Firstly, they say right before the line you cherry-picked that they're not an individual contributor. But your statement makes the implicit assumption that you are one or the other. If you're not a manager, you much be an IC, if you're not an IC, you must be a manager.
The best organizations I've ever worked for have had their front-line managers still responsible for significant IC-type work. If you work somewhere where the lowest management level has a dozen direct reports and spends all day every day doing "management things," run away as fast as you can because they have no idea what they're doing. The lowest management level at my current role can expect at most 2 reports if they're managing a different team than what they came from, and at most 3 if they're getting moved from IC to management on the same team. The other ~60% of their time is spent writing code and doing these "Staff+" tasks. There can absolutely be a gray area and in the best organizations there definitely is. The top 2-3 IC levels and the bottom 1-2 management levels will be nearly indistinguishable from each other with the exception of whether or not you have direct reports.
Firstly, they say right before the line you cherry-picked that they're not an individual contributor. But your statement makes the implicit assumption that you are one or the other. If you're not a manager, you much be an IC, if you're not an IC, you must be a manager.
The best organizations I've ever worked for have had their front-line managers still responsible for significant IC-type work. If you work somewhere where the lowest management level has a dozen direct reports and spends all day every day doing "management things," run away as fast as you can because they have no idea what they're doing. The lowest management level at my current role can expect at most 2 reports if they're managing a different team than what they came from, and at most 3 if they're getting moved from IC to management on the same team. The other ~60% of their time is spent writing code and doing these "Staff+" tasks. There can absolutely be a gray area and in the best organizations there definitely is. The top 2-3 IC levels and the bottom 1-2 management levels will be nearly indistinguishable from each other with the exception of whether or not you have direct reports.