I miss doing the work. Is managing people enough?

You climbed, and now you spend your days in meetings, reviews, and other people's problems instead of the work that made you good at this in the first place. You tell yourself management is the reward. Some days you don't believe it. Here is what you are avoiding: management is not a consolation prize for people too senior to do real work. It is real work, with its own skill, its own failures, and its own craft. You feel hollow not because you chose wrong, but because you have not yet chosen at all. You are doing the manager's schedule while still wanting the maker's satisfaction. Your team feels this. A leader who is half-present, still reaching for the old bench, gives them a manager who is not really managing. Decide what you are doing here — not someday, this week — and your people will feel the difference before you explain a word of it.