I was the direct manager for software engineers at a big public hosting company. Being a line manager was miserable. I thought going into management I'd have mo

I was the direct manager for software engineers at a big public hosting company. Being a line manager was miserable. I thought going into management I'd have more ability to influence things but I had less. I had no time to write code, and so I wasn't taking part in technology decisions outside of approving with whatever the team decided, and they are smart people, they didn't need any hand holding. I couldn't influence anything at all with the director who managed me, all I did was communicate whatever he wanted to the engineers. I couldn't influence other teams. I basically sat in meetings, listened to 1-1's and just relayed information. Another team had someone struggling and so I got to do a bit of mentoring there, but I didn't have to be a manager to do that. It just seemed like I was always fighting with HR for my engineers, fighting my boss for my engineers, trying to get other teams to respond to my engineer's needs. It sucked. I think the people on my team were happy with me, but I want to write code. I want to make things. Engineering has a career track that makes sense, when I looked at managers who were my peers I saw politics, and one-upsmanship. I just want to make good products. I don't want to play mind games. I want to do the best I can. I don't need to rise up the ranks. I just want to learn and do cool things with software. It was a great learning experience though, because before I became a manager I thought that was like a natural progression, something that I had to do, something that I felt I couldn't shirk from, something where people recognized me for my skills, but in reality it's just a shit job, a dead end, unless you're one of the few who advances up the latter, because you know what, all of my managers and my manager's managers were all just relaying their manager's will down the pyramid. When you are a software engineer you see things you do create value. You build things that work and do stuff. When you're a manager, I have no idea what I contributed. What did I do last week where I earned my pay? I have no idea. Anyway, I'm glad I survived and am back to writing code. It involved getting a new job at a new place as soon as possible before I got too rusty. I was writing code at home all that time so that helped.