I don't get how "let your developers do whatever they want" equates to playing with some "shiny new thing". Most companies have a training budget that should al

I don't get how "let your developers do whatever they want" equates to playing with some "shiny new thing". Most companies have a training budget that should allow for learning new technologies, even ones not directly applicable. If I had the opportunity to do what I wanted on company time it would 99% of the time be fixing some technical debt in the existing code; reworking something with a different/speculative architecture; or build some tools to automate anything that gets in the way of doing more meaningful work.