As I wrote elsewhere, it all depends on the size of the department, and the manager. If you work where there's 3-15 in the tech department, either a small unit

As I wrote elsewhere, it all depends on the size of the department, and the manager. If you work where there's 3-15 in the tech department, either a small unit of a large company, or just a small or medium-sized company, you have more autonomy and authority. But if you are one of 200 programmers, then no. That was true back then as I'm sure it is now. In the same respects, if you have a sh-t manager back then, big company or small, it is the same thing. Micromanaging, time-wasting, with a sh-tty boss. Or you could have a great manager back then or now, who keeps general tabs on things, and only starts getting to become a micromanager if the person under them starts f-cking up, which as it should be. But let's say you work at a large plumbing company with 200 plumbers, and you have a tech department of 7 people and an admin staff of 25. The CEO is a plumber and what does he know about tech, the COO is working on coordinating trucks and insurance and personnel and all kinds of other things, and the CFO has his hands busy just keeping up with accounting. Nobody is going to mess with you, as long as YOU don't mess up. They don't even know how to help you, and they are too busy with their own sh-t. Except in the biggest picture view, of course. Then, all you have to hope for is that the manager is good. Usually they are, because they are busy. But I've worked at Fortune 500 companies in local offices or regions where I was the only person doing what I was doing, and absolutely no one bothered me, because I was there by myself. Sure, I talked to a lot of people in the company to see what they needed to have done, but after that, my time was my own. I can't imagine it would be any different now, in the same circumstances.