Jeri Ellsworth fired from Valve?? EDIT: At least 9 more too

[SartreFan]

Was she not heading the hardware development team at Valve? I would assume she was working heavily with their VR development. Maybe they decided just supporting the Oculus was a better choice?

[cybereality]

Interesting. I don't know much about her. Could mean anything though.

[SartreFan]

Interesting. I don't know much about her. Could mean anything though.

I first saw her on Ben Heck's show awhile back. She sounds like a pretty badass person. She has a pinball collection of over 90 machines. When I first heard she was getting involved with Valve I was pretty excited. It's a shame to see this happen.

[Krenzo]

That's disappointing. I've heard of people having trouble integrating into the culture there. There have been smart people that got hired there but just couldn't fit in.

[SartreFan]

Maybe Oculus could give her a job?

[STRZ]

I heard in some interviews that the employees set their own goals, and if they don't reach them..

Has to be something related to the new biometric sensing technology Gabe was talking about, maybe this doesn't work this well.

[TheHolyChicken]

Has to be something related to the new biometric sensing technology Gabe was talking about, maybe this doesn't work this well.

You're extrapolating awful far, are you not?

If and when more information falls out of the woodwork perhaps this could get more interesting, but at the moment she could have been fired for literally any reason.

[Direlight]

She's lovely.

[STRZ]

Has to be something related to the new biometric sensing technology Gabe was talking about, maybe this doesn't work this well.

You're extrapolating awful far, are you not?

If and when more information falls out of the woodwork perhaps this could get more interesting, but at the moment she could have been fired for literally any reason.

Yes i am, but what else could it be? She was involved in controller design, and has a youtube channel where she shows a lot of experimental work http://www.youtube.com/jeriellsworth

Ellsworth's team is creating a hardware solution to the control barriers found in many Steam games.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/valv ... ellsworth/

[TheHolyChicken]

Facts:
* Valve have experimented with biometric sensing controllers.
* She was involved in controller design at Valve.
* She was recently fired.

Your conclusion:
Biometric sensing controllers don't work well. ??

I don't understand how you could arrive at that conclusion. It just doesn't make sense. Valve encourage experimentation, and it's simply not possible for every line of investigation to be successful. Even the link in your post, that you provided as "supporting evidence" for your argument, contradicts your theory:
"She gets verbose when asked about corporate culture at Valve, about how she's never worked at a company where risk and failure are so acceptable -- even encouraged."

If you could explain what you mean in more detail that might be helpful.

[LNQ]

Fired is a harsh word. Usually involves some controversy.

[STRZ]

Facts:
* Valve have experimented with biometric sensing controllers.
* She was involved in controller design at Valve.
* She was recently fired.

Your conclusion:
Biometric sensing controllers don't work well. ??

The other possibility would be that she and the group she was working with where not able to figure out a controller design to solve the problem which was "a hardware solution to the control barriers found in many Steam games.". And if something works or not, you'd know it after some prototyping and testing, you don't need months for this as expert at a big company and having all the tools, and game developers at your side.

I think they have solved the control problem but got stuck with the more experimental biometrics stuff. Maybe it's just mission accomplished and she didn't find another project inside the company where she was valuable.

Do you think it's the other way round? That they didn't solve the control problem but got the biometrics working?

I don't understand how you could arrive at that conclusion. It just doesn't make sense. Valve encourage experimentation, and it's simply not possible for every line of investigation to be successful. Even the link in your post, that you provided as "supporting evidence" for your argument, contradicts your theory:
"She gets verbose when asked about corporate culture at Valve, about how she's never worked at a company where risk and failure are so acceptable -- even encouraged."

The quote and link in my last post was to support evidence that she's working on controllers, nothing else. And if a workgroup leader of controllers gets fired, then there isn't much what it could be other than that it's related to what they're working on. It's also possible that they got everything working and there was no other space to fit in for her. Whatever..

You should watch Gabe's talk "Reflections of a video game maker". At min. 25 he talks about firing people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU

If you could explain what you mean in more detail that might be helpful.

i hope that it's detailed enough for you to understand why i wrote what i wrote. Just guessing here as well. mentioned biometrics because it seems to be the hardest part of their controllers.

[Direlight]

She was sexually harassing Gabe.



That comes up under Gabe Newell sexy meme.

[TheHolyChicken]

@STRZ: I just didn't understand why you seemed to jump to blaming biometrics.

A person can get fired for any number of reasons, and it can be completely independent of their work. Perhaps she just wasn't fitting well with the company. Perhaps she had a conflict with someone else, perhaps she was routinely late or skiving off, perhaps she was showing up to work drunk, perhaps she broke an NDA, perhaps she sexually harassed someone, perhaps she.....

You can go on indefinitely. There are thousands of reasons someone could be fired, and right now we have no information whatsoever to go on. What evidence do you have that she was fired because "biometric sensing technology doesn't work well", and not that she dropped her trousers and pooped on someone's keyboard?

[Diorama]

Based on the seeming suddenness of the announcement and the fact that (to me) her tweets imply she was surprised by the sudden lack of job, then its not insane to speculate that she might have lost her job due to something related to her field. But to say "yeah the biometric stuff must have failed, case closed" is a bit much.

