Valve

Valve can be an amazing place to work, but it requires the right fit.

The people who will do well at Valve need to be high performers in their specific area. Beyond that, they also need to excel at thinking about users and products and contributing to product-level decision-making. Additionally, people need to be able to take in a lot of sometimes conflicting opinions and advice from co-workers who are all peers. Then, they must make good decisions on what they should work on and what direction they should take their work independently. People who can demonstrate an ability to do those things well will be afforded a huge amount of freedom, independence, and responsibility at Valve.

Most of the people who do those things well are extremely happy at Valve and have trouble imagining leaving. For those people, Valve is a place of huge opportunities, freedom to take big risks, freedom to work on many different projects, and a place filled with smart people who will help you accomplish things you couldn't on your own.

In terms of more tangible pros, compensation is competitive at the base level. For high performers, bonuses (cash and sometimes equity) can be extremely generous. The company takes you and your immediate family on a free vacation to a fancy resort every year. You get extremely good medical coverage, life insurance, a very generous 401k matching plan, free food, free personal trainers, etc. Overall, benefits are generally as good as or better than the best companies out there.

The biggest con is that fit can be difficult to measure up front. The company has a difficult hiring process and works hard to measure not just your competence at your role but also your ability to work without a manager and to make high-level user/product decisions. This process is tuned towards allowing false negatives and trying to avoid false positives, but mistakes in hiring can still be made.

For those who end up inside the company and struggle with the environment, it can be very painful. Since you don't have a manager, it can be difficult to get clear guidance on how to improve, and you may get conflicting advice from peers. The company has a yearly ranking/review process that has proven very effective at correctly compensating those who are doing well, but I agree with a prior reviewer who stated that it's never been 100% effective at providing useful feedback to those who need help.

If you end up in a situation where you are struggling at Valve, you will get some advice and guidance from peers and from HR, but you will ultimately need to figure out your path to success on your own. For those used to having a more hands-on manager as their advocate, this can be hard.

Many of the negative reviews here seem to come clearly from employees who struggled at Valve to varying degrees. My experience is that these employees are a small minority due to the difficult hiring process, but their negative experiences are still real. The best thing you could do for yourself before working at Valve is to try to really understand the work environment and the high expectations. Once you understand those, make sure you are really honest with yourself about whether Valve is likely to be a good fit.

Keep taking risks and pursuing big opportunities.

Work harder at improving cross-company communication so employees understand what other teams are working on more clearly.

Keep the hiring bar high and don't compromise on hiring anything less than top performers.