Perhaps it's easiest to list what I don't or cannot do: performance management, individual strengths and weaknesses (I'm more limited here since my project team

Perhaps it's easiest to list what I don't or cannot do: performance management, individual strengths and weaknesses (I'm more limited here since my project teams have 3-4 engineers), cost centers vs profit centers & business landscape. As an IC, I lack authority and have to rely more on influence. A good manager relies on influence by default but some things are very hard to achieve without some authority (as distasteful as it may seem). For me, getting folks to pull in the same direction consistently over a long period of time is hard. Getting folks to appreciate why doing this thing rather than another (because business value) is hard. And I am well aware that I can and do also make life hard for my manager in exactly the same way! Humans are hard.