I would be in the younger category, as I've only been in the industry for little over a decade. I do though fully agree with many of the points in the article,

I would be in the younger category, as I've only been in the industry for little over a decade. I do though fully agree with many of the points in the article, and desperately wished we could actually change the corporate culture around SW development. However I've come to the conclusion, after years of trying, that it simply can't be done. At least not in companies that have reached a certain size. The 'agile' managerial mantra, along with all of the other bad practices that usually accompany it at cargo cult workplaces (managers that constantly work on 'optimizing' procedures and creating 'effective' teams, too many too long meetings, excessive documentation, lack of space to think and ponder, lack of private silent spaces, etc), is simply too entranched in the manager layer and company culture at these places to ever change. The only times I've had the option of silent uninterupted deep work (i.e flow) has been when working at startups that were started and run by other SWD's who knew what worked and what doesn't. And regarding this point: "Instead of distributing projects between “teams” (sorry, that word makes me think of sports, we were “groups” back then)..." I believe this is done exactly to make it feel we are like a sports team competing with other teams for a price. It makes it much easier to sell layoffs to the rest of the team when they happen ("we had to let Steffany go, she just wasn't an 'effective' 'team' player") Edit: I will add that there are many good points in the agile manifesto that I belive would make sense if done correctly. The market place of 'agile' consultance has simply twisted it into a unrecognizable mess and so the corporate culture trying to implement it falls horribly short (and in the wrong direction) of doing so correctly