Despite where they are now, the FAANG founders could sling some amount of code back in the day.

I have no doubt they would fail their current interview cycle for engineers if they tried it under a pseudonym, they were considered software engineers when they started their companies and that cohort is now in charge of a double digit percentage of the planets wealth.

If you think software engineers have no power and limited wealth compared to finance then I can only imagine you are not a software engineer are are downplaying the amount of power the class has absorbed, or we fundamentally disagree on what a software engineer is