The complaints are human behavior rather than technology, or the culture around it. There are places that are better than others, but you're going to encounter self interest and "dilbertesque" behavior everywhere.
Personally, I view learning to deal with work is an emotional skill you have to develop. Even if you get a job doing math all day in a research position, you need to be ready for the usual academic politics problems.
Plus learning to recognize toxic environments and avoid them.
There's a lot of investors and companies that no one should ever work with because of this. Learning to recognize them is a tricky skill and some people are better off not playing the game at all.
There are more people in large organizations now, but the problems of greedy financiers and goofy bureaucratic behaviors go back thousands of years. I'm sure there is some subset of Dilbert comics that ancient Chinese officials would have found funny.
You are correct, and humans have been greedy, manipulative, and self-centered since the beginning of time. We often don't even see it in ourselves. I'm sure many of these people who contributed to his disillusionment probably thought they weren't too bad...especially when compared with some other person!
Pure toxic more common in webtech, gaming, and IT than other places. Although toxic webtech culture is kinda bleeding into software in general. Big corp and gov have different issues.
Personally, I view learning to deal with work is an emotional skill you have to develop. Even if you get a job doing math all day in a research position, you need to be ready for the usual academic politics problems.