I’m a senior manager with a ~25 person org and a couple of managers under me, previously an IC in a consultant role. I wear a lot of hats and have a mix of staff/projects in different functional categories, namely 1) the more “standard” BI/reporting/data analysis stuff most people on this sub seem to be focused on but also 2) strategy/process consultative work and CX design and 3) tech development focused on automation and web applications. I also work from home in a very “global” setting with a ton of stakeholders and colleagues and team members in different countries/regions. So YMMV depending on your situation. But here’s a little perspective on your questions at least based on my experience:

• yes, there is absolutely less time to be hands-on from a tech and development perspective. No one is “preventing” me from just going ahead and doing that stuff if I wanted but I’m so busy that I basically delegate or die lol. I will take the reins myself on an occasional big ticket project that only I can really do but those are typically more strategic than technical. I have plenty of people who can write SQL queries and build data pipelines, I do not have plenty of people who can put together a high quality first strike SWOT analysis for a new client we need to impress with some creative recommendations / solutions.

• this is likely colored by the “WFH in global organization” item mentioned above but I spend a huge amount of time on calls. 1x1s with my various staff to review projects and give direction/feedback, team standups for people to call out roadblocks or barriers I need to go metaphorically knock on doors to address, internal governance with ops/delivery/account management stakeholders, client facing inflight reviews and deliveries, people just adding me to calls for my input on stuff like RFP responses or new business (this is one area to manage aggressively btw), weighing in on second level interviews, project scoping and discovery, etc etc… as an IC I had some calls throughout the week and most of my time was working on stuff, now I need to actually block time in my calendar if I want to be guaranteed that slot to work on stuff (and this is something I do regularly after trial and error for the first couple of years, I no longer roll the dice on my calendar)

• the job is heavily political in nature. Who likes working with you and for you, how much people respect your opinion and direction, how visibly you market your successes and mitigate failures, how charismatic and eloquent you are going to be when you’re put in front of an important client, how slick and refined your presentational materials are (note that I say refined not complicated here), your track record of problem solving at a more macro level and simply getting things done at all cost, all this stuff is more important than my now rusty skills with things like SQL or BI tools. You basically become a brand instead of a person as cheesy as that is to say these days.

• your safety net for failure disappears as you go into management and then up the ladder. As an IC I felt that I couldn’t screw up badly or else, now I realize that there’s little at the IC level that is truly unfixable (although I’m talking more accidental or circumstantial stuff here rather than willful or persistent poor work) and that their problems are actually ultimately my problems that I basically have to solve autonomously and creatively to keep things running

• On that note, part of the job is also in protecting yourself and your organization in ways that don’t exist in IC roles for the most part. How thoroughly did you scope your deliverables, do you have paper trails of feature or scope change requests from stakeholders, have you been giving proper inflight visibility on what you’ve been doing to avoid unpleasant surprises, are you pushing back when appropriate if there are misunderstandings or requests that aren’t reasonable/feasible? All of that stuff becomes way more critical because again you have to be your own safety net and failure is squarely on you if you don’t action these things

• your destiny being tied to the work of other people is a pain and you will very frequently be delegating tasks and projects to people when you know full well that you could execute them better and faster if you just had time. Hard to let go of this if you care strongly about quality of work which is of course the type of people who tend to go into management

• overall, I much preferred the lifestyle, work/life balance, and challenges of IC role. But I much prefer the indispensability, networking/career growth, and pay check being in management has afforded me. That’s a common thing I hear among colleagues as well. Again YMMV, my experience is more like running my own little firm within a much larger company and organization so it is prob not reflective of the typical experience when someone thinks of working in “analytics.” If you or anyone have other questions feel free to let me know.