I'm like you, in that I started in management (center manager at Kaplan Test Prep) and then became an engineer. After 7 years programming my opportunity to become a manager again came at a small startup when the CTO left. I was already lead engineer so I made a case to the founders that it would ease the transition if I were promoted instead of bringing in someone from the outside.
The transition for the company was smooth but for me it sucked. More meetings, less coding, more BS. I spent so much time writing status reports and making spreadsheets. Management was so dysfunctional that they spent more time focusing on micromanaging teams than growing the business.
Overall it was worth it to get the bigger salary and title on my resume, but I never want to deal with that again.
I'm fairly new to management myself and I've been reading a lot of articles recently to improve my abilities. Here are some of the blogs and websites I've read (hopefully you'll find them useful as well):
- https://www.gitprime.com/blog/newsletter/
- http://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/
- http://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/things-ive-learned-transit...
- http://firstround.com/review/making-engineering-team-communi...
- http://blog.lunarlogic.io/2017/effective-collaboration-super...
- http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-...
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14726130