It's barely creative. You have a small amount of room to work within someone's requirements.

You can be the guy creating the requirements, but then you're better off specializing in that and letting someone else do the grunt work.

I think this statement is very extreme case scenario. I never really saw programming job without freedom to create requirement at least on technical front.

It's not creative in many cases because the technical solution already exists, invented and optimized decades ago. Just because developers are ignorant of known CS, prefer their ego (NIH), or chose to use the brand new shiny thing with no ecosystem to solve the business problems in front of them, doesn't mean they're engaging in effective creativity. How many times has the wheel been re-invented, do you think?