> The system rewards cheaper and faster. But that's an issue of (primarily financial) incentives, not sociocultural biases.

Abusing other workers is a common phenomena at all levels of a company. Low level team leads (line/operations managers) are almost always of the same "class" as the people under them. They almost always ascend from those lower ranks.

In any given instance of abuse, there may be other factors. But there is always a zero sum financial incentive to do so - to exploit others to benefit oneself.

To be clear, I'm not in any way defending CEOs or any other executives. As a category, they are grossly, inexcusably overcompensated for the value they deliver. I'm just saying that the issue is systemic, pervasive.