Helping other people grow has also been important to me. Mentorship and teaching have always been things I prioritized. When I moved into a management role a couple of years ago it was because I’d done the principal level IC thing before where I was extremely cross-functional and I wanted to try focusing on a specific part of the business and a specific team of people and try to grow them. I wanted to grow vertically rather than horizontally.
I think I’m a pretty good manager, based on feed back from my team and my peers, but the reality is that it’s enormously more draining than I ever imagined and there’s very little to concretely feel satisfied about at the end of a given day. When I became a manager I thought I’d just code in my spare time since I wouldn’t be coding at work, but in reality I’m far far more burned out from any given day of management than I ever was from the most stressful day as an IC. It’s hard to find the motivation after work, and I worry about my skills slipping over time.
In an abstract sense it feels good to see a product grow, and to grow a team, but practically speaking none of the success is mine. Every good thing that gets done is thanks to the people on my team. Their growth and accomplishments are ultimately thanks to them. I facilitate, I give direction, I find alignment and build consensus, hopefully I make things easier- but I personally accomplish nothing. It feels like being stuck running at top speed on a treadmill going nowhere. Being a manager means taking on none of the credit when things go well, and all of the blame when things go poorly.
Unfortunately, part of what got me into management at all was caring about the product and the people and no matter how much it sucks giving up and going back to an IC role seems worse. I don’t want to leave my team unsupported or risk them getting a worse manager, and I don't want to see the product my team owns fail due to a lack of leadership. I’m hopeful that in a few more years with more experience I’ll figure out ways to be happier with the situation, and until then I just try to remember that most people hate their jobs and I’m just lucky to have had almost 20 years of loving mine before moving into management.