I don't have a "boss" I have a "manager" or "team lead".
I don't work "under" or "for" my "manager", I work "with" them.
If you understand that connotations of words matter, you should use other words. When you start to use other words, you might start to act differently. When you start to act differently your manager might too.
Meanwhile, your manager sounds terrible. My condolences.
P.S. This TED talk[0] is all about power dynamics, and its kinda cool, give it a watch. But seriously, stop using the words you do because every time you do, you subconsciously convince yourself they have more power than you do.
The boss has the power to terminate your employment relationship. You have the same power. If you are in software, most likely you'll find a new job long before they find a replacement. That's certainly true of my team.
What "power" do you believe the boss has that an employee doesn't?
The boss can usually harm the subordinate's quality of life much more than the subordinate can harm the boss's quality of life. If you are fired than you immediately have less income. Your reputation is damaged if people learn of it. If you quit then it rarely causes any harm to the boss. They still have the same income. They probably have several other subordinates. Power imbalance is the defining characteristic of the boss/subordinate relationship. The boss can give orders and the subordinate will obey because the consequences if they refuse are worse for them than for the boss. This is what you pay to gain the stability of employment.
If I or most of my colleagues are fired we'll have less income for a month or two. Our lifestyle won't change [1] unless we want it to. In contrast, if my employees quit, my projects are significantly slowed, I need to spend a lot of effort hiring new ones (I hate hiring) and I'll look bad.
Furthermore, insofar as costs are unequal, that's merely a reflection of the principal/agent problem. Similarly, as a boss (but not an owner), I'm also motivated to overpay my workers; it keeps them happy and helps me get my work done (by hiring better people), and it's not my money that I'm spending.
[1] My colleagues all live in a country with a 30% savings rate and where American levels of financial recklessness are not socially acceptable.
So you choosing to leave is the same as being forced to leave? A boss has power you do not in many ways. They can increase your pay, they can choose the projects you work on and do not work on, they can terminate your employment whether you want it to terminate or not.
Choosing to leave is equivalent to being fired; either my boss or I can unilaterally terminate my employment agreement.
My boss can increase/decrease my pay, and I can either accept or reject the new agreement. I can also demand higher pay or threaten to quit. They can tell me to work on certain projects or I'm fired, I can say I want to work on certain projects or I quit. They can terminate my employment whether I want to or not, I can quit whether they want me to or not.
Employment is a market; a situation characterized by cooperation and mutual agreement. You may choose to pretend you have no agency and are a mere victim to your boss, but I do not. My employees don't pretend this either, which is why I need to keep them happy.
I wonder if it's not in fact that he only has as much power as you yourself give him. Then pretending that he has no power, actually makes it so that he does not have any power over you.
"They can tell you what to do, and how to do it. And if you don't, they can fire you. And when you have no job, you have problems eating, a place to stay, and a much harder time getting jobs."
Our team is excellent with this, and I've truly appreciated it having come from the opposite situation.
It is a small team slowly growing, and I have been there from when it was a team of just engineers to when non-technical, project managers and accounts managers were introduced. All credit to my boss and the project managers themselves for truly understanding how to integrate with rather than herd a team of engineers.
As you said, we all work with eachother. We can ask the PM to create a ticket for us and he can ask us to work on a ticket, but our schedule and priorities are set for the individuals in the team separately through a resourcing meeting. So when a PM comes to me with a ticket he needs done, he will ask "Do you have time this week to work on this task?" and I can reply with "Absolutely, I've been allocated 20% for that project this week and can complete that task in that time.
They do their best to manage the client requirements, the project timeline and time allocation but ultimately it never feels like I work for anyone other than my boss, and even he leads through example and morale rather than orders and processes.
It has been very interesting to see how this all comes together as the team grows and I am super thankful to have been able to experience the transition.
We had one manager come on board, who did not much other than ask us to complete a task, and then ask repeatedly if it were done yet throughout the day, then applying time pressures that didn't exist. To be able to see the different management side by side in the same environment was truly eye opening. The difference in my morale working with the bad manager vs the rest of the team was night and day.
When people do come to me with a new task, I ask them for rationale. If they convince me its worth doing, I do it. If they cannot, I convince them its not worth doing. Sometimes, its not worth doing but needs to be done anyways, and in situations like that, I gently persuade them to talk to anyone else. Its generally someone with less conviction than me.
Have I lost jobs before? Yes. Did I find a new job? Yes.
Managers actually manage. Boss's react (knee jerk). Managers will actively remove barriers in the way of employees. Boss's systematically manipulate their employees due to low self-image.
