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If software engineering is not the 'hard part', why are dev salaries so high?

Because the "engineering" part is literally all that other stuff which is actually quite hard. Just like a civil engineer doesn't pour concrete for a living, we don't write sort or string search algorithms for a living, we build solutions that solve company problems. Usually using someone else's well-built sort or search algorithm. When I need to write the latter, I reach for my Knuth books.

That said, I still bridle at the term "software engineer"; I mostly accord with Alan Kay's quote "Software engineering hasn't happened yet."

Everything else the OP listed is project and product management. You can get devs to project manage, you can't get project managers to write code.

I am the OP, and I don't think I've ever had a project or product manager who gave me sufficient detail such that all I had to do was walk away and "write code."

Problem solving skills required and a bunch of questions. What really do you need, how important is each part of it, and who are the other people I need to talk to help make this happen? Being able to ask those questions and produce code from the answers is what we get paid the big bucks for.

At least for now.

You're the parent commenter not the OP. The commenter was referring to the OP (Original Post) i.e. the posted article.

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