It can be hard to do the right thing, especially if there are real-world consequences like "do this bad act or lose your job" threats.

However, "do this bad act and we'll all get rich" seems a bit ... harder to sympathize with.

When an executive level manager is paid multiple times (or orders of magnitude) what an engineer is paid, I feel there should be a different assignment of responsibility and exposure to risk.

Because there’s not been a large obvious reminder for some time. In fact the last such reminder was before most currently living software developers were born.

Yet owners and management get to say, 'it's business' or 'it's just business'.

Not according to me, they're both wrong in the exact same way to me.