Valve Corporation Designer Interview Questions
& Process

The initial setup for this interview was quite disorganized, and I suspect it wouldn't have happened without a personal connection at Valve. They decided to fly me out for an in-person interview, and we set a date. However, with only 4 days left before the scheduled interview, no one had contacted me to arrange my travel and accommodation. Concerned, I reached out to my friend, who then nudged the interview organizers. They got in touch with me the next day. The actual interview day involved a full schedule of back-to-back meetings, speaking with two Valve employees at a time. The discussions covered designing a scoring system for L4D, an app for a ski resort, and some standard interview questions. Although it was a full day, they mentioned they could end the interviews early after lunch if things weren't going well. While most interviewers were engaged, a few seemed disinterested or even hostile, which was a strange approach for an interview meant to simulate working together. It often felt like the interviewers were chosen last minute, as many were unaware of my previous work or history, leading to repetitive discussions and follow-up questions. By the end of the day, I was offered a contract position. I explained that I couldn't accept because I wasn't willing to relocate to a very expensive area for a job without benefits or a guarantee of full-time work. They mentioned that contractors often transition to full-time roles, which made the offer even more confusing; why not hire directly? After I declined, they said I'd be welcome to contract with them anytime in the future based on this experience, but I doubt they'd remember me. Following up, my emails thanking them went unanswered. To add to the disorganization, the hotel charged the card I had to put on file, requiring me to contact Valve's interview coordinator to sort out the payment. Overall, the entire experience was poorly managed, and ending a full day of interviews with a contract offer felt like a significant waste of time. As a long-time fan of Valve's games, this was a really disappointing experience.

So after a phone interview that went pretty well, I was invited for an in-person. It was a conference room setting with 5 different groups of people, each group for an hour. Each group was from a different part of the company and they asked me questions and looked at my portfolio. I thought the process was pretty unorganized. A lot of the interviewers hadn't seen my resume or talked to the person who did the initial screening to understand my skills. Many questions were about things I have no experience with, which they could have seen on my resume. It was confusing because they were looking for a different skillset than what I have, which is fine, but my resume and the initial screening should have made that clear. So I don't really know why I was brought in for the in-person. They were all very nice though, and the HR people were really on top of things and professional.

I interviewed with Valve yesterday, which is a dream job for me. The lobby itself makes you want to work there. I applied for a Designer position and was surprised they wanted to interview me given my background is in Avionics. The atmosphere was very casual and the interviewers were very personable. We sat in a conference room and discussed my work online. They asked questions about some of my projects, their background, what had been shipped, and if the shipped items were actual products.