It makes even less sense in other areas of engineering. I'm a computer scientist and can code, but it would be absurd for me to claim that, if I collaborate with a chemical engineer or mathematician who can't code, that person isn't "technical". It's getting increasingly useful to know how to do at least basic programming all across the sciences and engineering, but there are lots of other technical skills as well, mathematical skill being a big one. Even at tech companies, a statistics wizard who can write only basic code (say, simple R scripts) but knows the underlying theory and practice very deeply would certainly be a "technical" employee, for reasons other than their rudimentary coding ability.