The only management experience I've had was as a team lead at a US-based consulting company. It was really stressful because I felt like I was managing a team that wasn't capable of doing the work. I was expected to spend at least some of my time coding, and was responsible for the overall project. This is the first time it has occurred to me that this might have been intentionally set up to exploit me while maximizing the amount we can charge the client.
> this might have been intentionally set up to exploit me while maximizing the amount we can charge the client
This was the sense I got from a friend's situation: he works for a consulting firm managing a large offshore team billed as "Oracle Experts" who are in reality completely incompetent. (Side note: How would a bunch of young third-world devs go about mastering a niche technology to the expert level?) The offshore team meets their contractual obligation by committing nonsense SLOC everyday that contains vague references to the requirements. But as the quarters roll by, it never actually meets requirements. So my friend learned the only way to deliver is for him to personally implement the solutions while juggling semi-daily meetings with the clients and the offshore team. The client is happy in the end, but it all takes a lot longer than it would he could drop the offshore team entirely.
In this situation, the value of the offshore team is they make the client believe that 1) their problems can only be solved by a large team and 2) they are paying less for this team than they would otherwise.