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by komali215 hours ago |
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upvoteby 3form11 hours ago|
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The company is very small, and they're doing a lot with what they have. Steam alone is full of arcane features that I keep discovering. There's a lot of backend stuff. They're making games and hardware.

Perhaps some of this is contracted, similar to the Linux compat and drivers, but it's still impressive to me, compared to the orgs like Spotify, order of magnitude larger with barely any features at all. (I understand there's legal, huge backend, and I didn't see many bugs over time, but still)

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upvoteby trumpdong8 hours ago|
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The company makes $50,000,000 for every employee each year. It can afford more employees.
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upvoteby zipy1247 hours ago|
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But would it actually help. More employees means more communication and overhead. Lean organisations can move much quicker. Part of why valve can do what valve does is how lean it runs.
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upvoteby trumpdong4 hours ago|
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To summarize this conversation:

"Steam is bad because it has few employees."

"Steam can afford more employees."

"Adding more employees would make Steam worse."

Good talk.

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upvoteby DanielHB8 hours ago|
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The number of developers needs to grow log(n) to the number of users to handle all error reports. Valve is way under the log(n) of user.
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upvoteby mhitza14 hours ago|
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My favorite bug family, that somehow to sneak in every time, is how their react frontend (or whatever the store runs) manages to semi-crash and the controller inputs are no longer recognized.

I kind of hope at least they'll fix such issues permanently before the steam machine release.

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upvoteby philistine13 hours ago|
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That is the bane of my existence. Steam's UI is so slow to react due to its web roots, that I feel like people must be insane to think that Steam is somehow this great app. It's terrible.

I shop on GOG.

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upvoteby csande1712 hours ago|
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Steam was rewritten in React relatively recently. I think most people formed their opinion of Steam back when it was mostly developed in VGUI, the same in-house native UI framework Valve used in games for stuff like the Half-Life 2 title screen and the TF2 server browser.
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upvoteby 8 hours ago|
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deleted
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upvoteby NekkoDroid7 hours ago|
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> Steam's UI is so slow to react due to its web roots

I actually wouldn't blame the web roots. Battle.net is also a CEF based launcher and it feels so much more snappy compared to Steam. For some reason Steam just feels really slow.

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upvoteby stackghost15 hours ago|
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Valve famously has a very flat org structure so it's possible that that problem just isn't sexy enough for someone to pick it up on their own, without being told by a higher-up.

I wish they offered remote; I'd happily work there doing those sorts of unglamorous bug fixes. High-reliability engineering is my jam.

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upvoteby sph13 hours ago|
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People keep blaming the flat org, as if conventionally-organised companies never had any bugs or never focused on very visible and marketable features rather than bug fix.

In fact, the flat org allows a random person to work on a niche bug management doesn’t seem to care about, which wouldn’t be possible if you had a boss breathing down your neck.

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upvoteby PeterHolzwarth14 hours ago|
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They say they have a flat structure. People who have worked there, despite some axe-grinding, indicate otherwise.
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upvoteby formerly_proven12 hours ago|
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grug tribal animal, tribe always there even when chief say is not
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