In my own career, I've had moments where everything just flowed and I was incredibly productive. I've also had moments where I was absolutely worthless. The dif

In my own career, I've had moments where everything just flowed and I was incredibly productive. I've also had moments where I was absolutely worthless. The difference was all about the constraints of the environment. For example - yes, if you have great tooling that makes it easy to produce, then that's cool. But, if you don't have great tooling but you have the organizational support to bring in the tools and processes you need, then you are halfway there. On the other hand, if you don't have the organizational support - which often isn't about budget so much as actual verbal, emotional, political, psychological kinds of support - then your productivity will likely be very low. When I've been in places with management or clients that were repressive in their behaviors, well... they reaped what they sowed and out the door I went asap. Normally someone will pop up and say something about the risks or the security or something driving that kind of behavior or process - yes, I've worked in some high-risk environments, but there is a difference between a process designed to minimize faults and one that is just repressive because of ignorance, egos, etc. If you treat people badly, they will not produce at a high level.