Someone of you need to do some research before commenting, but wait I forgot this is the Internet. First of all, Valve doesnt fire people maliciously if you've read their employee handbook and listened to the hour and thirty min talk Gabe gave at the Univ. of Texas you would understand this.

Valve has a very different hands off approach to management, Gabe even refers to the company having a "sink or swim" culture. In other words no one tells you what to do at Valve, you show up and you immediately start working and contributing to the overall effort. If you are an Engineer/Programmer no one is going to tell you to go work on "that game" and create "these lines of code" and this needs to be done before Sunday. Instead, you go to work find a project that interests you and immediately start doing anything you can to help that project. If you are an Programmer but also have a degree in Fine Arts, nobody is going to stop you from making Art Designs as well as Programming.

This is obviously a hard workplace for a lot of people who crave structure and a type of hierarchical order. Gabe mentions that those from the film industry often have the hardest time adjusting because they are so used to being stomped on for showing even a hint of original thought or creativity.

Due to this fact a lot of people end up getting "fired" from Valve, you have to be fully comfortable with working on your own with very little oversight and producing top quality work. If you're someone who just follows orders and needs that hierarchical order then you probably wont be working at Valve for long.