Your argument is quite usual in this sort of discussion and it mostly comes from dev managers or TLs who are almost gone to the 'other side'. I (everyone?) agr

Your argument is quite usual in this sort of discussion and it mostly comes from dev managers or TLs who are almost gone to the 'other side'. I (everyone?) agree that software development is not only programming/writing code. It also system design, documentation, finding solutions, troubleshooting, load testing and so on. And yes, it is also gathering and understanding requirements and collaborating with other teams. But if your average developer only has 20% of time for coding and everything else goes to meetings, you are doing something terribly wrong. Simply because the time of the developers is used inefficiently, unless you are doing something very simple (from technical point of view) and cut costs on other roles, so devs are doing everything. Usually it means that there is no proper Product/Project management and technical leadership. You can build a lot better and faster if your developers have time to focus on development itself without going to constant meetings to understand this sentence in requirements. Even during my 'worst' (from dev time perspective) years as a TL I spent ~40-50% of my time to management/communication work. It allowed team of 5 devs to be almost distraction free (less than 3 meetings per week per dev), because I worked as proxy for them. In my experience adding good technical PM between devs and other managers can greatly increase devs efficiency and more importantly - their happiness