I went into product management (not people management) because I was tired of being a cog just implementing other people's ideas. Admired the product managers as "deciders" and wanted that creative aspect. Little did I realize it'd simply mean writing requirement documents for other people's ideas. Project management is similar: Executing the schedule for other people's ideas. Unfortunately it's pretty rare in the corporate software world to actually get to create something yourself end-to-end.
It's turtles all the way down. Even CEO's feel like they have no agency at times.
It depends on the maturity level of the business you're in. In mature industries customers have a clear picture of what the software should do, even if suboptimal, and you're just there to turn their preconceptions into running software. In new industries nobody knows exactly what it can do, so you have a lot more agency as a developer.
I spent years working on an IWMS system and always felt trapped by other people's ideas, and then moved on inside the same company to a smart building project where I can pretty much do what I want because the market hasn't decided yet what such a system should do. The tricky part is selling something people don't understand yet, but luckily smart building is in the leading edge of a hype cycle.
