They are cheap and you can cycle them quickly without too much grief until you find the good ones.

We (little ISP) get them for a few hours each day after school and put them to work answering phones. They get some work experience and credit under the high school's "industry as shop class" scheme.

The better ones get a job for the summer and a raise. If they show the right blend of bordom doing phone support combined with motivation to learn systems stuff we promote them and give them sysadmin projects.

Worst case they end up with some clerical work experience in a office environment. Best case they learn some combination of Sysadmin/Netadmin/Coder. Either way it beats working fast food or stocking shelves.

Absolutely, what a great program to be running.

Speaking as a high schooler, I think there are plenty of us out there who would be plenty helpful to a company like Valve. (I like to think I would be one of them!)

As for this project, I, for one, would like to learn about 3D rendering -- that's always been something that I'd admired from afar.

If you're seriously interested in learning about 3D rendering and have some programming (and some linear algebra) experience, you should look into Udacity's CS291 course.

https://www.udacity.com/course/cs291

Awesome, thanks! Programming experience I definitely have, and some linear algebra... although I'll be taking that course soon. Again, thanks!

Valve is a company that has the margin and the culture to support products that don't pay an immediate return. That said, I see some immediate benefits:

1. This will attract a large pool of young talent and some of them will make direct contributions and contributions through feedback and interplay of ideas.

2. This creates goodwill in the developer and education community which helps experienced industry professionals to think more highly of Valve. They will be more likely to apply or recommend applying.

3. This, as has been said, improves conditions at Valve and helps to shine light on more stultified areas of the company.

I was a full time dev at 16, and believe that I was quite valuable to the company. Some other comments tell similar stories, so it seems like its not that rare. I wouldn't be so quick to say that high schoolers aren't valuable at all, but I do agree that most of them probably aren't.

You forget that Valve's offices are in Microsoft's backyard.

I helped out at http://studentrnd.com/ a few times. Hooooly crap. Some of those 14 year olds can code! Having two Microsoft Devs as parents is a pretty good strategy if you want to grow up and be valuable to Valve.

If nothing else, they might be a good audience for Valve's older employees to bounce ideas off of. They could provide information about what teens (a big consumer of Valve's products) want and think are cool.

I wouldn't say so. I'm currently in high school and working at a small indie studio on our flagship game. Working with other professionals on a title that matters is invaluable experience, at least in my opinion.

Invaluable experience yes, but it's really the employer who is providing the value, which is backwards in business sense.

You, my dear friend, just described an internship. I'm one of two programmers on the game we're working on. I feel like I contribute a fair share as an employee to the game.