My motivation was quite different, and i'd like to encourage more people to consider the same.

Often times narcissistic power grabbing (often technically incompetent) engineers become managers, like it was the case a previous team I've worked at and it was quite penalizing to the whole team.

I've realized that either i can be the one managing and try to do good, or be at the mercy of another manager; chose the first.

This is what taught me to sublimate my own ego. Overcoming the wickedness of others with patient, meditative calm can be an incredible experience. It just takes longer than a business day to play out. You've gotta think across much grander time scales. 3 steps ahead, at minimum, at all times. Burn these people out of your team. Take charge and stay focused on the customer. It often takes non technical people a little bit longer to lock onto complex problems and downstream consequences. It's taken me nearly 2 years to deal with one bad hire. All I can fantasize about is being in a position to never hire that kind of person again. The destruction some people can cause in a business is unthinkable to those who haven't seen it yet. I didn't believe these people existed until it was way too late.

I still prefer to solve technology problems, but I see a bigger and more important mission out there. Keeping the team happy and aligned on the customer is much more rewarding overall. I'd rather 5% dev time in paradise than 95% dev time in hell.