You are 100% correct. I manage a team now that I don't really have time to guide and am probably stricter with them than I need to be because of it. Additionally I am constantly behind on my deliverables to Sr. leadership because I don't have time to focus on the constant flow of busy work they keep giving me because they need data for some report to their leaders. I have no one that I can delegate this work too. I'm also working in an agile environment and have no scrum master. In addition I don't have time to think, I am just constantly pinged and in meetings. My blocked time on the calendar is not respected. Yesterday I had 9 meetings. Its impossible to do any type of deep work. Honestly its really not great. Salary is helpful though.
If anyone ever asks me "I want to burn out as fast as possible, what should I do?" I will send them the link to your comment.
Jokes aside, I think that I had very similar experience, and it does lead to burnout
If you care about total compensation, “grind LeetCode and work for a FAANG” (haha only serious)
I went from the Dev lead in 2016 in a medium size health care company, to a senior dev/de facto “cloud architect” at a startup to mid level “cloud consultant” at $BigTech. Each job came with more money - and the current one a step change in compensation - and less responsibility and less headaches.
You are not wrong. I used to think I wanted to work in leadership and now that I'm there it kind of sucks. At least the middle manager level I am at. I have really started considering doing exactly as you suggest, just grinding for a year and then going for a FAANG position. I currently make more money than I ever imagined (I grew up on food stamps) and its far less than what FAANG SR's make. The thought of being able to make more than this with half of the responsibility sounds incredible and I am leaning in that direction.
I'm done complaining now :)