Those are not engineers then, they're managers.

It's strange to see this confusion when it comes to software. Any other discipline and you wouldn't say engineers that don't do any engineering are the best engineers.

They are still ICs, not people managers.

Project management != people management.

Either way, IC means primarily a producer of work product, not a manager.

Project management!= manager. And your PM/PO whatever won't coach your junior devs...

That’s usually what poor engineers tell themselves

Your best engineers are both.

You can't do both unless you are one in your team.

The more people, the less code you'll do.

Software engineering goals is to solve human problems, you can't escape human relation, which eventually means facilitating stuff.