A decent manager, especially a low level manager of ICs, will work hard to shield her charges from the full impact of the company's bureaucracy. And even a mediocre manager can't help but do some of that: they usually still have to approve time off requests and deal with the paperwork for performance evaluations etc.

Yeah, I sometimes miss the more simple IC life. Office politics is a more of a problem in management, but also dealing with humans all the time is just more messy.