"It definitely got my foot in the door at Microsoft," he writes in an e-mail message. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't having a one-day towel boy item on my resume that aroused Steve Ballmer's interest."

His Microsoft stint lasted 13 years, during which he started the company's multimedia division and worked on applications for the Macintosh before Apple's famous computer had even been introduced.

But Newell says the thrill of those challenges waned as Microsoft evolved. He and one of his co-workers decided to go for broke with their own business.

"Mike Harrington and I both had a love of games, and were able to con ourselves into believing we could make a go of it as a game developer," Newell says.

So far, the gamble is paying off. "Half-Life" is still at the top of the market after close to a year on the shelves, and Valve's latest project, "Team Fortress 2," is in the final stages in development.

The small staff of Valve is a diverse group with one other Harvard alum--a fact unknown to Newell until after the employee had been hired. Career networking, he says, is more successful between programmers working on projects together.

"Most of the networking in the software world has occurred at the corporate rather than collegiate level," he says.