Is this still a true statement?
One very important point to make here – and this is one of the most common questions on the communities – is that you cannot separate the roles of Office 365 global administrator and SharePoint Online Administrator.
– from this blog
I am trying to roll out SharePoint online for the first time, and my IT team has created the O365 environment and now wants to never touch anything SharePoint related again. I have been granted the SharePoint administrator (not global administrator) role. I’m used to administering on-prem.
Am I going to have trouble managing things from that role’s level?