Yes, and senior is supposed to be the highest rank of IC. But at some point, people gave this advice to call yourself a consultant instead of a freelancer... and it worked. So we have to live with this new term, and so do actual consultants.
I prefer contractor because it doesn't have the same stigma as freelancer, and is still accurate about their relationship.
My wife is from civil/construction engineering and she thinks terms like developer, engineer, and architect are all BS when software people use them. But idk, eventually we need terms for what we do.
Well, if we aren’t developing (creating and bringing to life new software solutions), engineering (designing and building software systems), or architecting (planning and structuring the overall framework of software), what are we doing then?
Now that you mention it, I prefer the term consultant over freelancer