what you just said is completely orthogonal to the comment you're replying to. self-directed vs. manager-directed is a separate concern from whether or not a p

what you just said is completely orthogonal to the comment you're replying to. self-directed vs. manager-directed is a separate concern from whether or not a programmer can be expected to put in 40 hours of high focus, high concentration technical work per week. in my experience getting 20-30 high focus hours in a week is a very good week. the rest of the time has to be used for things that are much less focused. like arguing about this shit on hacker news, for example. it's not even an either/or scenario. you need to do both. just like when breathing you have to both inhale and exhale.