[Too]

What's difficult is that usually half the team of grunts can be trusted to run their own race, the other half can be completely clueless and need explicit guidance, even if they are decent programmers otherwise.

If you were to allow everyone to innovate freely, some would spend several weeks learning the latest shiny fad and creating things of no or negative value, like using AI to generate commit messages or adding service mesh to your single container kubernetes cluster. The disconnect from business value and writing code for the sake of writing code can be astonishing. Conversely, if you let loose one smart guy in the team, it may seem unfair to the rest of the team.

A good leader is the one who balances the need and utilizes the best of both these sides.

[throwaway82931]

You’d think from this thread that the messes inevitably originate from ”grunts” wandering off the reservation. In my experience the source has often been “innovation” imposed from above, in the form of buzzword-driven development championed by semi-technical leadership enamored of this poisonous “grunts can’t be trusted” ideology.