The hardest part of stepping up to lead was not the meetings or the politics. It was watching my team solve problems in ways I never would have chosen, and keeping my hands off the keyboard while they did it.
I still miss the code. Writing it is the most fun part of this job, and I have to remind myself most weeks that it is no longer mine to own day to day.
What nobody warns you about is how much of leading is letting go. Their implementation will differ from the one in your head. Sometimes it will be worse, often it will be better, and either way it will not be yours. That gap is where the real adjustment lives.
Early on I filled that gap with correction. I would step in, redirect, tidy up the parts that did not match my mental model, and tell myself I was raising the bar.
I was micromanaging. And micromanaging is distrust dressed up as standards. If I am rewriting your work to match what I would have done, I am telling you I do not trust you to do it without me.
The shift came when I accepted that my job had changed shape rather than shrunk. I am further from the individual lines now, but much closer to the architecture, the customer, and the reason any of it is being built in the first place.
You do not stop being technical when you lead. You stop being the one who has to be right about every detail.
That has taken me years, and I still catch myself reaching for the keyboard.