I don't agree that those other professions aren't creative. If anything, the ambiguity behind what constitutes a successful brand design or convincing a client to buy your product seems to require more abstract knowledge to me (as a software engineer) than the ability to read and implement syntax.
the vast majority of people who work in offices just push papers, go to meetings and other mindless bs. the people who build brands are higher level managers/ivy-league over-achievers. sales people are hired or retained based on talent, getting a very low base salary and high commission. writing code is way more than reading and implementing syntax, it's actually making the design work or solving very tricky bugs. People with bare-minimum degrees and no demonstrable acumen are useless. take any given tech idea you want, it doesn't "just work", the devil is in the details.
