> the vast majority of people who work in offices just push papers, go to meetings and other mindless bs

I know this to be true for many working in software engineering. Conversely,

> writing code is way more than reading and implementing syntax, it's actually making the design work or solving very tricky bugs.

This can be true but is not always true. I think you were right when you said

> take any given <sales|tech|branding|marketing|HR> idea you want, it doesn't "just work", the devil is in the details

:)