...are people actually paid to write code? It's a means not an end!

Yes.

For instance, when I was freelancing, I would be hired by people to write code for their websites, in Javascript and PHP. Telling my employers that I wrote the ideal amount of code (none) would not be satisfying to them. They would not be willing to pay me for the code I didn't write. Outside of the SV bubble, that kind of thing doesn't fly.