You know what's funny though. I know some folks at Valve, they all say that the work-life balance isn't great (not terrible, but not great). Valve does peer stack ranking in order to set compensation. From what I hear this means that, yes, you can technically 9-to-5 it, but good luck getting anywhere in the company if you do.

I've also heard that the everything-is-flat model isn't all that great either. Yes you get to work on what you want, but, going back to the stack-ranking, it can be quite the political place if you want to get on the right projects, etc.

I'm not trying to say that Valve isn't a great place to work, but I think people romanticize it a little too much when this handbook gets trotted out on HN every other month.