This is why I don't really want to get back into management, even though sometimes I think at some point it will be the only thing I'll have the patience and mental capacity to do. I saw the best and worst of myself when I was a manager- the worst is what scared me. But moreover, I learned after I stopped being a manager that I didn't deserve the accolades I got. If you were to take the best manager in the world, give him/her a shitty team, a hell of shitty code, shitily designed application and infrastructure, a shitty relationship with the customers/users, shitty support team, and shitty project/product/upper management, and you don't let that manager work to fix these things, they'll quit or fail, guaranteed. If you give them the best of all of these things, they will succeed, guaranteed. Being a good manager- knowing how to manage well and doing it, can be critical. However, it is nothing on its own.