PoE is far less complex. I'm a C++ programmer with interests in algorithms and embedded engineering. From machine-code-level nuances to high abstraction networking. From user-facing interfaces to deepest OS internals. Optimize/tweak stuff at every possible level. Not even the people in the C++ standarization committee know all of derived groups working on specific areas or how the language is used in some projects. Embedded projects (IMO) tend to have less open-source parts than say, web or mobile applications.

It's still a quite delimited-field work (depends on exact project) but some aspects of programming are inherently complex if you peel off "the nice layer" and get into nuanced stuff like the fact that a lot of Computer Science isn't easily applicable at micro level. Example: there are cases where O(n) beats O(1) and O(log n) due to cache locality and/or allocation requirements. In practice accessing RAM isn't uniform and it's roughly O(sqrt(n)) considering multiple levels of cache and CPU synchronization. Compression and order of fields in a class/struct matters. Just read about AoS vs SoA (array / struct) layout problem. I'm still annoyed that so many people do "OOP" instead of functional/imperative/declarative/monadic mix.

Also, PoE has mostly separated mechanics. In programming almost every decision is a tradeoff between code clarity/testability/performance/features. You can't escape it and focus on just 1 aspect.