I’d be interested in the things that will change dramatically. What kind of changes did you appreciate? Which ones did you not?
What I didn't like? Finding out "how the sausage was made." I found out very quickly that decisions weren't made on real metrics like we were always told. Everything was literally just "X screamed the loudest this week and I need to impress them for my next promotion so this is now a priority." In more than a few meetings I found out that a lot of the non-technical managers just looked at the dev team as an assembly line of labor to be pushed to the breaking point just so they could pretend the needle was moving (which often led to a lot of shoddy code that was just made to 'get it working now').
I made it a point to still be a hands on developer by taking non-critical path items on our projects... but even then I eventually had to step back for a while as I discovered in some orgs, any empty space on your calendar will be filled with another inane meeting where nothing is actually discussed or solved.
Going back to being a senior developer in a new org in a few weeks and looking forward to it. I am leaving my team in a good place, got a lot of farewell messages thanking me for always going to the mat for the team and showing them my appreciation even when upper management wanted me to chop heads off. I knew how hard they were working, the long hours they were putting in, and how exhausted they were.
I like leading and mentoring, but I will never ascribe to the school of dictatorial / machismo fear-based leadership. A good leader is a servant that reduces friction and clears the way. A good leader has empathy and compassion. My management above me wanted to beat that out of me and it left me burned out and exhausted. Don't sell your soul to the company... remember your team is made up of people.