It's of a piece with the impulse I see so often to also downplay and denigrate the difficulty of doing engineering work.
No one who knows what they're talking about would debate that engineers need large blocks of uninterrupted time to get anything done.
But at the same time, not all software projects can be divided up in such a way that individual engineers can just do their thing without frequent communication. This is the whole art of large scale software development, and it is incredibly difficult to get right. Minimizing overall meeting time so ICs can focus is just one consideration, you also need to make sure the right people have a seat at the table for certain decisions or you run the risk of building entirely the wrong thing.
As an engineer you have to fight for your own time, but also trade off against the greater good. If you put your work on a pedestal above everyone else around you (designers and product managers are also ICs that need focus time) then you'll hit a ceiling in terms of the impact you can drive (unless you are a researcher or deep specialist, but those roles are comparatively rare).
You can however practice a specific thing so it no longer feels like a big deal. If you have gone to a thousand meetings then having another one wont be distracting. But most software engineers don't do enough management work to get over that hurdle.
1. This problem of constant interruptions through email, slack, etc affects everyone. It's extremely arrogant to pretend that it's primarily a problem for the special engineers. (I'm an engineer).
2. The idea that you can't be effective if you don't have half a day free everyday is frankly bullshit, and it gives people a victims mentality if they accept it. Yes, people need uninterrupted time. I assure you that I can code effectively in blocks of 2 hours. It may be slightly less efficient if the only thing that matters is coding, but a lot more matters that pure coding.