Comment by JaumeGreen

Engineering Manager can be a social role with some tech aspects.

You attend meetings, negotiate deadlines, evaluate people, navigate project minefields, take decisions or force people to take them,... and the technical aspects are quite minimised.

Depending on the company this is not an upgrade, it's a lateral move. I have people under me who earn more than me, and I agree with that.

The job it's not easy, it's different. Spending 5 hours on meetings it's easy, but exhausting. Giving credit to your people but taking the blame (which is what should be done) it's easy, but demoralising. Not having a peer group of people with whom easily socialise makes the job feels lonely, when you talk with other managers it's 99% work related, and you can't make your people like you as a person.

Most days I'd love to have a clear objective.

One of the worst is the strange feeling that you have because you've studied for a long time some skills, and worked using them, and now those are hardly used. You need to use a set of skills that you haven't trained for, and haven't used as much (depending on your personality/skillset, of course).

Being a manager is not for everyone.