That aspect wasn't my intent, but in the Red October movie for example, he states that his job is "sitting in an office and writing books", and the story revolves around him doing things that are explicitly not his job, and him confronting how "green" he is for all the field work of the latter half.

I was specifically thinking of that line about sitting in an office writing books, analyzing, strategizing, justifying and criticizing, all of which are crucial guides to action -- hardly something you could describe as "just a tech job", for example.