I’m more curious as to how many contractors work for Valve.

Just because they aren’t a direct employee doesn’t mean other people don’t work for Valve. They don’t seem to have “janitorial” or anything like it on there, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume like almost all US companies, that they contract out a lot of the “bitch work” so they don’t have to pay “regular people” well or let them be part of that “flat management” structure. Someone cleans up those offices, and it probably isn’t the devs or anyone directly employed by Valve.

It’s easy to act like your profits per employee are insane when half your employees are actually “contractors” and don’t count toward your employee numbers somehow.

EDIT: According to Glassdoor, they absolutely use contract work, so these numbers are a farce. So much for Valve being the perfect good guys or whatever… Good guys don’t use contract labor as a way to pay people less than they’re worth.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Valve-Corporation-Contractor-Reviews-EI_IE24849.0,17_KO18,28.htm

Tl,dr: About a million dollars annually per employee.