My superficial read of the Basecamp kerfuffle is that what people are really upset about is a lack of professional development, but it was expressed as a sort of aimless resentment of everything the founders are. If what the founders are is the most important thing in the company - if the company is thought of as their thing, and not a thing any other employee will ever have a hand in steering, it would be frustrating.

I think the walkout is a symptom of the problem you're pointing out, not the cause. People started to think of it as a dead-end job working on someone else's toy.