Real managers deal with coaching, ownership, feelings, politics, communication, consensus building, etc. The people who are good at it like setting other people up to win.
> I’d think there would be very, very few people who are actively seeking people drama
Theoretically as a manager you get the bump up the power dynamic ladder (and probably pay ladder) because you are taking on the responsibility of "people drama". Being a good manager is antithetical to treating living, breathing human beings as NPCs in a game.
In engineering the only teams that win are the teams that ship code. Dealing with coaching, ownership, feelings, politics, etc, should all arrive at the same outcome: ship code.
Shipping code is not the end goal of engineering. In fact, more code you ship more liability you have. Main goal is solving problems.
> Engineering is the practice of [...] solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve systems. [0]