Preface: Valve is one of those companys I admire and wish I could buy stock in them.
Saying that, Its too bad they have said they will never go public/sell. Working there would be even more awesome if you knew there was a possibility to become a millionaire before working there for 20-30 years or getting lucky and advancing up the corporate ladder to where you could make 200k+ a year.
I wonder if facebook would have been such a hot place to work at if zuck said right at the start he would never go public and never sell the company.
Its obviously in a startup guys DNA to look at day jobs and retirement plans in disgust ( we are all trying to make tons of money now, right? ). I accept that type of thing is fine for most people and thats cool with me. I could personally never work for a company knowing that the most I can hope for is a higher salary though. (Unless you climb to the truly top of the ladder, where bonuses and whatnot await you). Working at valve, I wonder if there is going to be any stories of chefs/masseuse's who become millionaires because they took the risk early on. Probably not.
Again, not that there is anything wrong with that. Valve is never claiming to be a startup. Just saying, I wish they were.
That's a tough game- the startup lottery- and there are professionals playing. Sure a few people manage to win and become millionaires by being there when it all started. But far more common is the scenario where the employees take "equity" over salary based on this dream, and the equity evaporates in later funding rounds.
Here, employees get regular bonuses based on how well the company is doing. Everybody is sitting on the same side of the table. And if the company is profitable, employees win- a situation that is not always the case with stocks.
I think that's a good thing, because it makes sure they get people who are in it for more than the money. I'm not saying that wanting to strike it big in a startup is all about money or is a bad motivation, but rather that it unambiguously paints Valve as a place where employees don't even have to think of it as a career. People are there because they want to make cool things with cool people, not because it's a good stepping stone to another opportunity. I think I read that their retention rate for employees is like 98% or something?
I don't think they need promises of money to attract the kind of people they're looking for. Plus, I'm sure they pay very well, being a 200-300 employee private company bringing in billions in revenue.
I think it depends on what you define as "hot" - if a company is sought after to work at because of the working conditions or the perceived monetary upside.
I think it's fair to say that the pressure to make investors and Wall St happy each quarter would ruin the kind of long term focus Valve has.
Saying that, Its too bad they have said they will never go public/sell. Working there would be even more awesome if you knew there was a possibility to become a millionaire before working there for 20-30 years or getting lucky and advancing up the corporate ladder to where you could make 200k+ a year.
I wonder if facebook would have been such a hot place to work at if zuck said right at the start he would never go public and never sell the company.
Its obviously in a startup guys DNA to look at day jobs and retirement plans in disgust ( we are all trying to make tons of money now, right? ). I accept that type of thing is fine for most people and thats cool with me. I could personally never work for a company knowing that the most I can hope for is a higher salary though. (Unless you climb to the truly top of the ladder, where bonuses and whatnot await you). Working at valve, I wonder if there is going to be any stories of chefs/masseuse's who become millionaires because they took the risk early on. Probably not.
Again, not that there is anything wrong with that. Valve is never claiming to be a startup. Just saying, I wish they were.