got was more than likely honest. You aren't going to get the experience they are looking for working in tools dev and they aren't going to carve out of the schedule hours for you to prove you can do it.
I don't know enough about Blizzard's departments to say he could be a rockstar at the job or not. I'm not sure you do either. It seems like they would be taking a gamble and something tells me there is a line of overly qualified people with a lot of proof that they can do the job just waiting to get in, where this guy is long on "I think I can" and short on proof.
Skilled professional creative staff are an investment. Without any of the above you're just a factory assembly line, and a high degree of staff churn is extremely bad for big studio culture. People don't work to their best when they have no encouragement to do so and have nothing to gain by being anything other than adequate. It's also a good way to stifle otherwise passionate individuals.
Maybe this is just a Microsoft thing, but I'm glad that there's some manner of training available should I ask for it, and that I do get to do work outside of what my specific doctrine demands of me when I can schedule the time to do so.
Either that or they're all robots...
I really like my job, the company is small enough that I can jump around and wear a lot of hats if I want to. Everyone knows everyone else and if someone shows some interest in another department, learning something new, blazing a new trail everyone in the company will help support them in that effort. The company has offered me programing classes because I have shown interest in maxscript. That was great! I didn't expect it or demand it, they just saw me growing in an area and wanted to see if I thought it would help. They have also offered art classes to other artists, they've brought training DVD when people ask and when someone figures out some cool new thing they can set up a lunch workshop and anyone interested can come, watch and toss in their 2 cents, again great but not expected. I don't expect the programing department to drop what they are doing and tech me everything they know because I show an interest in maxscript. It would suck for them to be forced to do their regular job and then mentor me.
I'm not a fan of a structured career path where everyone is doing it and if you don't, you're falling behind and you don't want to fall behind because: "we're all moving forward in the same direction... join us... no? NOT ONE OF US!!! UNCLEAN! Cleanse it with FIRE!"
My personal path and why I like small companies and think they offer the most room for growth:
At that time 100% of their character art and animation was outsourced costing them quite a bit of money. It also was a VERY inflexible character art pipeline and often cost big to have changes made and the results where often mixed, characters and animation where hardly consistent from game to game and the animation was worse than animatronic. A co-worker and I came up with a plan to bring characters back in house, he would do the characters and I would do the animation. We did a dry run in our spare time and it worked out great, we saved money, brought the characters in house, improved quality in all areas and we had new jobs and raises to go along with it. At a bigger company it would have been much harder with a lot more red tape.
In my spare time I've been tinkering with kinect motion capture and training other people to do my job in case we want to switch positions someday or we want to change the scope of one of our games, have 15 characters and less environments, no problem reshuffle the titles and away we go, before we where locked in at 4 characters.
Even through I'm an animator I write a lot of maxscript and do a lot of art pipeline stuff, I don't have to, but it helps everyone out so I do it when I have time. I talk to our programers I've learned enough about their job to be able to stitch scenes together and I could fill in if needed or help squash bugs. When we had an opening they made comments to see if I was interested in jumping but I declined, to me code is a necessary evil to busting up creative roadblocks.
I learned all of this in my down time and by just being friends with the people I work with and wanting to see things improve like they did. I never expected the company to give me a break from my regular duties find me a teacher, provide me with a curriculum and train me to do all of that with the expectation that at the end a new position was waiting for me.
It's the difference between top down:
"Management knows the best path for you. we know the future. Do THIS!"
and ground up:
"You guys are nimble, diverse and smart enough to handle whatever the future holds. We have a vision and we want to give you the creative freedom to innovate and try new things whatever those might be, we support you. Lets make cool stuff".
Honestly it breaks down to, Valve's egalitarian system VS Microsoft's ladder system.
I'm not saying where I work it's exactly like Valve but very close and started by people who left Microsoft with a similar vision of how a work place should be structured. The main difference being Valve is Valve and I work on PC adventure games that cater to a very loyal niche market.
Now there is a difference between being forced to wear a lot of hats and having the opportunity to do it. Just like bigger companies can easily fall prey to an over structured environment small companies can fall prey to forcing a few people to do everything. The difference being management and at a small company you have less managers and its easier find out of they are good or not. At a bigger company you have more managers and more opportunity to have bad eggs who have a much easier time hiding.
High turn over is bad at any company, it's a sign of serious problems. Based on my experience at other companies outside of the industry big and small, small companies are more devastated by high turn over. A bigger company can tightly control employee freedom to make mistakes, they can lock down jobs and make things very simple, almost George Jetson simple so turn over becomes a pain in the butt for HR by keeping them busy but it also gives them the freedom to say "press this button 200 times a day, if you don't out you go and here comes someone who can". They can work it so it's not a devastating loss of talent, of course it kills creativity and squashes growth, personal and company but it can be effective...
At bigger companies it's easier to get stuck on a prescribed career path out of that button pushing position and not be allowed to leave or take a break from the unrelenting advancement path.
Ahh that explains it. I have friends that work at Microsoft and they have moaned about the push for more education, that it's more of a unwritten requirement than it is an opportunity.
Personal story of a close friend who worked at Microsoft:
Falling off the career path by having a baby? WTF!?
Relax and lets not push pregnant women to do too many things at once. Do you want her to have a developmentally disadvantaged child and spend more time away from work and fall farther off her career path? Just relax, let her do her job, take her leave and after a while she will be able to get back to career advancement. Pause, let her reshuffle her life and then get back to advancement.
She actually felt like work wasn't supportive, didn't understand and was forcing her to choose career advancement over family, so she left. They pushed it and they lost her. She later went back to school on her own and now freelances because she really can't stand working under that kind of culture.
For some people (I call them career students) it's absolutely what they want and prefect for their life, the company leads and they are happy to follow. They like the structure and knowing that they are on a good path to something better. It may not be like that at some of the other departments or in the more independent creative studios but a big company really has to be careful that by providing what they think are tools to grow their employees they aren't stifling them or forcing them down a path they don't want to take.
I absolutely reject the "do your job monkey. Don't look me in the eye or ask me where the bathroom is" I've worked that, it sucks I'll do everything I can to avoid it and a structured career path can be just another form of that if they aren't careful.
If someone wants to put the time in outside of work and help the guy switch jobs great, but he still needs to apply with everyone else and if he's the best so be it, if not, best of luck next time. With some kind of structured program you have to be careful not to set expectations at "if you do these things you WILL have this job". The employee can think they are entitled to that job because they put in a lot of work, even if they aren't the best qualified candidate for the job. It can put management in an awkward position:
"Do we hurt the company by hiring this guy even though he isn't the best, or do we hurt our relationship with the employee that we invested in?"
An investment in an employee doesn't necessarily guarantee greatness. It's a gamble and it's really easy for the employee to think its a sure bet.
Congratulations to anyone who made it through that without blood pouring from your eyes. How a workplace operates is something I'm very passionate about, as you probably guessed.