this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.
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... What?
It... it goes into the company.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted
They run an absurdly profitable business.
They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.
That's after wages.
Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they're a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.
The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.
The steam deck is making them money, that was a product developed by fucking around.
It seems that you can only think of value in terms of making a profit. But there is also great value in making something to see what is possible, regardless of profit. If you can't see that, you'll never make something innovative. The best a mindset like that can ever achieve is only incremental.
This conversation is enlightening to me. See I just always assumed business people understood how engineering works, but were being obtuse to keep us on track or were just looking at the financial spreadsheets. But no it seems some people genuinely don’t understand that sometimes you spend a lot of time on things whether or not it goes anywhere because if you don’t you don’t develop any products or solutions.
Unironically, this is why I no longer work in tech.
Another user pointed out 'Found the business major' and while that may or may not be 100% accurate... this person's mindset is absolutely, hilariously, stereotypically common amongst MBAs.
They know almost nothing about the actual business sector they end up in, they know almost nothing about the nature of any given employee's actual work, they just view everything through the lense of 'maximize next quarter profits'...
... It's all just 100% cocksure narcissistic bravado + 'the way i was taught how to things work is correct, stop arguing with me.'
And these people are almost always your boss, or your boss's boss.
This person is an idiot and can only think of one possibility. They are ignoring the fact that fucking around on the job can have implications like increasing skills. I made the mistake of replying to this person with an anecdote of mine which I am sure will be deconstructed by them like they were there. Point is, boss allowed us to goof off with pet programming projects and that resulted in me experimenting with code I wouldn't have had the chance to otherwise and making a breakthrough, which I then realized how to implement for the benefit of said company. So I wasn't fucking around to make money, but the fucking around gave me the knowledge and skills to them apply that indirectly. But hey this person is determined to infect the thread with their single minded theory that doesn't make a shit to the actual conversation.