Yea, I think the same. Further, I feel bad for ICs and bosses alike because the bosses likely had poor management training (MBA doesn't count - I mean modern me

Yea, I think the same. Further, I feel bad for ICs and bosses alike because the bosses likely had poor management training (MBA doesn't count - I mean modern methods and mentoring/coaching) and are managed by other managers who also never had good training. I find that most people actually really want clearly defined work / goals from their manager and for the manager to be pretty hands off unless they need help, more resources, etc. There's also another class of problem which is that, as a corollary to the above: "You weren't meant to have a job" - ie it's not always easy to execute / enjoy work even when the work is interesting and your boss is great. Anything worth doing is probably going to be challenging and that's going involve some measure of stress.