If you like to spend days getting the architecture just right, moving code around from one file to another because it just makes more sense there, running it through lint on the strictest settings and getting no errors, alphabetizing your #includes and lining up all your variable names, sanding and polishing away until that code is a beautiful diamond, then for your own sanity don't write software for a living!
It's not terrible, it's just reality. Some people never even get the opportunities that we do as highly-paid "IT people"...
If you're on a paper boat in a gravy stream, don't poke holes in it or you'll drown. If you're on a meatloaf mountain and you need to chew your way down to the gravy lake, don't just jump off, because then you'll drown in gravy too... We're all miserable souls looking for mashed potatoes, but sometimes there's only meatloaf, so plant potatoes and then hope it all works out.
It still pays more and beats working at Cracker Barrel. ಠ_ಠ
That's where software development grows from skill to art. What do customers actually want? What mostly likely will be their next requirement? Can we optimize the API to speed up development and use the extra time we got to improve stability? Which projects should be reported to the management proudly and which ones should be quietly sneaked into the codebase? And so on so forth.
Using your chef analogy, at some point it's no longer about flipping the burgers, it's about organizing the kitchen, optimizing purchases and educating the freshmen.
It's just a matter of putting creativity in a different place.
I love the experience of writing and using rock solid programs, but in the real world, there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt. For people in it for the money, it doesn't affect them. For people that appreciated good software, it turns them into people just doing it for the money, except it also affects them.
I always explain it like this: imagine you were a chef, that loved the complexities of cooking; preparation, presentation, and recipe formulation. You enjoy preparing food and experiencing food. With this passion, you're forced to work in fast food, churning out meals as fast as the drive through will take them.
"Well, you can always cook in your free time!"