
Valve Pipeline - pizza
http://pipeline.valvesoftware.com/
======
ChrisNorstrom
Wow.

1) Good for Valve. I think this is the beginning of an already awesome company
evolving even further.

2) Jeri Ellsworth (fired valve employee) was right. Some of the older Valve
employees really have been holding the company back in terms of culture and
new hires. This seems to be Valve's response by fixing itself and focusing on
recruiting new younger staff. The problem with being an awesome place to work
is that employees don't leave even when they should. They might in turn refuse
to let younger employees in out of fear that they'll be replaced. So slowly it
destroys the natural cycle of replacement of old ideas with fresh new ones. It
might not be set up as a recruitment platform but it sure can be used like one
to Valve's advantage. They can support kids who want to get into the industry
and at the same time snap up the best of the best before other companies do.

3) Also, Valve hires only the most experienced who can self manage themselves.
This has allowed them to do a lot with only 300 or so people but expanding
seems to be slow. Other companies hire juniors, work them hard, pay them below
market wages, and can expand faster and create more IP. If Valve wants to
launch more IP or expand they're going to have to change their ways. And it
seems they've come to terms with that.

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CaveTech
Aren't high schoolers the wrong crowd? I mean it lets them get their feet wet,
but most (read: 99.99%) of high schoolers won't be valuable employees to a
technology company.

~~~
jmgrosen
Speaking as a high schooler, I think there are plenty of us out there who
would be plenty helpful to a company like Valve. (I like to think I would be
one of them!)

As for this project, I, for one, would like to learn about 3D rendering --
that's always been something that I'd admired from afar.

~~~
frakkingcylons
If you're seriously interested in learning about 3D rendering and have some
programming (and some linear algebra) experience, you should look into
Udacity's CS291 course.

[https://www.udacity.com/course/cs291](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs291)

~~~
jmgrosen
Awesome, thanks! Programming experience I definitely have, and _some_ linear
algebra... although I'll be taking that course soon. Again, thanks!

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r00k
Fine job on the video, young Valve employees!

Can I make a suggestion? Make your email capture form immediately visible and
give it equal emphasis with the video.

Don't let intrigued people leave without giving you a way to contact them
later. People who offer their email address are your biggest fans, and having
that information will be valuable to you almost instantly.

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hobs
Every time I read something like this I just think, "My highschool experience
sucked."

~~~
laumars
Depends on your age. When I was at highschool, IBM PCs were just hitting the
market. So games developers were still very much a couple of nerds in their
garage. This meant that the industry was relatively level pegged (ie I could
leave highschool and write a relatively professional game). However these days
kids don't have that opportunity (generally speaking of course. There's still
your Minecrafts and other indie games that have gone on to be hugely
successful for their developer(s)). These days the entry bar is so much higher
that I think that's part of the reason so many students are drawn towards web
development; where it costs next to nothing to set up a web dev workstation
and anyone can throw together a professional looking site. And because of
that, the more lower level programming industries are missing out on talented
developers.

I appreciate that the Raspberry Pi foundation was set up in an attempt to
readdress this issue, but I for one consider myself very luck -perhaps more so
than this generation of kids- to have grown up in an era where school kids had
the same (dis)advantages as the games studios. And I think it was that which
cemented my desire to work in IT at such an early age - as I felt part of the
industry even though I was just throwing together silly BBC / Amstrad BASIC,
and later DOS games in Pascal, for my own amusement.

~~~
churchNumber
>I think that's part of the reason so many students are drawn towards web
development; where it costs next to nothing to set up a web dev workstation
and anyone can throw together a professional looking site.

You are absolutely right. I am currently in high school, and I enjoy doing
lower-level stuff like game engines, compilers, OSes and hardware.

I am currently thinking of dropping out of school, but it will probably force
me to do freelancing and web dev.

It's almost impossible to get a job in any of the areas I am interested
without a University degree.

Back in the early days of PCs, I could easily make a hardware startup and earn
a decent living, or maybe even get rich. But now it's virtually impossible to
do so.

It costs billions of dollars to setup a semiconductor fab and the field is
encumbered in patents and politics. Majority of games studios also have
budgets with about the same number of digits.

~~~
fzzzy
It's totally possible to get a job in those areas without a degree.

~~~
redorb
Highschool can help grow you up a bit.. And it's expected you finish in
today's society.. Please let's not encourage people to drop out and yes, let's
encourage them to stay in.

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eridius
Without watching the video, I have absolutely no clue what this is. I should
not be required to watch a video to understand the site.

Also, for some reason, the header image doesn't show up in Safari.

