Standard psychology says they should be highly sensitive to status loss, but it almost seems the opposite.
Existing in a large org over the long term becomes a game of survival. It's very much similar to the "dark forest" or the Eye of Sauron. Your number one goal as an IC is to complete the tasks directly assigned to you by a supervisor and avoid at all costs any kind of "hey you" assignments that have zero upside and plenty of possibility for downside. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where individual initiative mattered and was rewarded, but it doesn't. It becomes "why haven't you delivered XYZ", and the vague ephemeral reasoning of "well A, B and C for team D needed fixing" is not an excuse, and now you can't pay your mortgage anymore.
How much money does movie maker bring Microsoft? Now which executive would want to prioritize movie maker so much that they would directionally alter the company to fix this? Consider the issue that the execs had was fixing all the issues involved a huge number of teams.
Discredit to Bill here but I honestly think he was the only one who had the power to fix this. A Jobs-like figure is the only person with the organizational power and freedom to drive details like this to completion. Anyone else would end up in a power struggle