I'm not saying you cannot do any work in meetings. But if the only empty space in your calendar is lunch time and 2 or 4 hours for a whole week, as a Software Engineer, there won't be much time to do get, I repeat, actual work, which is mostly programming & debugging done, at least for most junior level positions. When an enterprise gets large enough, even just regularly checking in with projects, program managers, executives, designers, product managers was %50 of my busy time for a week. And it was exhausting. Not everywhere would be like that, but that caused a serious burnout with me and I've quit.