I am in a similar boat and it is exhausting. It is very hard to manage people effectively and do individual contributor level work at the same time. Many people

I am in a similar boat and it is exhausting. It is very hard to manage people effectively and do individual contributor level work at the same time. Many people I know after a short stint in management returned to IC work and that is fine and respectable choice. If you do stay in management, get your priorities straight. You do need to be the jack of many trades but these are probably not the trades you are thinking of. Your first and foremost priority is building the right team. Hiring right people, giving autonomy and sense of purpose to the team members. You want people that are smart but even more importantly you want people that get things done with little or no supervision. Having said that your second most important priority is to get people unstuck. Be it your gravitas in organization, making the right introduction, or sharing a critical piece of knowledge - check in with your team regularly and actively ask if there are stumbling blocks or blockers. Many people are good in asking for help but there are many for whom it is hard. I could go on but the point is that the trades you want to master in management are more like: communication, courage to delegate, empathy, accountability, being able to make decisions on imperfect information and deal with whatever consequences come up, etc. EDIT: if you are leaning more towards individual contributor role, you will probably either find startups more interesting OR - if you looking for seniority - find an organization that has parallel ladders for management and individual contributors. Those companies will have positions that are worded “staff engineer” or “principal engineer” and tend to be on a larger side.