Ultimately, though, I'm afraid I can't summon too much sympathy for a PI who thinks this way, because they knew exactly what they were getting into when they accepted that promotion. It is common knowledge that the tradeoff you make upon becoming PI is that you get the authority to direct the research aims while sacrificing the ability to do them yourself.
Exaggerating somewhat, a PI gets 100% of the intellectual freedom and responsibility, and has 0% of the fun. A grad student or postdoc gets 0% and 100%. I was looking for something like 50%/50%.