A lot of users don't realize how many of the whales are letting curation efforts use their votes. It's very important and has helped a lot of people out, including me. If your post gets into the latter time frame with little payout and suddenly jumps to $15-$20, there's a good chance that a curation effort has found it and helped it in order to encourage you... using some whale voting power.
IMO, folks need to quit complaining. It's distracting and harmful to Steemit. Sometimes the resentment drips from their posts, as though they think that anyone who has a large account somehow owes them something.
Why do some of these folks have huge accounts? Some got in early. Some invested a TON of dough (did you see laonie's comment?). Some have worked hard from early on.
I see someone like smooth, who's invested resources, works his butt off to make Steemit better and is incredibly generous with both his time and voting power and can't imagine someone denigrating whales in general. Same for many others.