As someone who joined and then departed the management track fairly recently, there’s another aspect here that’s not mentioned, but contributed to my finding other work: as what I’ll politely call social awareness has grown in companies, even technical managers are expected to buy into and boost to their team a lot of policies I flatly do not agree with. Not too long ago prime concerns for employment were suitability to the job, now it’s whether they’re the correct gender or race. Team dynamics are supposed to focus on sharing deep meaningful emotional personal things which I believe is both inappropriate and unprofessional (and hurts team dynamics). I was subjected to sensitivity training where I was supposed to admit my racism/sexism by virtue of not being a female POC, and new employees who were not white men (or H1Bs) know they can get away with all kinds of bullshit because while they may not have been diversity hires the company is highly motivated to keep a diverse-appearing workforce. Conversations about technology or business basically became nonexistent - I felt like I was being asked to be a social worker first and only. Eventually it became so frustrating I left for an IC role and couldn’t be happier. Now when my boss asks if I want to get involved an effort to root out all the bad technical words we use and replace them with rightthink I can just say no thank you instead of pretending I buy into any of it.