It's also worth observing that "culture" tends to mean "people similar to myself", unless more explicitly defined. So it's no suprise that the people who declared not to "fit" are a woman and a skilled manual worker (machinist).
The totally uniform power distribution idea only works if you have totally uniform employees. As soon as you have signifigantly different skillsets and workflows - which you need to do different kinds of work - then employees become uncomparable and shortly afterwards unequal.
The size of Valve is also over Dunbar's number, so they're beyond the range of what can be organised with informal social operations anyway.
It seems a bit unfair to claim that it's because she's a woman -- how many women work for Valve?
Also, Valve, being a game company, has always had a diverse set of skills with artists and software engineers being the most obviously different. Their success has been a lot to do with efficiently integrating these together.
The totally uniform power distribution idea only works if you have totally uniform employees. As soon as you have signifigantly different skillsets and workflows - which you need to do different kinds of work - then employees become uncomparable and shortly afterwards unequal.
The size of Valve is also over Dunbar's number, so they're beyond the range of what can be organised with informal social operations anyway.