I think the author is over indexing on the value that the company brings to its customers and the value that an employee beings to the company - as if there is

I think the author is over indexing on the value that the company brings to its customers and the value that an employee beings to the company - as if there is just a kind of lossless value roll up going on here. In reality, there are many humans in the mix - various gatekeepers with all kinds of objective functions that are not necessarily aligned with the overall stated objective of the company. The better a company is, the more aligned it will be, but still good to keep in mind the gatekeeper layers in an org and what their actual objective functions are.