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I was good at it. I was being groomed to take on a CTO role. But it wasn’t for me. Programming is hard. But for me people are harder.
If it’s possible try going back to the role you like and see if they’ll hire a manager.
Since you seem to have the authority and the freedom, please ask for and hire a manager. As others pointed out, management is not next step to development. They are different skills. I have switched back and forth and in my current role, I have completely given up on managing people. It is probably a step down in terms of pay, but I am more happier.
You are also in a very privileged position of defining the role of that manager. You like some managing tasks? You can keep them. You can even make it your hire, and hire the kind of manager you want to help you with these tasks. Since you can recruit yourself, that person will have some loyalty toward you.
I think you are in a very good position to build your dream job from scratch. Just do it my dude :)
We're in a window—not sure how long it'll last—where the FAANG's and mid-size tech firms have well-defined and well-trodden paths for being a senior developer and _not_ managing. Take advantage of it if you can, while you can, if that's your desire!
I would guess (just making stuff up here) that there's some chance you'd be able to get your company to hire a manager, and some chance they'd be good. But in that small agency-type world especially, you'll be running a risk that if you're not there vetting proposals to make sure marketing didn't promise the moon, you're going to bear the burden when they do .
I wouldn't say your attitude is childish- you're allowed to have personal preferences. I don't think you have to give up on having development be your profession, although you could maybe "scratch that itch" with projects outside work if climbing the ladder is ultimately more important than doing what you'd prefer.
It's a huge problem in tech that companies traditionally try to force engineers into management positions to allow their careers to keep growing. I have had more shitty managers who were just Individual Contributors who were told they needed to manage to succeed past a certain point.
> I tried telling myself that it's a childish and idealistic way of thinking and that it's all a part of career progression regardless of where you work at
The above, however, is no longer true. I work in a smallish tech company (~250ppl) that has gone through a major shift in the past few years to support the career advancement of Individual Contributors; the message being, "You don't need to be a shitty manager if you'd rather be a kick-ass engineer, and we will still provide paths for promotion and advancement."
As other comments have noted, it sounds like maybe your company is just not at a stage of their development that can support pure engineering career paths past a certain point. You do NOT have to be an unhappy manager to succeed in tech. And frankly during a time of economic contraction I feel safer as a valued IC than as a manager whose role could always be 'absorbed' by someone else's position during layoffs.
It sounds like your company is more worried about someone's work product than the person, which is a shitty thing to manage. You shouldn't have to "check on others to ensure they're working as they should." You shouldn't have to "..sit with someone for a couple hours to explains how I'd like things done, or having to fix something they've done wrong." That's a sign that you either micromanage, or you don't have good employees, or both. Daniel Pink's Drive is a good starting point - give people Autonomy, Purpose and a desire for Mastery, they will give you good work. It's not the be-all and end-all, but it's a good place to start.
I didn't like management, until my company offered a management course. Now I actually enjoy it. To me it's about making people the best versions of themselves. It's about learning to listen to people, and see the situation for what it really is rather than the words coming out of people's mouths. For the company, it's so you get the best work out of them, but "getting the best work out of them" doesn't have to be your focus as a manager.
There's a lot more I can say here, but for now I'd suggest reading this article which was on HN yesterday: https://longform.asmartbear.com/docs/fulfillment/ - and ask yourself if this is really what you want to be doing, regardless of any financial incentives to do so.
In FAANG/larger companies they outline the management track and the staff engineer track. It sounds like you simply want to do the latter - so no, there is nothing wrong or unusual with what you are wanting. The problem is those roles are harder to find and grow into in smaller and even medium companies. Eng pay tops out unless you gain management responsibilities whereas at those large companies they will pay staff…
At one point they had a meeting about creating a "technical track". I was in this meeting because I was interested in it. We went around for a while but they basically came back a couple weeks later saying that they don't have the resources to commit to having this track, and admitted they don't really know how it would be sustainable with our business model at the time, nor did they have anybody on the team who had experience with maintaining that kind of track and so it was killed.
We did have the "stronger engineers" who occasionally may still get paid/compensated at a manager level even if they stayed at a slightly lower level not requiring management, but that was about it.
They were also our "big hitters" when it came to putting them on the highest priority projects, and while by nature of consulting most of us were skilled in many different stacks, these people had a specialty that if a project came by that needed that skillset and was high visibility or priority, they were first pick to be on it.
But you had to start managing if you wanted to continue to move up there. I actually ended up leaving because of this, even though they were honestly a great company.