I took it as a like IC promotion - senior to staff or something - but you raise an excellent point.

A promotion into managing people comes with dealing with people's ego and emotions and you have their compensation and well being tied up in it as well...

I've had some gigs where I've sorta shirked managing people - I hate dealing with performance reviews and the like. But I have liked mentoring people, so I've accepted dotted-line reports where the actual management responsibilities fall to my boss and I help people build cool things while leading some team that does that.