Its just too many things packaged and loaded in that question. Haha
If you are a brilliant engineer, you might build an amazing feature. But if you are a director managing 5 teams of 8 engineers, your decisions affect the output of 40 people. Even a small 1% improvement in their efficiency multiplies across the whole group, resulting in massive financial impact.
If a VP makes a strategic mistake, an entire product line gets canceled, and 200 people lose their jobs. Higher pay is often a premium for taking on that personal and financial risk.
On the flip side, traditional corporate structure puts a cap on individual value. They operate like early 20th century assembly line, where a deeply technical engineer is seen no different than a blue collar drone.
As for the “being seen” situation, its not about being seen by your bosses. Its more about being seen by your family and friends. At least in certain cultures, “man of the house” is expected to weild power over others outside their house too. While some are OK being called potty as long as they’re paid forty, not everyone subscribes to it.
Do you want an actual answer?
MKUltra was shutdown long ago, but several fragmented research continued and still lives on. MKNAOMI, MKDELTA, MKSEARCH were immediate successors. Later, ruwre was StarGate. And many many more undisclosed human experimentation.
Intelligence community behavioural science seems to be one such project, where they teach interrogating resistance, psychological profiling of adversaries, influence and propaganda analysis (not direct brain control).
While modern variants don’t have any official names or are even disclosed, its safe to assume they still are conducting human experimentation. Just much better and much less fan fare.