No, this is incompetent management.

Senior engineers write enabling code/scaffolding, and review code, and mentor juniors. They also write feature code.

Lead engineers code and lead dev teams.

Principal engineers code, and talk about tech in meetings.

Senior Principal engineers, and distinguished technologists/fellows talk about tech, and maybe sometimes code.

Good managers go to meetings and shield the engineers from the stream of exec corporate bs. Infrequently they may rope any of the engineers in this chain in to explain the decisions that the engineers make along the way.

Bad managers bring engineers in to these meetings frequently.

Terrible managers make the engineering decisions and push those to the engineers.

Half of those meetings are business MBAs asking “Why isn’t more getting done on this project?”