It didn't really make sense to me. How did you imagine any decisions working?

For technical stuff it works okay, because people can make decisions just by doing whatever it is, or by talking to the team and agreeing on something. It's a lot harder to get people to do that for bonuses and pay.

Right, or "should we spend millions on Steam Deck which will pay off in 10 years" vs "should we all just get a big pay rise now with the money?"

The fact that even Valve, which is one of the companies closest to the idea of having endless free money, and thus the most forgiving to a structure like that, didn't make it work, must surely at least give us pause for thought!

At Valve the corporate wing made (and still makes) those decisions, trying to have ten people agree on who deserves to be paid what and whether it should be invested instead hasn't been tried in any company I know of. In contrast having managers who are collectively answerable to those ten employees through the share ownership structure has been tried, and it works out okay.

> having managers who are collectively answerable to those ten employees through the share ownership structure has been tried

How does that work? As in the employees are owners but the managers aren't?

In this example we're talking about 11 more or less equal shareholders, one of whom is a manager.

Sorry. I genuinely don't understand. Is it that the ten people report to the manager, but the manager also reports to the ten people?

What happens if half of the ten think the manager is good and the other half think he's bad?

But are those 10 professionally qualified to check the manager's work quality during those 10 years? (Or do they buy some audit service from another division?)

It is usually pretty obvious when a manager is clearing blockers, communicating well and not punting on hard decisions; and since you're giving them 10 years, it would also be easy to see the outcomes of their riskier choices.