What's up with the Ops Position

So, I just finished watching through every Star Trek episode.... ever (yeah, yeah, I didn't watch The Animated Series, but who cares about TAS?), starting with DS9, then ENT, VOY, TOS, and TNG. Now, I'd seen most of them before anyway, but (or maybe because of that), I noticed  about a billion things that seem to contradict each other or not make sense, despite the series generally being excellent. Anyway, as I'm coming down the end of TNG, the thing that stuck it's head out at me most, in a sort of "Huh? Wait, really?" fashion is the Ops position, and how it's regarded.

So there are several mentions here that it is apparently the most difficult of the bridge positions to fill (yes, I'm exlcuding command here). In The Most Toys, when Data is presumed killed, they bump Worf off of tactical to take his place at Ops. This implies that Ops is a more important position than tactical, particularly because it seems that Worf's skills are particularly suited to that tactical position, and he has oodles of experience there. In Lower Decks, all these different officers are up for a promotion and with it, a position on one of the watches at Ops. This implies that it is like the more prestigious or responsibility-filled position, at least in comparison to the others (again, tactical/security and the helm). In this episode we hear Sito complain to Worf how difficult the position is, because of having ot do 3 things in half an hour, including looking for a cat with internal sensors (shouldn't that be really easy? Shouldn't these sensors be really advanced?) and de-Gaussing the main deflector. De-Gaussing? Really? Isn't that the same thing you do to your TV to get hte colory splotchy parts off (well, I guess almost nobody has CRTs anymore even now). But they still have to do this? And scrubbing up the magnetic flux is difficult? Really? For a starfleet officer, who's academy trained, in a society where apparently like everyone has to take calculus and chemistry when they're like 9 years old? I just don't buy it. As a side note, what's up with the helm position, where there's always just some schmo ensign? Is ops really a billion times harder than HELM? I guess it is......