1. Known quality of life and work decrease for having to focus on middle management tasks instead of getting my hands dirty.

2. Big gamble on not knowing what kind of manager we might get.

So, I declined and gambled on a new manager. So far, this has gone terribly. Our group morale and productivity is super low as we now have a petty micromanager with no technical skills a technical team. They insert themselves into our processes with no knowledge of how any of it works, demand that they are cc’d on all communications with any manager or above, and complain when we disagree with their opinions, calling that disagreement disrespectful.

I have been looking at job boards just about every day since.