About 6 years ago, I was in a very similar place and it motivated me to get into management so I could focus on cutting through that red tape for my devs while

About 6 years ago, I was in a very similar place and it motivated me to get into management so I could focus on cutting through that red tape for my devs while escalating the problems caused by it to higher ups. I realized that if I could help people work 5% more efficiently at even a small company, it would outpace the value of me trying to work 24 hours a day as a single programmer. I do consulting now and when I get to see the response from dev, product and QA teams when they get to experience better first hand it's rewarding. Hearing excitement about the changes from execs first hand is wonderful. If that's not your cup of tea though, try learning something that makes you think differently. For me, this was getting into Elixir and Phoenix. I binge-read Programming Phoenix in about 24 hours and my colleagues will tell you I haven't shut up about it ever since. :-)