I've found that SDE day jobs can be not so great, but it's actually BECAUSE there's not as much coding as I'd like. I think I'll be content if I can find a job

I've found that SDE day jobs can be not so great, but it's actually BECAUSE there's not as much coding as I'd like. I think I'll be content if I can find a job where 70% of the time is spent writing logic and testing it. But my experience so far, while limited (about 3 - 4 years), has been that your time is taken up by meetings, research, tech debt hell, etc. So you might not be missing much, some developers actually do most of their coding in their own time just like you!