I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. There are plenty of "truly" interesting software engineering jobs, no CS required. There is a lot that goes into des

I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. There are plenty of "truly" interesting software engineering jobs, no CS required. There is a lot that goes into designing a good CRUD app (yes, I said it). There are many trade offs, different basic architectures to choose from, different libraries, different design patterns -- all which have pros and cons to be weighed, based on the needs of the project (I speak as someone who makes spends a lot of time doing native Android CRUD work). It really annoys me when people say "oh that stuff is so trivial, you need to be doing low level C++ optimization or whatever to be doing anything truly interesting or important." It's "Revenge of the Nerds"-type BS. But the truth is that jobs that "only require programming skills" can certainly be interesting if you take it seriously, and treat your craft with the respect it deserves.