Valve’s job rejection letter to a high school teen is a class act

The job market can be a brutal place. You might apply to hundreds of jobs and never hear a peep from anyone. A workplace might pull an applicant through a convoluted process involving multiple interviews only to ghost them without explanation. So when Liem Nguyen sent his resume to Valve back in 2015, he wasn’t holding his breath.

At the time, Nguyen had just graduated from high school. He had a tough living situation back home and was racking his brain for ways to make money. He knew he wanted to make games and didn’t see the harm in trying to get his name out there. He tried every recruiter he could find, but nothing was panning out. Valve, meanwhile, is behind the most popular PC storefront and some of the most popular games in the world. Nguyen wasn’t expecting to hear anything back.

He did, though. Valve sent a rejection letter — no shocker there. What Nguyen didn’t anticipate, though, was an actual human being at Valve taking the time to write a response. Nguyen recently shared a picture of the email he received on social media; in it, a worker at the Seattle-based company explained the reasoning behind the rejection. More than that, the person at Valve offered some words of advice for Nguyen. Here’s the email, which Polygon verified as real and linked to an employee who worked at Valve in 2015.

For Valve fans, much of what the letter contains probably won’t be a shocker. Valve makes more money than companies like Google and Amazon, raking in nearly $50M per employee. A company like that is not going to hire newbies or have many entry-level positions. Beyond its services and games, though, Valve is known to be an offbeat workplace. There’s the apparent flat hierarchy, where employees technically don’t have managers or assigned projects. Much like other tech companies, Valve also isn’t prescriptive about background — Portal, for example, began as a student project. Two of Valve’s most successful games began as gaming mods. With a track record like that, the company is destined to hear from teens with some gumption.

Though Valve declined the application, the response has gone viral on social media due to its encouraging tone. In it, Valve acknowledges that it looks for seasoned talent. But talent, in Valve’s eyes, is not reflected by a degree or title.

“Instead, we believe dedication, experience, and customer focus are what make good hires … Those things are intangible, aren’t taught in schools, and are what differentiate typical candidates from special ones,” a worker at Valve wrote.

“Basically, our advice is for you to follow your passion and spend the time perfecting your craft,” the rejection continued. “The most important thing is for you to just begin creating games, whether on paper or on the computer. What is crucial is the ‘doing’ and ‘creating.'”

Fast-forward ten years, and Nguyen has taken those words to heart. He’s at an indie studio he funded and is currently working on a new game with biological themes. He looks back on this rejection email with both pride and some embarrassment. He couldn’t really appreciate the significance of the response a decade ago. To Nguyen, it was just another rejection among many.

Now, though, he credits Valve with his decision to keep making games.