The alternative is that when your co-worker goes on vacation, gets in a car wreck three states away, and the victim's family takes your house in compensation.
What I just described is the liability structure of a partnership, absent any remnant of the "corporate veil". Liability flows from your partner through the partnership and back to you. It is the corporate veil that isolates the company from the personal actions of its employees, and the employees from the business operations of the company.
There's a little more nuance.