Valve Corporation—Valve's flat structure revealed to hide power hierarchies, with employees comparing workplace to 'Lord of the Flies'
Multiple former employees including hardware developer Jeri Ellsworth revealed a hidden management layer behind Valve's publicly touted flat hierarchy. Stack ranking peer reviews reinforce biases and discourage risk-taking. Employees compared the workplace to 'Lord of the Flies' in a People Make Games investigation. Firings are peer-driven with no formal process or transparency.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Transparency | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Worker Rights | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.214 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.57)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
Former Valve developer Jeri Ellsworth revealed hidden management layer behind flat structure
Former hardware developer Jeri Ellsworth revealed a hidden layer of powerful management structure within Valve, contradicting its publicly touted flat hierarchy. Employees compared the workplace to 'Lord of the Flies'.