[Noumenon72]

My current project got rid of everyone with less than ten years of experience and I thought that was weird because there are usually tasks that you can give juniors. Is Valve unusual in not having any positions for people under seven years of experience?

[Ethee]

Based upon everything we know from Valve's corporate structure, they're basically their own self-contained YCombinator. They have a ton of internal 'startup' groups that are constantly trying new and boundary pushing ideas. Looking at it through this lens, it's not really a good company fit for any junior. Having juniors detracts from your seniors work, but the point is that you're supposed to get value from that when they eventually become mid-level or senior engineers themselves. But if you're constantly working in new complex environments it's hard to bring a junior up to speed and teach them the requisite skills to thrive, especially if that project they just spent 3 months getting up to speed on gets canned because the idea didn't actually pan out.

[wildzzz]

I'm guessing that with the flat structure of the company, there are more engineers that have a deeper responsibility with regards to ownership of a product. The guy responsible for maintaining a game does everything from project management to low level patches. Kind of a fun way to run things but you do end up needing to wear many hats which can be a bad thing if you would prefer sticking to one area.