Nice! 2 hours ago in case anyone was wondering how old the screenshot is.
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I wish I could have a cool job like that instead of this soul crushing one I've ended up with
I wish I could have a job…
I’m going on 20 months of unemployment.
Jobs at Valve or Meta are very demanding and people can usually only cope with it if your life is your job and the many hours don‘t feel like working. These people are obsessed with what they are doing. It can be very soul crushing if you either loose that passion or want to have a life outside your job (like friends, a romantic partner, a time intensive hobby etc.).
Any source for that?
- Valve handbook (if you read between the lines)
- Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?
- Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Note: I am not saying this is bad practice. These companies try to offer you the best work environment and a very good salary. If you like working then this right for you and it will not necessarily feel like work. Also things might have changed in the last few years at Meta.
I just listened to https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/ruff-talk-vr/id1568389515?i=1000610060284
She is definitely very passionate and obsessed about working on VR tech doing it in her freetime for month presumably years even after she left Meta.
Good for her. Valve doesn't run on the same talent recycling process you see in much of the industry. They're small and retain talent.
I agree with the sentiment, and I'm sure Valve are one of the better companies to work for, so I'm happy for her...
But Valve aren't small.
They ARE the PC gaming industry. They generate billions in revenue and control something like 75% of the global PC distribution market. I know they keep trying to sell themselves as just a small company, because they're a small internal team, but I really wish they'd snap out of it and scale up a bit to match their market. Especially when talking about their hardware side. I live in New Zealand, and the number of conversations I've had with people who have gone to some pretty extreme lengths to get a hold of Valve hardware is ridiculous. I'm not even talking about the new stuff, I mean the damn Steam Deck. I find it incredibly frustrating to hear people refer to them as a small company. Jolla is a small company. Valve is not.
Anyway, sorry, /rant
Small was in regards to the number of people they employ. Valve runs a lean ship of a few hundred.
Neither Jolla nor Valve are small companies, 200 and 350 (ish) employees respectively. But company size has nothing to do with revenue or profit, it's literally just people on the payroll and a cutoff of your choosing.
I don't think it's really fare to compare the distribution capabilities of a hardware company vs a software/service company, though. And doesn't this hiring kind of imply they're expanding their hardware side?
From employee count they both would easily fit the legal US definition of a small business, as that's usually 500 or fewer, but can be as high as 1500 in some industries, depends what they'd be classified as.
Some are just directly about revenue too, so you could in theory be too big to be a small business even if it's just a single person - and by that standard, Valve is obviously not fit to be a small business.
Whoa, I think in many other countries it's small upto 50. 500 feels so high - the ceo wouldn't even know everyone.
I was being vague about the cutoff because Jolla isn't in the US and I didn't want to look up every country's definition lol
Wouldn't it be great if turning that giant valve actually did something. Like...I dunno, someone in the next room shouts "turn that back on right now !"
It's great if you can work for a company that hires the actual smart people instead of management.
It's cool that she was hired. Let's hope more VR hardware is released from Valve in the near future.
I am extremely hopeful about steam frame. Wikipedia says it will still run linux like steamdeck.
Ofc it’s going to run Linux, it’s default OS is going to be some variant of SteamOS
Eyup. ARM Linux.
This is what actually has me excited over it
If I can somehow afford a Steam Frame down the road, great! The real hype I'm feeling is in knowing we'll have Linux support for all sorts of mobile devices boosted by the advances they'll be supporting on the software side
I really think they need to do a Frame Lite that just does streaming. A 16GB ARM powered standalone device was probably a great idea two years ago, but now we have all this. *gestures to fucking everything*
Considering Valve's customer base, this is really what I expected out of the Frame. I find it odd that they focused on standalone compute alongside a novel streaming function (foveated streaming) when the two are mutually exclusive in gaming use.
I just want a movie watching device that makes it feel like I'm in a theater. So I guess I'm agreeing with you, how do we get this
Very cool! You known what would also be cool? Releasing the damn thing!
Given the current chip market there'd be a 400+ USD upcharge from the previously stated price of "below the (Valve) Index"
What's upcharge? Is that like updog?
It's more than good enough for CPU imo but the GPU is going to really struggle. I think though most people just want onboard processing for the foveated streaming support and plan to use it with an actual PC, where I've heard the headset is extremely comfortable and lightweight despite what is then an overspecced processor
For standalone it should be faster than a Quest 3, so I think it's a stretch to call it outdated, it's still not great though
I can already run cyberpunk on my pc. I want this so I can now see it in VR in higher quality than my current headset, wirelessly, with a much less bulky format.
It might be outdated, but it won't be overpriced. Meta made it clear their next headset will not be subsidised. And Pico are saying their next headset will be a Apple Vision Pro competitor.
lol why would you try to compete with something that no one's buying
It's not overpriced if that's what components and comparable hardware costs now and in the future, it's just the new normal.
They have to finish HL3 first so that it has a launch title worthy of a new platform.
I love it when people demolish stereotypes. Nice work.
What stereotypes?
That engineers can't have awesome style obviously. Too long have we suffered under the burden that we all dress like dweebs, sometimes with a really bad attempt at dressing cool, but here she is actively challenging that stereotype
(But fr I absolutely love the skirt + leather jacket look and am making a note to try it at some point)
The ones with baseless assumptions from a bygone era.
So basically every stereotype.
Very elementary!
Amanda after 15 mins: wait, don't we want to steal every piece of data of every user??
Has there been any news on some kind of proper VR desktop? Not a version of windows but something that is a new OS shell and can be used with a keyboard and allows task switching and using multiple VR apps at once?
There are multiple such projects, for example: https://wiki.vronlinux.org/docs/fossvr/stardust/
But the same wiki mentions a few more.
The problem is that the hmd resolution isn't really good enough for reading small text.
Thanks! And yeah I expect higher resolution to be the real killer app for VR. Once you can actually replace a multi monitor setup with VR?
I think Macs Vison Pro was somewhat geared for productivity. Might be sorta what youre talking about.
did you forget that Linux exists?
It should definitely be on the basis of linux, but not really what I mean. I mean a UI OS shell optimized for VR and things like eye tracking and controllers and how to switch from controller to keyboard. This is like an unsolved problem afaik. Like IOS and android designed a new shell for a non-desktop platform. I read a bit about Apple Vision Pro how they designed their UI widgets with eye tracking in mind.
At the minimum I want to be able to play a VR game like Elite Dangerous and pull up a video chat panel or browser window / notepad to look up stuff without exiting the game.
reminds me of that one episode of community
Which one? It's been a while and I haven't seen the last season I think.
oooh sry cant remember the specific season/episode, but it revolved around the dean and superintendent getting hooked on a experimental vr operating system iirc
I guess this one: Community S6E02 Lawnmower Maintenance And Postnatal Care. I probably mean the exact opposite lol.
https://scifiinterfaces.com/2023/12/18/community-lawnmower-maintenance/
Now if they hire Guy Godin as well, the wireless VR dream team will be complete
Is it true that their only like 5 engineers (exaggerated obviously and rule all of valve code)?
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