I applied online. I interviewed at Valve Corporation (Bellevue, WA) in Jul 2017
Interview
Rough legacy whiteboarding process. Valve unfortunately is using whiteboard interviews. Something that fortunately most companies have abandoned.
Whiteboarding, while great for fresh out of college comp sci students, is not something I learned to do as I have been in the industry for 20 years now. I worked through the problem, but overall had a really difficult time having a zero feedback loop environment and occasional scoffs from the interviewers. The entire process was extremely demoralizing and wasted their time and mine without getting to actually show any of my strengths. It's unfortunate that a candidate who's employers have included NASA, Sony, and other Fortune 500's isn't able to share my experience with them. But I think they are looking for a younger crowd.
If you want to pass this interview, brush up a lot on your whiteboarding, communication and coding.
Advice to Valve: Please try out take home assignments. You are severely limiting your talent pool otherwise.
I applied online. I interviewed at Valve Corporation in Aug 2014
Interview
I had a two person phone interview. The first person asked almost all of the question with the second person only asking me one question about something on my resume.
Overall the interview was really strange as they started asking me network questions about how to implement a VLAN. When I asked for clarification on which platform he asked how I would code it.
I had several other developer oriented questions and no real SE questions.
After the interview I received an email with feedback about areas I could focus on however those were all things I know well that they didn't even mention in the interview.
Overall it was very confusing, I felt like I might have been interviewed for a completely different position. Afterwards I emailed the recruiter to confirm but never got a response back.