[f1yght]

I think this could largely be an issue with public or VC/PE funded companies. There's plenty of private companies of small/mid size that make plenty of money but don't feel a need to grow excessively. You could think of the local plumbing company, or a small boutique consulting firm. They want to grow, but there's a natural barrier that's hard to cross without becoming a very large company and changing the nature of the company that the owner may be enjoying.

I have always wondered how that would apply to software companies though. If you make something that works really well and everyone wants to buy it, you could grow fairly large financially without needing a ton of people if you just focus on that one program that makes you successful. I imagine it's hard to not feel a need to scale up dramatically when you have millions of users/customers asking for new features.

[BlueTemplar]

Valve Corporation is one of such private companies, mostly known these days for its Steam game updates and store platform.

Being private didn't prevent it turning into a monopsony, ironically for the discussion, maybe because its competitors were mostly public companies (and so didn't care enough to do a good job) ?

They are not immune to walled garden issues though (SteamWorks), but maybe their private structure helped enshittification to proceed much slower ?