The software world has an abundance of mediocre coders that just happen to be good at writing e-mails, meetings, architecture (but not really), powerpoints, navigating customer requirements and product design. It’s in their interest to downplay coding skills.

While the former can certainly be challenging, it’s by far not rocket science. Any reasonably intelligent human can discuss requirements or design a product at a decent level.

Writing code at a decent level is beyond the average reasonably intelligent human. If your mind doesn’t tick a certain way, you will not be able to do it and it will be painfully obvious to anyone that can do it.