Valveco-founder,Gabe Newelluncorked a bit of his past lore in an interview onYouTubethis week, and it appears he may have gotten started in the gaming industry by just hanging around.
Long before Gabe Newell was the face of Valve, he started as an employee ofMicrosoft. He discussed this in an interview withZalkar Salievon YouTube (as reported byPC Gamer), with Newell diving deep into his background before Valve, when he was getting his bearings as a fledgling programmer in High School. The chat explored a wealth of the now-famous programmer’s history in gaming, including how Newell was 10 years old before the first video game came out.
Newell mentions “video games didn’t exist” when he was 10, stating, “At the time, programming wasn’t really a career path. There were probably only a couple of thousand programmers in the United States, working on mainframe accounting software primarily, and maybe there were some people doing stuff at NASA.” With that in mind, the first console Newell programmed on was a calculator.
Obviously, Newell didn’t continue programming calculator functions as he went on to earn a spot in Harvard’s programming school, before he even thought of it as a career path. Then he got the bright idea of visiting his brother for Thanksgiving, which changed the gaming landscape forever.
Gabe Newell Got His Start At Microsoft By Just “Hanging Out”
After spending some time “just hanging out” with his brother Dan Newell at work, Newell explained that the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, got fed up with his antics and said, “If you’re going to be hanging out here, you know, why don’t you do something useful?” In response to this, he said, “Fine, I’ll do a little work.”
Newell professes an admiration for his early programming days at Microsoft in the conversation, giving the company great respect at a time when layoffs continue to run rampant at the company in 2025. Newell claims it was the best place in the world to learn how to be a programmer, and after saying he would go back to finish his degree in programming, 13 years had gone by. Newell then said it was during these 13 years of working with such talented people that he decided to start Valve. The rest is history.
