Want to work for Valve?

[Ddz]

Hi guys!
I went out for some beers the other night with my buddy at Valve, and I now have an exciting career opportunity for a Web Developer at Valve that I wanted to share with this community. I know there are plenty of developers that frequent here, so I felt appropriate to post here. My friend who works at Valve is looking for a lower-level web developer who could work up through the ranks. Looking around 5-6 years of experience (they consider this to be junior; you will be expected to be pretty brilliant and able to work independently without being annoying and taking up too much time with questions).

Some of the responsibilities he conveyed to me:
This person would not start out by working on public-facing content, but eventually this could happen. This person would help with internal sites and tools (internal operations dashboard, a financial dashboard, a bunch of monitoring stuff, and so on.)
Tech:
Linux, Apache, SQL (it'll be MySQL, but you will be expected to learn SQL Server), and PHP
Another skillset could be Windows, ASP.NET, SQL Server (You would be expected to learn PHP)
Must have: HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Design skills a plus.

I'm thinking a blend of all of these technologies would probably be ideal. You would obviously be expected to pass their interview process, which can be quite grueling (I have a ton of notes on this).

They really dig people who are self-driven and can intuitively notice when someone else is overworked and relieve some of their own bandwidth to help out on several tasks when they see that a coworker is getting pissed at being so busy! Valve is a flat organization, meaning that there are no managers or titles. Everybody shows up to work as an individual contributor and gets to work on what they want, making structure an organic process. You will need to be an expert in your craft. They like to hire T-shaped people, meaning your experience is very broad, and goes expert-deep in one or more areas.

If you say you're 10/10 at C++ or SQL, you had better be prepared to go head to head with people who actually shipped Visual C++ and SQL Server from Microsoft, because those people work at Valve.

If anybody here is interested, I'd be happy to take a look at your resume if you want to PM it to me. If you could give me an idea of the scale of the companies in your experience, that'd be great (how many customers were you serving, how many employees, how many machines, secondary skills). Also, a skills inventory on a scale of 1-10 would be helpful. Please also note that this will require a relocation to the Greater Seattle Area - Valve will offer a relocation package.

I look forward to hopefully finding a special someone to introduce to one of my very favorite companies in the whole world. If this is not your skillset but you think you're awesome enough to inquire about a job, I'll gladly take a look at your resume anyway.

Please feel free to reply to my thread if you have any questions and I will relay for answers!

Cheers!

[Sonomaa]

stuck for a little bit, while everyone drools over the most wanted place to work in the gaming industry

[Ddz]

Also, if you guys know anybody who doesn't frequent the boards that would be interested/be a good fit, please don't hesitate to put them in touch with me.

[Ddz]

I have a few pretty decent PMs! Thanks so far guys. Please remember to include your resume (text is fine for now) so I can review your experience. I know that Valve won't consider people with a lot of short-term assignments. A solid career trajectory that doesn't make it appear that you've jumped jobs a lot is what I'm looking for.

[Ddz]

Thanks for all your guys' PMs. I got some great referrals, sent a guy over there and he landed himself a phone interview tomorrow. Wish him luck!

[Ratatapa]

People always need programmers but never network admins

[Cayos]

More people need to hire software dev interns. If anyone does happen to be looking for an intern... PM me <.<

[Ddz]

What city do you live in?

[Cayos]

Edit: Removed personal information, PM if you want it.

[Aaron Martone]

Fired you off a PM if there are more similar positions opened (best of luck to all who apply!). Would be one heck of an opportunity to work at a highly respected company like Valve.

[Ddz]

I has a sad: My main contact at Valve got let go a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure what I can do to submit resumes going forward, but if something changes I'll revive this. A mod can un-sticky and lock for the time being. If I can squeak resumes in through someone else I'll try, but for now I need to put this on hold.

[Ksandra]

kk gonna unstick/lock it for now, let any of us know if things change and we'll restick/open it.

Sad to hear the guy got let go. :/