I disagree. Though (1) and (2) are good points, but they shouldn't be telling you what to work on at the individual ticket level. Even then, they should priorit

I disagree. Though (1) and (2) are good points, but they shouldn't be telling you what to work on at the individual ticket level. Even then, they should prioritize and set a healthy deadline (if appropriate); and that is it. Implementing a high priority ticket may still require addressing technical debt to implement, or dealing with other lower priority tickets first -- because they block the new, higher priority ticket. If your manager needs to know all these details and can tell you "no, you can't fix X to build Y" then I really think that is a crappy place to work; not just due to the politics involved, but also the code must be absolute crap.