+1 for this.
My 2023 laptop with SSD claims that Fedora takes 44 seconds to boot:
Startup finished in 25.412s (firmware)
+ 5.996s (loader)
+ 1.038s (kernel)
+ 3.093s (initrd)
+ 9.039s (userspace)
= 44.579s
While in reality GDM is on screen waiting for input in less than 10 seconds, measured from the grub menu.
@fottl make sure you are comparing real-world timings before trying all sorts of low-level tweaks to your system.