~~~
Zikes
Header image is hotlinked from wallpapersus.com.

~~~
eridius
Not the texture. The logo
([http://pipeline.valvesoftware.com/images/logo_final_gray.png](http://pipeline.valvesoftware.com/images/logo_final_gray.png)).
The <div class="clearfix"> it's wrapped in ends up being 1x0 in Safari.

~~~
fredsted
Works fine here. I'm using Safari 6.1, though.

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javert
Looks like someone (Gaben) finally got around to reading Ender's Game.

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hmind
Cool idea, but the page needs serious redesigning. Also, for the love of god
put 'cursor: pointer;' on the FAQ links (or just make them links)

But yea, definitely awesome to see Valve wants to engage a younger workforce,
though we'll see if they actually commit.

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bherms
This is pretty awesome... I hope to see more tech companies try to connect
with younger audiences and help foster growing interests in the engineering
fields. Pair this with the quickly changing education landscape and we could
see some big changes -- and hopefully big innovation -- in the near future as
kids move away from the traditional college education structure and focus on
developing skills around their interests earlier in life.

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dindresto
Seriously, the website is crappy. No doctype, images for quotes, the hidden
text in the FAQ is completely unnecessary and the site looks like crap on
mobile devices. I'm 16 and I could do better than that. In fact, I claim that
my websites already looked better when I was 14.

That said, the video looks quite nice.

~~~
javert
I didn't have any problems with it whatsoever. I think you're being too picky.

~~~
dindresto
"I think you're being too picky." Oh well, screenshots following...
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfftfq8ubq4rn5q/Foto%2013.07.13%20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfftfq8ubq4rn5q/Foto%2013.07.13%2010%2034%2028.png)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/axsg6e27byqy1y6/Foto%2013.07.13%20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/axsg6e27byqy1y6/Foto%2013.07.13%2010%2031%2003.png)

~~~
javert
You took those with your phone, right? Do you always browse with your phone,
or did you specifically pull it out just to test the site? (It's OK if you
did, just curious.)

If you can explain it, I'd like to know why _anybody_ ever browses on the
phone unless you're literally travelling or on the toilet. I just don't get
it. A tiny screen and no keyboard seems like a crappy way to experience the
Internet when you could use a big screen, but everybody is saying it's the
next thing. (Perhaps it is purely economic and I'm being a bit of a Marie
Antoinette here?)

~~~
fredsted
That's an iPad.

I agree that if the site looks like that on a tablet, they need to fix it.
It's not about being "too picky". There's no excuse for stuff like that.

~~~
javert
I agree with what you said.

The main thrust of the critique as I saw it was that the OP could have done it
when he was 14, which is what led to the "too picky" comment.

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jackmaney
Excellent! Even though the program seems to be aimed at high schoolers, I hope
it eventually expands to those (like myself) with experience in other
industries who are either considering or trying to break into the video game
industry.

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zerr
Anyone noticed that related videos are very interesting? (About real
pipelines).

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Jach
I wonder how many students will be funneled through DigiPen's summer workshop
programs. ([https://projectfun.digipen.edu/summer-workshops/workshops-
gr...](https://projectfun.digipen.edu/summer-workshops/workshops-
grades-8-12/)) Students who have done some of those workshops would have a
huge competitive advantage over those who haven't. (I'm told by a friend who
teaches some of the Engineering workshops they get a good selection of bright
kids too.)

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Rickasaurus
Very cool, but they really should have had more women in the video.

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TeMPOraL
Why exactly? Serious question. Is there _any_ reason for this except political
correctness?

~~~
Fomite
Because when people are considering aspirational activities, "People like me"
doing those things helps a huge amount.

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remixz
As a high schooler myself who's working at a company (DIY) that's promoting
the same ideas, this is extremely awesome. I totally think more companies
should be doing this, so major kudos to them.

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6ren

      the reasons for this and the tradeoffs are covered in the Valve employee handbook
    

I don't think we're going to see the Valve employee handbook...

~~~
jackmaney
The Valve Employee Handbook was made public some time ago:

[http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHa...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf)

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johnpowell
Free labor.

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ChrisAntaki
I would _so_ choose this over Auto Shop.

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cromwellian
How about shipping Half-Life 2 Episode 3? :)

