I was ill suited to be manager in hindsight. I am a good developer, I am not great with people. I wanted it because it seemed like the next logical step in career progression but I was not good at managing people.

I am very glad I left. I have spoken on here before about how it gave me stress induced health issues.

Were you a lead or a manager?

Did you take a salary cut?

Both? I was in charge of our codebase as well as managing our developers.

Is that not how it always is? Everywhere I have worked "Lead Developer" has been a management position, such that your team reports to you.

No, it was actually a pretty significant pay increase. I went from a very small company to a larger one.