Trying to hire an employee and tell this story that they "own" the product is just silly. It's like companies that try to describe themselves as a family - just kind of a weird and incorrect use of a real word that has other meaning.
'Ownership' is taking on those same stresses and responsibilities without any of the potential pay-offs... or at best a marginal rounding error.
It's not surprising that few people want to work as a founder but get compensated like an employee.
On the flip side, I've seen early-stage startups and scale-ups where engineers did not have real ownership. It's easy to get into a situation where an individual engineer "owns" a specific part of a startup... but can't make any real decisions on it because the founders want to dictate work at a week-to-week level or something.
It's a function of culture, not scale.
Individual ownership at the individual engineer boundary can breed distrust within a team or org, but often alienates team members who like their job but aren't trying to lead, at least with respect to what ownership entails. In this blended environment someone almost always ends up without agency. Sometimes no one gets agency. Who wants that?
It's surprisingly simple and effective by comparison to give a team agency and ownership, usually in part because of the dynamic of having a manager or lead to begin with.
Simply put, there are too many modes of failure at the individual level for software ownership to settle there comfortably: staffing changes, job security, career growth are the obvious ones, but the dysfunction (even in otherwise healthy orgs, there's always some amount) will find the shortest path to complete the circuit here.
I like to think of it like a gearbox. If you only have one gear, and you break it, or wear out all the teeth, then you don't get to go. If you have many gears, well, the ride may be uncomfortable at times, but you'll keep moving.