High tech companies really should be partnerships like law firms and medical practices. The only reason they are not, is because tech firms do produce a product that can be copied and sold.
So high tech firms occupy this strange space between a 50's style manufacturer and a service type partnership.
There are other reasons. For instance, it lacks granularity; if the only statuses are "partner" and "employee", there's not the flexibility of options grants. People are willing to suffer as the low status and long hours as employees in law firms and accountancies because of the guaranteed payoff when making partner, tech is a lot riskier. At partnerships the partners typically bring in the bulk of the business, a tech company would have a very hard time hiring talent if it were run along those lines. Not to mention that the partners have an unlimited personal liability. A law firm doesn't require much capital and doesn't risk much either. A high-tech company often needs to (do) both.
A high-tech services company could be run as a partnership, as Accenture was for many years, but they turned themselves into a public company so they could use their stock as acquisition currency.
I agree with you that a law-firm-like structure would not work in tech, but I'll disagree on one point.
People are willing to suffer as the low status and long hours as employees in law firms and accountancies because of the guaranteed payoff when making partner, tech is a lot riskier.
Most "white shoe" law firm ("biglaw") associates aren't set on making partner. First, the odds are pretty miserable; about 5-10% make it, and it takes almost a decade. Second, junior partners are ridden a lot harder than senior associates, because they have more to lose. Partner firings, while not common, occur often enough that there is no "guaranteed payoff", because a junior partner might be axed before becoming senior. As for the "low status" of a law firm associate, this is true in some ways and not in others. For example, a first-year law associate is going to be expected to do a lot of grunt work, and work 55-65 hours per week. On the other hand, he's likely to have staff, if not a personal assistant, and a salary over $150k... not bad for a 25-year-old without work experience. The grunt work exists not because the associate has "low status" but because, frankly, so much of the law-in-practice is bureaucratic, precise, and uninteresting. This is especially true at high levels in corporate law, because clients would prefer to pursue the low-risk, precise, and boring routes (settlements) over the "fun" and unpredictable part of law, litigation.
The reason young attorneys are willing to endure years of pain in biglaw is that, in law and banking, reputation matters a lot more than technical skills, and the only way a young person can distinguish himself in these industries is to grind out years at a prestigious firm. They suffer because the name on their resume is often perceived to be worth the upfront pain. Of course, another reason for people to put up with 4-7 years of biglaw is that there's also a huge stigma against quitting or being fired; unlike in tech, it's not okay to say you left a law firm job because you weren't learning anything from the work and wanted to try something new; you're expected to have the social skills to handle this internally, without resorting to leaving the firm. This stigma is less pronounced in finance during bad economic conditions, because it's known to be a volatile industry. However, law firms never admit they are laying people off for economic reasons, always claiming their layoffs are performance-based firings, saving face at the expense of let-go employees. Goldman Sachs, the "creme de la creme" investment bank, did the same in 2007-08 (scumbags).
In technology, people evaluate a job based on what they will learn rather than the reputation of the firm. There's also much less of a stigma inherent to leaving a job for more interesting projects. For these reasons, and many more, a biglaw model (thankfully) will never work in tech.
So high tech firms occupy this strange space between a 50's style manufacturer and a service type partnership.