So you hate being a manager

livemint.com:

Sick of managing people? Maybe you should stop. So many of us stumble into being the boss, or raise our hands because it feels like the only way to get ahead. We’re attracted to the cachet of the title, the promise of more money or the comfort of having a ladder to ascend.

Then come the performance reviews to write, the team drama to adjudicate, the meetings to attend. The job keeps getting harder. Managers oversee nearly three times as many people today as they did in 2017, according to data from research and advisory firm Gartner.

Nearly one in five managers says that, given a choice, they’d prefer not to oversee people. “That’s what we call buyer’s remorse," says Swagatam Basu, a senior director in Gartner’s human-resources practice. You can switch back.

And your company might be amenable. More are “unbossing" their workplaces by shrinking middle-management layers. The trick is figuring out a way to maintain your pay and influence.

In some companies, the number of people you manage is a proxy for your power. Others now use special individual-contributor tracks, meant to ensure that technical experts have a set path to climb. You might have to give something up.

Making the shift could still feel like a relief. “It was like, oh, I don’t have to deal with the people issues," says Suzet McKinney, an executive at Sterling Bay, a Chicago real-estate company. She’d served in leadership positions before.

When she started her current role in 2021—no pay cut required—she figured she’d eventually hire direct reports and build out a team. Then she realized she didn’t miss it. “Managing people would be more of a distraction," she says.