[throw49sjwo1]

It was meant to be mostly a joke, I agree it's vague and I do the same as you do. Though the point stands - very senior or principal engineers/developers/architects are not there to write code.

A team lead should be hands on, I agree. But there are also technical people who operate above teams and even above departments - those probably don't code much. Most of their time is probably spent in business/strategy meetings and writing stuff in Jira and Confluence.

A principal engineer can be on the same hierarchy/influence level as a very senior manager or director, leading hundreds of people.