Introduction/Introspection

Today I was listening to a pair of Nerdist interviews with Gabe Newell, and Gabe said something very interesting. He was talking about how Valve acts on all feedback it can get a hold of, and he said something to the extent of everyone is part of Valve.

The philosophy that drives Valve's company culture is passion. Every company wants to have passionate employees, but most of those companies want to channel an individual's passion in a specific direction to achieve a company-wide goal. Valve is unique because it allows employees to pursue their passions wherever they may lead. Once you are in, it sounds much like my favorite class from college. I was in a design course where we were given a computer, access to a machine shop, access to a ton of parts, and told to just go make something. There were parameters of course, but the freedom to pursue whatever I wanted ended up with me devoting a year of my life to MAL-9000 (which you can read about under Projects). It was a lot more interesting than regular classes, and I ended up devoting more time to it than all other classes I was taking at the time.

Now that I am out of school and employed by a large tech company I miss the freedom that the project class entailed. I have been devoting as much of my free time as I can manage to pursuing projects that interest me, and I will be talking about those projects here on my blog. I hope that you will enjoy reading about these journeys as much as I enjoy living them!