14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, more developers would like to work for Valve than to find success on their own, according to a recently published survey.
The International Game Developers Association asked over 2.2k developers where they would most like to be employed, and the most desirable employer in the industry was selected to be the creator of Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead: Valve.
The survey was taken this year and was based on data from the group's annual developer satisfaction survey. The question that developers were asked was "What developer/publisher would you most like to work for?"
The results show that Valve, followed by "my own company" are the most popular results. The other popular choices are, in order: Activision Blizzard, BioWare, Ubisoft, current employer, Nintendo, Naughty Dog, Double Fine and Bethesda Game Studios.
The survey made no difference between Blizzard and Activision, but it's more likely that people were thinking of Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and Hearthstone instead of Skylanders when they voted for the option.
Valve is a huge player in the games industry, especially due to its tendrils going deep into the homes of pretty much every gamer on the planet with Steam, but unlike the other options on the list, it's privately owned, so it's not really that surprising to see it get the top popularity spot.
Being privately owned means that Valve is not subject to the same pressures as a public company, because management's primary task is not increasing profits and growing shareholder value.
Furthermore, Valve is known for its unique culture, where there are no bosses, people can take as much vacation time as they want, there is constant dialogue and collaboration between employees, and there are some unicorns strolling in the enchanted meadow.
Some of the praise and idealization that the company is getting is due to its publicizing of the company's employee handbook PDF. Desks on wheels? No bosses and fixed job descriptions that require you to talk to three managers and wait three months to get a new pair of headphones? No crunch? Freedom to experiment and fail? It sounds dreamy.
But the company's peculiar structure has not been universally praised. Last year, a former Valve hardware engineer complained that the lack of management meant that you couldn't get projects to take off unless you won the popularity contest, and that although there were no bosses, there was a "hidden layer" of management that exerted its influence, much like the popular cliques in high school.