I’ve seen similar, and the engineer not only had thousands of GitHub stars and forked projects, but they were an excellent team player, natural leader, and terrific developer. What I did see, even then, was sentiment similar to yours, coming from managerial levels above them. Where does the insecurity start, and where does it end?
Can you work with your team? Can you get management what they need to do their job effectively? Can you get what other teams need from you effectively? Can you do the technical work?
All of them are part of the job. If you're great at working with your team but management hates working with you, that means you're only doing part of the job.
(And sometimes, that's management's fault too, don't get me wrong!)
