Management and administration, though, can be just as taxing. It's a lot of people interaction, which can be draining. It's also a job where you have to keep a bunch of balls in the air without dropping them. I've done a little of both as anchor/lead in previous roles and it's draining to do either and especially draining to do both (but extremely rewarding).
Coding can be quite satisfying. I make something, I can see it working, I know I contributed something useful. In management roles, both contributions and feedback are much more indirect. Often it's not clear whether the work is useful and what the work even is. If something is not right, as an engineer I can just fix it, while as a manager I need to convince other people to fix it for me.
Also, managers generally stand between teams. While as an engineer in a team, interactions are generally positive if the team is working towards a shared goal. Managers on the other hand typically liaise between groups that have conflicting goals.
It isn't just managing the day to day or the current project, but it's managing the growth of the team for the future. Seeing the results of your work may take days, weeks, months or even years.
Also, dealing with conflict (and there will be conflict) between team members, teams or other managers can drain a lot of energy out of me. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I just want to do absolutely nothing.
We could avoid 75% of our meetings if the business knew their processes. If only they could make a business process map...