I think this is a misconception that software developers tend to have; their comfort zone, their work passion and their perceived goal is to sit behind a screen and type the code. But that's just the programming part of the job, as a software engineer your responsibilities are much wider. Meetings can (I'm not saying they will) tweak what code needs to be written and how. Left on their own, developers may end up writing code that isn't needed or doesn't do what it's supposed to, which is wasted time, dead code or branches, or worse, sunk cost fallacy kicks in where it's kept anyway because someone wrote it.

I wouldn't have minded more meetings in my current job. I'm leaving in two weeks. Not because of a lack of meetings mind you, it's a combination of factors.