Assuming it wasn't something like gross misconduct, I wonder if it was more a 'we're going in a different direction' or 'you're not producing the results we need' kind of thing*





*speculation.

[STRZ]

@STRZ: I just didn't understand why you seemed to jump to blaming biometrics.

I didn't blame biometrics persé, just mentioned that it might not have worked very well which would be related to the work they're doing with the controllers. It's just speculation because it's a experimental technology for video games. Firing a controller designer who is into experimental stuff just did let me come to this assumption.

A person can get fired for any number of reasons, and it can be completely independent of their work. Perhaps she just wasn't fitting well with the company. Perhaps she had a conflict with someone else, perhaps she was routinely late or skiving off, perhaps she was showing up to work drunk, perhaps she broke an NDA, perhaps she sexually harassed someone, perhaps she.....

You can go on indefinitely. There are thousands of reasons someone could be fired, and right now we have no information whatsoever to go on. What evidence do you have that she was fired because "biometric sensing technology doesn't work well", and not that she dropped her trousers and pooped on someone's keyboard?

But Valve seems to be a very tolerant and alternative thinking company. if dropping pants would make the others more productive, it would be possibly tolerated

Dunno man, somebody not living up to his own predictions and goals is just the obvious reason, based on what is communicated on how it works there. She's seems to be a cool woman, so not fitting in in the sense of not beeing able to make friends there isn't realistic.

Having thought alot about it now ( ), the most probable and pleasant reason as Valve fan like me, seems to be that all the critical work is done and she isn't valuable in other areas thy work on.

[geekmaster]

Jeri Ellsworth has been featured at hackaday a lot. She has a working scanning electron microscope that she rebuilt, and she has done many things, including making a silicon integrated circuit by hand:
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/10/jeri-mak ... -circuits/

And her DIY TSA x-ray backscatter body scanner:
http://hackaday.com/2012/11/27/diy-tsa- ... y-scanner/

She restored a car before her 16th birthday:
http://hackaday.com/2012/07/27/girl-dec ... -birthday/

And so much more. Smart people tend to be independent thinkers, and some authority figures in group environments feel threatended by such people. Althouth we do not know the details, Jeri's personality may have been too strong for their group.

More Jeri Ellsworth projects at hackaday:
http://hackaday.com/page/1/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/2/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/3/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/4/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/5/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/6/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/7/?s=jeri+ellsworth
http://hackaday.com/page/8/?s=jeri+ellsworth

She has some interesting videos on youtube (mentioned on a previous page) too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth/videos?view=1

A lot of people wish her well.

[geekmaster]

There are a lot of rumors floating around the interwebs, but these two seem interesting:

I mean hacking the bathroom music server dosen't validate her leaving

okay it looks like they might be firing several people in the hardware company. So it looks like valve might be scrapping hardware all togeather.

Behind the hack: 1:45:06:
http://www.twitch.tv/jenesee/b/328895114

[Krenzo]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1865 ... RwJXmeoQuu
http://www.develop-online.net/news/4326 ... aves-Valve
http://kotaku.com/5984057/layoffs-rumor ... he-company

It looks like Valve is restructuring and did not fire Jeri because of any specific failing on her part or her team.

[SartreFan]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/39856 ... e-software

Looks like it wasn't just Jeri that was let go. Something interesting is happening over there at Valve

Moby Francke, Jason Holtman, Keith Huggins, Tom Leonard, Realm Lovejoy, Marc Nagel, Bay Raitt, Elan Ruskin, and Matthew Russel seem to be the others that were let go

[STRZ]

Seems like a big change at Valve..

[Direlight]

Hope they find work.

[STRZ]

Hope they find work.

For sure, valve only hires the best of the best, they all have a impressive curriculum vitae

Considering what Gabe said in his recent interviews it just seem to be people who don't fit anymore into the newer projects and direction, mostly game designers from past projects where the community now provides the main part of the software. One guy is the Steam boss, and this departure seems logical after Gabe announcing Steam to open up as sort of network API for everybody.

[KBK]

I know I'm looking at an interesting person. One who is forward looking, who is interested in areas that are..off limits, shall we say..when I see an image of her playing with a Wimshurst generator. A woman who makes her own Wimshurst. Be still my beating heart.

And the right kind of CV, too. Self made. My kind of CV. As in, 'you can't do that'..they say. The reply, 'screw you, here's some new physics. Eat it."

[bugnguts]

Looks like the number is at 25.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Jeri-E ... 21072.html

[backstaia]

One might guess this means a shift in business direction concerning the rumored steam box -> after the cooperation announcements at CES with different hardware provider (Xi3,..) they might have decided to give up plans on developing inhouse hardware. Building new hardware from scratch is tough business -> Palmer can for sure confirm that
Btw she seems quite capable at hacking hardware stuff, maybe she ends up at Oculus as well

[STRZ]

Gabe Newell:

"We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/13/valv ... statement/

[geekmaster]

Gabe Newell:

"We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/13/valv ... statement/

So it is just plain and simple downsizing then, if everything else remains the same.

[STRZ]

The downsizing possibly happened after internal peer reviews every year, where the workers rate each other anonymously based on productivity and contribution to the company goals. Possibly there so much leaving because the goals changed a bit in the last year.

You can read their employees handbook, pretty impressive organization http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/10743 ... LowRes.pdf