It’s never any fun to pull teeth. We’ve seen team leaders do all the right things to build incredibly strong teams only to have these teams fail to excel (and eventually fall apart) because of just one or two low performers. We understand that the human aspect is the most challenging part of writing software, but the most difficult part of dealing with humans is handling someone who isn’t meeting expectations.
This is a good chance to scare you away from management so you are more aware and sure of what you're getting into: dealing with low performers is unpleasant, hard, and time consuming.
It's unpleasant letting someone know they're a low performer, which you may have to do. Worse, firing someone is also unpleasant — both when you wish you didn't have to and even when you're glad to finally get to. (If you don't find it unpleasant, I'm inclinedto believe you're not a good manager 😬 because we should have sympathy even for those who "deserve it.")
It's hard. It's a difficult skill to let someone know they're under-performing in a healthy and productive way.
And it's time consuming. Learning how to effectively deal with it, managing performance, handling PIPs, etc.. Meanwhile, it's pulling you away from the positive pattern, which you want to do: spending your time with best performers (learning from them as well as doing what you can to empower them and make them even more effective).
