>So it looks like Valve has already scaled beyond their effective structure.
Such scaling problems are not binary. They are probably less effective than they were at 20 people but they would be even less effective at 30,000. One way we might look at this is to assume (incorrectly) that a flat hierarchy is a complete graph which is the way most small informal groups are run.
A complete graph of 30 people has 435 edges.
A complete graph of 300 people has 44,850 edges.
A complete graph of 3000 people has 4,498,500 edges.
Such scaling problems are not binary. They are probably less effective than they were at 20 people but they would be even less effective at 30,000. One way we might look at this is to assume (incorrectly) that a flat hierarchy is a complete graph which is the way most small informal groups are run.
A complete graph of 30 people has 435 edges. A complete graph of 300 people has 44,850 edges. A complete graph of 3000 people has 4,498,500 edges.