Valve is a lot like a small version of Alphabet in that there are no adults around to make sure people are dilligently finishing and polishing products.

I say this as an developer myself. After a 20 year career of working on other people's businesses and struggling to put my own things together, the whole, "we'll make amazing things if we just get away from management" thing is a gigantic, unproductive trap of thinking. Few programmers have the necessary self-awareness of their own limitations to stick to a problem all the way through to the end.