Pretty much every company I’ve been in or know of values a vertical trajectory instead of a horizontal one for its employees i.e becoming a manager nearly always means a faster salary progression than becoming an expert in one or multiple fields.
Why is expertise valued less?
Putting it this way, project management is a skill that requires expertise. Lots of Laborers have the expertise to be the subcontractor, not all of them succeed at being the contractor/foreman.
The majority of disfunction in workplaces seems to be that the middle managers don’t have the skills to be there either or they’d have probably been promoted up the ladder even further already