No meetings, no politics? Lots a dev jobs have both don’t they, especially as you become more senior and/or want to drive change in how things are done.

It depends on what you want. If you want some sort of "purity of code", that's great.

If you want more (especially control), you'll never have it. Except for your side projects.

Technical co-founder with controlling equity is the role you meant, not side projects. Like most co-founders of big tech companies nowadays.

Founders of big tech companies deal with politics on a level you can’t imagine.

Asin actual, literal politics. As in, appearing before Congress to convince them why what's good for your company is good for America. And/or sending campaign contributions their way to help with the convincing.

But there's a lot of fun to be had between now and then.

Don’t get carried away, most startups never rise to that level, even fairly big ones.

Such a vision is a fallacy.