I play nearly exclusively in full households and can confirm that, unless this is a university run, you can spend as little or as much time micromanaging as you like. I do not tend to completely ignore any one Sim, but I always have one that is my primary focus that gets priority. The rest get attention as comfortabley given.
Plus the autonomy works fairly decently and there is not much danger in 4. Death is quite a rare occurrence for me, especially for Sims in my household. (I think I have encountered some bugged deaths of neighbor Sims lately, but that is a completely different thing.) I had to fight fire so much more in previous entries (though most times I have a fire in 4 it is bugged and therefore devastating). So just ignore who you want when you need to.
If anything, rather than hard, it is just annoying to have things like active careers to keep up with, too. If I remember correctly you still have to follow them to work to get your promotion, at least with the GTW ones, and I just consider it a hassle to be limited. Also, multiple households are rotational for me. I never liked story progression of any sort, so that has always been what I have done.
