It was a standard, semi-challenging, but ultimately fun interview experience. The questions pushed me to think critically, but the relaxed atmosphere and friendly interviewers made the whole process genuinely enjoyable and engaging.

You are contacted by a person that has been at the company for a long time. They will be coordinating most of the logistics until the front desk is tasked with scheduling your flight and hotel. The first interview is a technical phone screen where they probably ask you to do atoi. You should expect to do this basically perfectly. They'll also ask you some questions about your experience before the question to assess your technical depth. That's about an hour of time including questions for you to ask at the end. If you do well, you'll be flown out within the next couple of weeks to interview on site or you can interview remotely (the jobs are onsite). The onsite loop is as described in the majority of the reviews here. The questions are boring and they expect you to answer them in the way they usually see them. As I answered them in a different way, however optimal (up to debate), they were visibly/audibly frustrated. Each interview is a pair of employees, one pretty senior and one not as senior, typically from teams you'd be matched into. I'd say about 10% of them were personable and cared about me being there that day. The onsite loop day starts with two coding questions on a whiteboard (it's a very big whiteboard). I think I did okay and was able to solve the problems while accepting criticism and working with the interviewers (not sure they liked that though). Then there's a lunch interview which was awkward and I'd rather them have just let me eat alone and then ask me the same questions. At that point I thought I was going to be kicked out because I was waiting a while and they were probably deliberating as a half way point. I believe anyone can veto you during the process. I then had a non-technical interview as my 4/5th question which I believe I did well on but the interviewers were unenthused. 5 minutes after that interview ended, two people that interviewed me came back and ended the loop early with the following feedback: - Not enough evidence of technical depth - Not enough evidence of customer requirements gathering They advised me to interview again in the future when I have more experience. This was confusing feedback given my background in startups, but maybe they asked poor questions or I didn't answer their questions in a way that was satisfactory to them. I would have hoped for actual specific feedback. I'm pretty sure they just did not like me from a culture fit perspective, which is okay! The office is super cool and if you get invited onsite, you might as well go just to check it out. My take on Valve at this point is that as a small company, they have little incentive to recruit new people that can disrupt their structure and bonus incentives. They have a lot of money and cool tech at their disposal, so I hope they do good with it. I will not be recommending any of my friends interview there.

Interviewers asked me to implement atoi, which I did. Then they told me not to use the "string" class, claiming it is part of the "STL" library. In reality, the "string" class is not a part of the STL, contrary to their belief, but part of the "standard" library. Still, I accepted their suggestion and coded a low-level version of the solution as they asked. I made a few mistakes, as the IDE compilation and syntax highlighting didn't work, which prevented me from catching these errors during the interview. They then inquired about my previous work experience, which I described in broad terms. They didn't seem to understand or show interest in this area of computer science. Overall, I felt that they had made their decision by the end of the interview. The entire experience was very boring and it felt like nothing of significance happened. They didn't seem to know what to ask, nor did they possess skills in my area of expertise. They also coudn't describe any projects in Valve related to my area of expertise. By the end of the interview, I believe both parties were wholly unenthusiastic. I felt we actually wasted our time.