I have been working at a large bank for a few years. Although some coding is needed, the bulk majority of time is spent on server config changes, releasing code to production, asking other people for approvals, auth roles, and of course tons of meetings with the end user to find out what they need.
I guess when I was a junior engineer, I would spend more time looking at code, though I used to work for small companies. So it is hard for me to judge if the extra time spent coding, was because of me being a junior or because it was a small company.
The kicker, is when we interview devs, most of the interview is just about coding. Very little of it is about the stuff I listed…
My employer (< 20 total employees, 3 total devs) was recently acquired by a much larger company. Our lead dev was made a manager and no longer has time to code and I was made a team lead and now half my time is spent in meetings, code review, or deployments. I am finding that with limited time for coding I am writing more concise, thoughtful code.
The hardest part of the change was adjusting my expectations for the product. We can no longer deliver what we want at the pace we want as that is now dictated by someone.