What sort of work would you class as administrative?

Meta-tasks around projects. Communicating/coordinating with other people. In big-corp land, mandatory training and time spent on time tracking (a bit ironic). Dealing with git screw-ups by people new to it.

> Dealing with git screw-ups by people new to it.

I do this all the time. Of course, the person new to it is usually myself.

I think the problem is when such administrative work interrupts the intellectually productive work.

I think another key component of administrative work is that even if it's time sensitive, it's not urgent.

Software Design is intellectually productive. If you aren't, you are not designing and implementing software.

I actually disagree - maybe 60% of good software dev is really really thinking. A lot of it is automatic, based on learning the crafts good habits, repeating motifs, testing can be repetitive but is important to do as you go. Making sample data, talking to people writing emails - so there is a chunk that is not deep foo.

This correlates with my anecdotal observation that the smartest people can write bad code, and it takes them quite a while to absorb the stuff of writing good code.. a couple years at minumum perhaps. Its not just about raw thinking power - perhaps the important bits are, but not all of it.