The very essence of being a boss is having the means to force you subordinates to submit to you, and at most companies I've worked with that's an explicit primary benefit to the rank!
The "very essence" of being a boss is knocking out obstacles for the people under you. That is what a boss actually does, not tell people what to do. Sure, a boss translates vague prioritization from above to meaningful and actionable items for his/her team to work through, but the only "power" a boss has is the ability to absorb shit so the people under him/her don't have to.
The boss also has a boss, who has a boss, and so on and so on, up to the CEO, who has a boss (the board and/or shareholders). No one gets to "force subordinates to submit" to anyone, at least not for very long.
> The "very essence" of being a boss is knocking out obstacles for the people under you. That is what a boss actually does, not tell people what to do.
Those types of managers/bosses are great, and are some of my favorite people because they simply allow me to do what needs doing while shielding me from bullshit. But by no stretch of the imagination (or certainly the experience of workers as a whole) do they represent every manager/boss. If you've been lucky or sheltered enough to avoid the kind that aren't like that, you should reflect on that as a fortuitous outcome and maybe consider that your experience isn't everyone's experience.
I am not a helpless passenger in my life, so I don't get "stuck" with bosses who treat me like cattle. I anticipate problems like this and preemptively deal with them, and you should too.
