Have you been a manager of managers? This sounds like the same problem the GP described (the problems are invisible until you are in the role).

An upper level management job can be very stressful. You have very little visibility into progress or issues, but are responsible for setting direction and making decisions with many consequences. If you get involved, you’re called a micromanager. If you don’t, you’re out of touch.

Cross-organizational pushes become harder, with more inertia, and more perverse incentives dragging things down. You spend all your time debugging the mess of an organization, not on the things that brought you to the industry.

It can be a very stressful, unpleasant job. I am not trying to claim it’s harder, or that the pay is proportionate or whatever. But the idea that they can rely on the work of others, coast by, and get the benefits is not at all true from what I have seen.

I worked mostly in startups and FAANG, maybe other sectors are different.