One of my worst job experiences was when I depended on a colleague who wouldn't deliver. Any feedback or conversations with that colleague mostly resulted in tantrums and empty promises.

The lack of delivery severely harmed the services I provided to the company and to external users, ruined team morale, and was a huge source of stress.

My boss always turned the problem back on me, despite him also being my colleague's boss.

I tried everything I could for 18 months and had extensive documentation of all my attempts, sometimes working in parallel with my boss or using his recommendations.

Still, the problems persisted and every time I brought it up with my boss it was as if he was oblivious to the ongoing saga. I want to HR and over his head about it and he always fed me shit about "empowerment" and "growth."

Yeah, I was empowered to interview with other company's and grew into other new roles.

You're describing one end of an extreme.

The opposite extreme is you have someone on your team who is only able to resolve conflicts by having their boss intervene.

E.g. you leave some critical feedback in a PR review. The author of the PR doesn't like your comments, so they tell your mutual boss, then your boss comes to you to ask why you left the comments in the PR, instead of the author coming to you directly.

Obviously there are cases where it's appropriate for you and a coworker to address a problem directly with each other. And there are cases where it makes more sense for your boss to intervene.

The problem is the culture at some jobs gravitate towards either end of the extreme. The ideal is somewhere in the middle. A good manager will find that balance.

There's a good chance he was an executive's nephew or some other protected class.