"Genes" as protein coding regions is a common shorthand, but there's another, broader definition of "gene" as "a locus in the genome that bears some responsibility for a trait". For instance, the ability to consume lactose post infancy is a trait driven by a mutation not in a protein coding region, but could reasonably called a "gene for lactase persistence". In general, we don't have good bottom-up ways of understanding which regions of the genome are regulatory, much less what that regulation is doing.
So according to one definition, it's even worse than your 14,234 tons of steel example: it's closer to "steel is a mixture of iron and carbon and trace amounts of other dopants, glass is silicon dioxide, concrete is ..." Without even listing the amounts. But by another definition, the genes are, if not a blueprint, at the very least a recipe and ingredient list. "Butter, flour, water, sugar, apples, cinnamon, cloves. Cut 125g butter into flour; if too coarse, continue cutting. Add water to ice. Add water from ice into flour..."
The information is clearly there—we have a long, unbroken history of offspring being very similar to their parents, despite having started with only a single, undifferentiated cell. But with the new tools available to us, we're starting to have a hope of understanding it, even if we're using more brute force than we'd like.