Valve Corporation Interview Questions
& Process

A recruiter who's been at the company a while reached out and handled most logistics until the front desk took over flight and hotel booking. The first step was a technical phone screen, about an hour long, where they asked me to implement atoi perfectly and some questions about my past experience to gauge my technical depth. Then, if I passed, I was flown out to interview onsite (though remote was an option). The onsite interviews involved pairs of interviewers, one senior and one less so, usually from teams I might join. About 10% seemed personable. The day started with two coding questions on a big whiteboard, where I solved the problems while working with the interviewers. A lunch interview followed, which felt awkward. After a break, I had a non-technical interview. Shortly after, two of my interviewers ended the loop early, giving feedback about insufficient technical depth and customer requirements gathering, suggesting I re-interview with more experience. I suspect it was a culture fit issue, though the office is cool. I think Valve, being small, might avoid hiring people who could disrupt their structure and incentives.

I tried to keep things general to avoid issues for employees. There was a small payment mix-up for the hotel, so I rented a car and did a bit of sightseeing while waiting. I arrived on time, but there was about a 40-minute delay, which honestly isn't too surprising lately. Everyone was friendly, but the general vibe felt stressed, making it tough to concentrate on the coding problems and give clear answers. Whiteboarding isn't my strong suit, so they were cool and let me use Notepad++ with screen sharing for the remote interviewers. I asked about how they define project leadership roles with each new interviewer, and got surprisingly different answers each time. I figured it was worth digging into since they advertise a flat, self-organizing structure, even though people naturally form hierarchies. They seemed a bit concerned or annoyed, which I get. The interview wrapped up after a call with Gabe. Just before that, I met someone who seemed really nervous and asked the same question a few times even after I answered. The question was about cloth simulation with fp math problems due to large distances from the origin. My initial thought was forward error analysis to pinpoint where errors creep in, and my second idea was to increase the time step until the simulation looked right. This is basically about issues with NLPs, which can take days or weeks to fix, and I'm not sure if the interviewer knew that. Gabe had a question I'm not going to share, but I was left unsure about the impression I made since it was audio-only.

I interviewed for a designer position at Valve for the full loop. The interview had a lot of design challenges, more than I normally see in a full day, which made it tiring. I didn't know who I'd meet, just to prepare for a full day. I met about 10-12 people. I started with my portfolio review, but got interrupted and couldn't show everything. I answered questions about what I owned and how I measured success. Then, we worked on an exercise to develop an app for a zoo, where I discussed my process and the team acted as developers and producers. It was fun. After that, I had a lunch interview with two people, just chatting about my goals and why I was looking to move. They asked what I'd do at Valve if I could pick my projects. Next, I had another interview where they asked me to design a scoring system for L4D. Even though it wasn't strictly a UI/UX role, I enjoyed it and thought I did well. I was a big fan of the game. Then, two more people interviewed me about a Steam library subscription model. I compared it to Game Pass and discussed its benefits and how Steam could compete. At the end, they asked me to wait while they decided. Two people came back, one who had championed me and the interviewer from the L4D prompt. They asked how I thought I did. I said I felt I did my best. Then, they said they wanted to offer me the job. The L4D interviewer complimented my thorough answer. The only feedback was that I didn't showcase enough UX work, which was fair. I thanked everyone and went home to wait for the offer. In the following weeks, I resigned from my job and talked with Valve HR. On my last day at my old job, HR called unexpectedly and asked if I could hop on a call. They told me they were revoking the offer because they weren't sure about my cultural fit or ability to drive my own work. They apologized and ended the conversation, and I never heard from them again.

It started with a 30 min phone interview. About a month later, I was in the office for an all day interview. Consisting of two people per meeting, with a white board to assist (though I didn't use it). Took me out for a nice lunch and afterward I just sat in the room (by myself) for 40 minutes. Two people came in and told me that they loved me but I didn't fit the structure they had in place and sent me on my way. They had another person interviewing the same day I was there and the guy who gave me a lift home told me he drives candidates back and forth all day every day for Valve. Beware, if you aren't 100% a perfect match from the get-go then the interview is a waste of time. Even if you are perfect in every way and don't conform to the company 'flat' structure (which anyone can adapt toward) they will usher you out. As another person said, they are just interviewing as much as possible.