> Your manager...“I don’t [know how it goes]. I went to business school.”

There's the problem.

Organizations whose leaders aren't able to discern your actual value are going to be miserable places to work. You play their games or baffle them with BS. But you don't get to attain any sort of authentic actualization.

...

Take my pessimistic commentary with a grain of salt. I'm job searching at the moment for a software manager role and the opportunity landscape is a wasteland of b2b insurance widget companies, usury companies, and AI dead-ends. If you want to build things that help real people, you may have to DIY.