I agree with your point, and the parent's, that Valve's success is most directly caused by Steam runoff and their own sales dollars, and not necessarily their dynamic organization style.
...do many people think or claim that their success is due to their management style? More importantly, is that why we're talking about it? Certainly that isn't the focus of this Gamasutra summary of the EconTalk podcast by Valve's economist.
Valve does talk a lot about their org-style in general, and they do talk a lot about their success. But I'm pretty sure they have a sound, mundane reason for those things: talent sourcing.
Standing out in the tech industry as an employer is tough, and the traditional offerings: "smart people working on interesting problems", "we're growing fast", "we're the market leader" are, excuse the expression, tantamount to banal rape. Valve has a further difficulty though, as expressed by Varoufakis:
"In many occasions people simply don't fit in not because they're not productive or good people, but because they just can't function very well in a boss-less environment."
They need to find talent like everyone else, but beyond that, they need to find talent that won't fail without someone taller telling them what to work on. Valve's sane solution to both problems (lack of talent, lack of talent-preparedness for their org-style) is to get loud about their org-style.
Valve's org-style is so wild and different that it means we could all talk about it until the cows return -- and we do. They routinely make (tech website) headlines just by repeating themselves, which draws crowds. It also causes candidates to self-select, lessening the fit-problem. Don't think you'd like to work at a Place Like Valve? You won't apply. Never thought about this org-style before? You will now.
Why do we love to hear about their org-structure so much? Is it just because it's different, or perhaps because of apparent claims it's more profitable? I think it's because it addresses a real problem. It would appear that silly directives-from-on-high don't exist at Valve, because they internally removed the notion of "on-high". They also claim to have given each employee the autonomy to figure out how and where to do their best work, while being paid enough. It sounds like they struck the creative-work motivators of autonomy, mastery, and purpose[1] on the noggin. Good marketing at the least.
A lot of people don't like their boss, don't like hierarchies, and secretly suspect that they're made to do stuff as some kind of display of power.
And in some places? Yeah. Probably legit.
But I the thing is that it's impossible to know if the Valve model is worth studying for clues on how to better manage non-lottery-fountain companies, because the confounding factor of riding a money mississippi is basically totally impossible to factor out.
In conclusion, I'm jealous that I'll never have to face this problem up close.
I actually disagree that the Valve-style bossless organization "works" as a matter of universal assertion. It probably works for some companies and not others. However, the alternative is ludicrous and only "works" because, with 99% of large corporate organizations taking that form (legacy) there is no competition.
The more common corporate arrangement is the extortionist command economy in which one serves one's immediate superior or gets fired from a whole company. That is ridiculous and pathological. It might have worked in 1870, but it's starting to fail badly. Billions of dollars of value are being lost due to this outmoded way of doing things.
Valve is clearly not perfect-- they had a layoff earlier this month-- but it appears that they're still doing a better job, on a cultural front, than almost anyone else.
If I've somehow represented that I think their organization would work universally, I didn't intend to.
I do think it's important that Valve operate as they have (in being loud about their structure), to point the water out to us fish. It's commonplace to think that work is just the way work is, with managers and workers and you get a job then stay in it until you are promoted or fired or quit.
Valve is doing something different -- and of course it won't be perfect. But it's different, and they're shouting at the top of their corporate lungs about it. Hopefully it will help lead to the development of a spectrum of organizational styles. Even if it just brings some common willingness to mess about with the water and see where we go, that would be great.
...do many people think or claim that their success is due to their management style? More importantly, is that why we're talking about it? Certainly that isn't the focus of this Gamasutra summary of the EconTalk podcast by Valve's economist.
Valve does talk a lot about their org-style in general, and they do talk a lot about their success. But I'm pretty sure they have a sound, mundane reason for those things: talent sourcing.
Standing out in the tech industry as an employer is tough, and the traditional offerings: "smart people working on interesting problems", "we're growing fast", "we're the market leader" are, excuse the expression, tantamount to banal rape. Valve has a further difficulty though, as expressed by Varoufakis:
"In many occasions people simply don't fit in not because they're not productive or good people, but because they just can't function very well in a boss-less environment."
They need to find talent like everyone else, but beyond that, they need to find talent that won't fail without someone taller telling them what to work on. Valve's sane solution to both problems (lack of talent, lack of talent-preparedness for their org-style) is to get loud about their org-style.
Valve's org-style is so wild and different that it means we could all talk about it until the cows return -- and we do. They routinely make (tech website) headlines just by repeating themselves, which draws crowds. It also causes candidates to self-select, lessening the fit-problem. Don't think you'd like to work at a Place Like Valve? You won't apply. Never thought about this org-style before? You will now.
Why do we love to hear about their org-structure so much? Is it just because it's different, or perhaps because of apparent claims it's more profitable? I think it's because it addresses a real problem. It would appear that silly directives-from-on-high don't exist at Valve, because they internally removed the notion of "on-high". They also claim to have given each employee the autonomy to figure out how and where to do their best work, while being paid enough. It sounds like they struck the creative-work motivators of autonomy, mastery, and purpose[1] on the noggin. Good marketing at the least.
[1] RSA Animate's adaptation of Dan Pink's talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc