How exactly have I treated this as a binary answer? >Why are you ignoring everything else that has come up about amazon's culture? I've read the articles, but

How exactly have I treated this as a binary answer? >Why are you ignoring everything else that has come up about amazon's culture? I've read the articles, but its important to remember that if you've had a bad experience you are 10 times more likely to be vocal about it(that shit is some straight science - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/your-money/why-people-remember-negative-events-more-than-positive-ones.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/your-money/why-people-reme...). > guess his job description should have been: "do what your manager says" ? I'm not a scientist but I am pretty sure that is the definition of a job. Having been both an engineer and a manager and an engineer again I can honestly say my smoothest projects were composed of folks that were great followers. They understood when they needed to take initiative and when they needed to follow instructions to the letter. When intentionally adding a leak to the abstraction was necessary to get something out the door and when their code needed to be bullet proof. Alpha programmers are different animals. If they are truly an Alpha programmer then I use them like a flamethrower loosely directing them at tough, solo/small team problems. But I've encountered my share of C/D players that labored under the delusion they were an Alpha programmer. These folks lashed out, constantly questioned my judgement, and eroded the team's cohesion. Somehow they managed to do this while also not being capable or qualified to tackle my big picture problems. I afforded them every opportunity to be successful, but in several cases they were just too smart for me I guess so I had to set them free. This article sounds like a my many meetings with the latter. As for advocating being a sheep. Some things are bigger than one person. Is the defensive end on a football team a sheep for following the play the QB/Offensive coordinator has chosen? He may not be put in the best place to make a tackle or a sack(very prestigious stats) because his role might be more subtle than that (containing the quarterback). This is what you do when you are part of a team. Why are you advocating going rogue?