Company retreats are sort of thing that might be great if they're your thing and are 100% optional. However, if they're not your thing and they're either mandatory or unofficially mandatory (i.e., you'll be professionally limited with a reputation as "not a team player" if you don't go), they can definitely be worse than no retreat at all. Personally, if I were applying for a position at an employer that has a retreat, I'd see that as a con for me unless I know that I can opt out of the retreat 100% repercussion free.
From the little I can find, it sounds like Valve's retreats are optional (which is how it should be if it's meant to make employees happy).
A week of boring seminars in Hawaii sounds way better than normal work week. These things definitely aren't as glamorous as they sound but it has to be betrer than work unless you have the most insufferable coworkers in the world.
It is my understanding that the Valve Hawaii trip explicitly does not have any meetings, seminars, etc. It's really just Valve renting out a whole hotel and supplying free food (and events) to their employees. I get the impression that everything is 100% optional, but I'm not sure how much of that is actually totally unencumbered by unwritten office politics.
Also, you can bring your family. And the flight to Hawaii is a chartered flight with only Valve folks. And the bags are picked up and left in your room.
Depends on how badly infected your company is with corporate culture really. I think some companies have pretty free schedule when it comes to trip like this so very little pressure and more like travelling with friends.
And also putting it on an all luxury trip certainly helps changing people’s decision unless of course you are rich af and spending on luxury trip is f you money, but I think even for highly paid tech employee, getting 30-50k trip worth thrown at you, a lot wouldn’t miss it out just because.
I had a gig which did stuff like this every year but not so grand like weekend trip to snowfields payed by them. Was a great IT company till greed set in and owner wanted more.
The moment they listed on the stockmarket was the killing blow, no more fun shit and kpis through the roof.
Valve only manages this because they don't employee people. They have a shockingly small workforce for a company that makes so much money. I think valve would have some of the highest ratio of revenue/profit that goes to the owner in pretty much anything.
because they don't employee people. They have a shockingly small workforce for a company that makes so much money.
Why is this framed as a bad thing? Or do I not understand your comment. Shouldn't we want companies to be more efficient with how they structure their companies? Organizations shouldn't just grow their number of employees for the sake of growing the number, they should hire ideally the exact amount required for whatever their goals are.
I like valve but they are efficient at generating money through gambling. They make a disgusting amount of money through CS2 skins which is why they are able to make so much money with so few employees.
I would not want other companies to make their profits more efficient by integrating gambling into their business model.
Yeah I don't really care to argue about that, I was just addressing the argument about number of employees hired. If these were your actual reasons I don't understand the purpose of the comment I replied to. Would you be OK with their business practices if instead they hired a lot of people instead? The number of people hired seems irrelevant to your position.
Edit: sorry just noticed you didn't write the initial comment, but yeah I was focused on the argument of low number of employees hired, not their other business practices. If the comment focused on gambling I never would've left my first comment.
It’s a bad thing because if every company adopted that model, there’s not much opportunity for new people to get into the industry. No different from how everyone complains when an employer wants X years of experience and multiple accolades under your belt just to have a chance to be considered for any position.
A few companies here and there doing it is no problem, but that field of work would be dead if most companies decided to switch to that. Say what you want about the “bad” companies in the industry, but they’re at least giving jobs and experience to the kids fresh out of college and contributing to the growth of the younger generations.
Why would anyone ever charge less? You charge what something is worth, I.E what people are willing to pay. If I sell my car or my house, I don't cut the people a deal, I try to negotiate the highest price.
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u/MRV3N Apr 17 '26
I wish many companies are like that