In the normal order of things "leadership" is one of the things workers should expect from supervision and management. Management isn't for everyone, so a "senior" worker position is where things top out.

Pay grade issues can be a problem in many specialized career areas.

If workers' pay exceeds that of their managers people have little incentive to take on such roles, which can be full of their own headaches and take them away from the work they worked hard to get good at. Yet if a technical manager's pay exceeds that of peers managing clerical staff it creates rifts and upsets H.R.'s idea of neat hierarchies based on pay grades.

In a mature organization of any size this can result in severely reduced pay all around, negatively motivated people becoming managers, and the best people jumping ship. You can end up with ineffective or dictatorial managers while workers fall into a general depression, producing organizational maliase.

After a couple of decades (sometimes sooner) things fall into a state of decay, despotism, and stasis.

Here comes the predatory vendor and outsourcing!

$18 million computer system fails DMV