[AyKarsi]

Of my many years of dev experience I worked 4 as a team lead for a consultancy. Eagerness to earn more money and serve more customers got me into that position. At the end of that time all I wanted, is get into proper project work again and say good bye to all the admin,sales and management bullst.

It is hard enough finding good projects for your employees, being profitable and keeping your admin stuff upto date. If you go down that road, you'll come to realize that you have less and less time for development yourself.

To answer your question directly: Yes I think the management overhead is usually grossly underestimated. Whether it's worth it depends on how what you want to do: Manage consultants, develop, sell projects, have a private life...

You'll be learning a lot of new things, and I definetly don't regret my time, but I know that I love developing and handpick the project I do.