This post a copy of an email from Daz – some replies to follow below.
This was an interesting read from the perspective of a relatively new employee at Valve, a games company, with regards to his view of Valve as a non-capitalist firm with no management hierarchy:
Quotes:
There are two kinds of non-capitalist firms: (a) Mutual, co-op like, firms whose ownership is formally dispersed among members (who may be customers, employees or both); and (b) Valve (or similar companies) where management is completely horizontal (i.e. the company is boss-less) even if ownership is held in the hands of a selected few.
Quotes:
There is one important aspect of Valve that I did not focus on: the link between its horizontal management structure and its ‘vertical’ ownership structure. Valve is a private company owned mostly by few individuals. In that sense, it is an enlightened oligarchy: an oligarchy in that it is owned by a few and enlightened in that those few are not using their property rights to boss people around. The question arises: what happens to the alternative spontaneous order within Valve if some or all of the owners decide to sell up? Granted that Valve’s owners do not intend to do this, the question remains, at least at the theoretical level.
My reply:
That’s really interesting. He echoes a lot of my thoughts on corporations. I think he’s not quite admitting to everything that goes on in Valve though. He mentions the ownership structure without even talking about profit.
It seems clear to everyone that the screening process for getting into Valve is a big part of the success – this cannot be done by everyone because you need to get people who really *care* about their jobs and despite the propaganda most of us don’t.
My housing co-op is pretty horizontal and voluntary. Our screening processes don’t really work because people don’t want to be harsh and judgmental. Which might sound hippyish, but if every institution had harsh screening processes, where would the ‘failures’ go? You simply can’t do it on a societal level.
Another point is made in the comments below: “Valve outsources their tech support, operations, and similar functions to very hierarchical contractors.” In other words it is only highly paid technical/professional jobs they operate in this manner – i.e. the professional class who are sure of signficant returns for their work, whether they work horizontally or vertically, and even though they aren’t owners.
It’s a pretty interesting organisation but not a model you could replicate in most economic areas at the moment I think.
Reply from Julia:
I am amazed by how little the author of that text refers back to the actual jobs valve encompassed. There are hardly no mention of its specificity: I can’t tell what that enterprise is producing by reading that text alone which to me suggest there is a problem in it: you can’t possibly speak on such general universal level. I don’t believe you can apply that way of working to any jobs such as bakery or building site.
Also, their screening process sound just another way to move pressure around and have your peers pressuring you to be as good as them which is likely to set up a competitive environements and discourage anyone who would like to rally a work group while not having the exact competence for it.
And yes, as you say [Preorg], it seems he is only talking of one class of geeky professional that can afford to swap teams to work on the cool research stuff. I very much doubt the cleaners of their officies have the freedom to join the work teams they fancy working with. So that text remains a public display of good intentions to me.
It makes me remember a scene in Alain Tanner’s film “Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000” where a farm employer decide to set up a school in one of the farm greenhouse. but I doubt valve model would encourage that sort of employee initiative as it still seems their pseudo freedom at work is in fact just a way to make work and pressure more bearable and above all a very effective way to make the employee have only themselves to blame in case of a problem in the enterprise production.
Valve is a computer game development company. It’s very well known in the industry and the text seems to be aiming at an audience which doesn’t need explaining who they are.