It depends on tons of factors. Yes there are things besides designing and coding, and they can be harder depending on people and projects, but some strong links to the technical parts are always needed, in the sense that a manager is not an evolution of an engineer. Cutler wrote non negligible parts of NT. Linus doesn't "code" much anymore but still has an enormous technical impact.
Limiting the dichotomy to "coding" vs anything else is really weird because coding is just a part of design, and never should have been considered the absolutely only essential part of software engineering -- and that's the case regardless of your seniority. Otherwise you can as well be considered a kind of secretary with additional specialized skills. Even if you don't recognize the other activities you are still doing them, at least temporarily in your head even when working on a project alone.
And also there are tons of areas where code/design can still be tricky even for highly talented people. E.g. writing a state of the art compiler is not necessarily easy even when the problem has been well defined.
Limiting the dichotomy to "coding" vs anything else is really weird because coding is just a part of design, and never should have been considered the absolutely only essential part of software engineering -- and that's the case regardless of your seniority. Otherwise you can as well be considered a kind of secretary with additional specialized skills. Even if you don't recognize the other activities you are still doing them, at least temporarily in your head even when working on a project alone.
And also there are tons of areas where code/design can still be tricky even for highly talented people. E.g. writing a state of the art compiler is not necessarily easy even when the problem has been well defined.