After working as an engineer for about 5 years, you are eventually asked to control the budget and production schedule for a project, and you are assigned people to help you get the job done. If you fail, you don't get asked again. Generally this implies that you've got a staff of some sort, and that you're responsible for all of the tasks being handled by all of your staff. I've managed two startup departments, where I started with zero staff and built a department up from the ground. I've also managed engineering departments with as many as 19 professional and hourly staff members.
Management is an unpredictable job, and it has good days and bad days.
A good manager makes sure that everyone in a department has everything they need to get their job done as efficiently as is possible. I currently manage two departments. One is a Software Engineering department, and the other is an Information Systems department. Fortunately, since I have some control over what happens in the departments, I still get to do some of the work. If it weren't for the technical challenges, I'd go nuts being a paper-pushing manager.