I disagree (unless your "bad environment" gets tautologically redefined to mean any place where people with good intentions don't get good results.... which you

I disagree (unless your "bad environment" gets tautologically redefined to mean any place where people with good intentions don't get good results.... which you might). I was working in a place that employed incredibly smart and capable but highly opinionated people, and did not treat them as cogs, and did let them influence their productivity, happiness, and quality of the code. However, there was a major philosophical disagreement between the "functional programming" camp and the "object oriented" camp (with a minor "procedural programming" camp), and designs occasionally became "I am smarter than you" contests, the overall system being extremely incoherent because every side wss able to influence their own productivity. It worked, because they were smart. It was not a bad environment for any single person. But it would have been a much better place for everyone if there was a benevolent dictator (but nevertheless, dictator) who enforced one way or the other - the randomly reached middle ground has all of the deficiencies of all approaches, and none of the benefits.