Not everyone in my position is a sniveling little shit, as much as you may think. I do get paid more than my team, but not by some ridiculous margin. The lowest paid person gets 70% what I do and the highest paid person is at 95%. When I took over it was no shit closer to 40% for the lowest paid member. I fought for that to be fixed and burned up a lot if political capital doing it too.

When COVID came along and pay cuts and layoffs were a real threat, I told my boss to cut my salary before anyone else's. We never had to, thankfully, but I literally told him I would quit if they cut one of my subordinates pay or laid them off without first taking out of my pocket.

I had a direct report who, for three years wanted to be in a leadership role. I fought for a new position for him and put my own ass on the line recommending him for promotion every chance I got. He's been promoted past me and I hope (since I can't see his salary anymore) he is getting paid more than me because he's earned it.

I'm not some superstar manager, but I do feel like I keep my team out of the political battles and turf wars so they can focus on doing what they do best without dealing with all that crap. That's my job. When something goes wrong, I'm accountable. So when the people doing the work get it wrong and take a critical system offline by fat fingering a command, I'm the one answering the phones and taking all the shit for it and smoothing things over with stake holders. And unless it was a result of gross negligence, I'm not going to give them hell for it either because I've fucking been there before.

I didn't even want this damn job. I was perfectly happy being the technical lead and not having job recruiting and performance reviews to do, but I took it because I knew at the very least I would do my best to advocate for the people I care about, and that's not something I could say about everyone who applied.

So you can make snap judgements and assume because I manage a team that I'm just collecting a paycheck while everyone else does all the hard work, but I don't and I won't because it's unethical and shitty and despite your own insecurities, I actually give a fuck about other people.