Valve

A company that earns over $50 million per employee

Intro

Valve has proven to be one of the most efficient companies in the world.

For 2025, the company earned around $17 billion. And according to existing data, it has around 336 employees. That is over $50 million per person. On average, one employee receives $1.3 million per year.

A distinctive feature of the company is its flat structure. Valve has no traditional managers, and employees can independently choose the projects and teams they want to join. In such a system, each employee is more autonomous, which contributes to high motivation and freedom.

So, would you like to work for Gabe Newell?

Genesis and Founding Vision (1996–1998)

Valve Corporation emerged from the ambitions of two former Microsoft employees, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.

Newell had spent thirteen years at Microsoft working on Windows. During that period he became fascinated by the creative potential of games. A survey he commissioned showed that id Software’s Doom was installed on more computers than Windows itself[1]. To Newell it was an insight: the most valuable software could be experiences not productivity tools. And instead of working on Windows 95 patches, he imagined building immersive games with first‑person 3D engines.

In 1996 Newell and Harrington left Microsoft and established Valve L.L.C. in Kirkland, Washington[2]. They licensed ID’s Quake engine and recruited a small team of coders, designers and artists. Newell financed the venture with personal funds and his Microsoft stock options, and he invited his future wife Monica Harrington—then a marketing manager at Microsoft—to help with a go‑to‑market plan for their debut game[3].

The founders chose to pursue an ambitious, narrative‑driven first‑person shooter called Half‑Life. They approached Sierra On‑Line for distribution and accepted a contract that granted Sierra rights to two sequels[5]. Harrington considered the terms “crazy” – Valve would bear most development costs while Sierra retained the intellectual‑property and took the lion’s share of revenue[5]. But for Valve, a company no one knew about, a strong distribution partner was essential.

Your call

You are Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington in 1997 after the first version of Half-Life fails your own quality bar. The company is financed with founder money, the release window is slipping, and rebuilding most of the game may exhaust the budget. Do you ship, cut scope, or restart? What evidence from playtests would justify treating the sunk work as irrelevant?