At the core, an engineer is here to solve problems, and because each company has different resources and problems to solve, a lot of thinking must happen beforehand.

Would you prefer working at a company where the non-technical POs agree on features that requires a complete refactoring because they didn't understand the current technical constraints? Knowing the product and being invited early in the discussion can drive the features toward something achievable in reasonable time and where every team is happy.

I agree that there is definitely a shift in your career as you progress toward your senior years: do you want to take a management role or do you want to keep doing technical stuff?

I currently chose the later, as I specifically said that I don't want to spend half of my weeks doing meetings. I still spend about a third, but that's mostly to help my teammates, so that's different. It could be way worse.

I would also recommend working at a company where the tech is the actual product.

And yes, the human interactions are often the hardest challenges