Valve's corporate culture

So I've checked out the Valve employee handbook that made the rounds of the internet a few months back. The corporate culture it depicts is very open and very egalitarian. 

Picking a project:

We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a percentage of their time to self-directed projects. At Valve, that percentage is 100. Since Valve is flat, people don’t join projects because they’re told to. Instead, you’ll decide what to work on after asking yourself the right questions (more on that later). Employees vote on projects with their feet (or desk wheels). Strong projects are ones in which people can see demonstrated value; they staff up easily.

Structure:

Valve is not averse to all organizational structure—it crops up in many forms all the time, temporarily. But problems show up when hierarchy or codified divisions of labor either haven’t been created by the group’s members or when those structures persist for long periods of time. We believe those structures inevitably begin to serve their own needs rather than those of Valve’s customers.

Working hours:

While people occasionally choose to push themselves to work some extra hours at times when something big is going out the door, for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communication. If this happens at Valve, it’s a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected. If you’re looking around wondering why people aren't in “crunch mode,” the answer’s pretty simple. The thing we work hardest at is hiring good people, so we want them to stick around and have a good balance between work and family and the rest of the important stuff in life.

These are admirable principles. I would love to work Valve's way.

But I have to wonder whether the handbook depicts how things are actually done at Valve. I suspect it describes an idealized version of Valve, Valve as it ought to be. And perhaps the company sometimes achieves that ideal. Also, Valve is small; right now they have only 293 employees. I suspect things would change considerably if they were to grow by an order of magnitude. Companies have a way of growing more formal and rigid as they grow.