Exactly. I read an article like this as implying that, "serious money is only for executives and rich people, not for workers. Workers are commodities, tools."

From the article: "How many lives could be saved through research, aid, or vaccines? How much good could be done with $3.5 million?" The author is literally implying that giving $3.5 million to a world-class engineer is a waste. Not a word about the millions or billions of dollars of compensation for management, as you said. None. It's as if the author can't possibly imagine that a single engineer could do work valued at $3.5 million, ever.

What causes this type of mentality? What is this even called? Crab-bucket mentality? Self loathing? It's one thing to see workers struggling for fair compensation for their contribution to an organization's financial success and quite another to see a resistance "from within" to that struggle. Don't programmers, engineers, designers, etc. want their peers to be more successful?