I think that's a valid take, and I think Valve has sort of re-evaluated it, because if I recall correctly, they kind of had to "put on hold" the "do whatever you want" bit to get Half Life: Alyx out of the door. So, imho, it seems like they're capable of doing both. They managed to produce a high quality VR game by putting the "flat" on the backburner, and them coming back to it later.

Although, to be fair, I hadn't heard anything similar about the SteamDeck or any Valve hardware, really. So if they can make a SteamDeck from scratch, an entire new product category, with the flat management structure, I bet it's not holding them back half as much as some folks at GlassDoor seem to think.