I don't work anywhere right now :) But as a contractor I move around, and it feels pretty industry standard to me.

Where does it not happen?

> You work in a place where this happens. You could not.

You could, if lucky, but such sane places are becoming more and more rare.

In the 90s (and probably earlier but I don't know) developers were viewed much more highly than now in all aspects except salary. There was a lot of autonomy and authority, the role was respected as a professional. With the rise of agile in the last ~15 years it has been transformed into a low-authority replaceable-cogs type of job, to be micromanaged by everyone else involved in the product. Salaries have gone through the roof though, so I guess that's the tradeoff.

Maybe there are engineering-oriented companies still with the 90s culture?

(If anyone knows of any such companies, please share, I'll head over to interview there.)

I guess the closest feeling I've had to what you're describing is someone being condescending around matters that are considered non-technical? A PO or Manager essentially treating dev's like entitled children who can't focus on getting the job done.

My only counter however, is that this often is the case, and the manager is right that the very overpaid engineer essentially sucks at self-management.

Or maybe management as a whole has simply realised that they need to gaslight engineers into thinking their required, or maybe a generation of engineers have been promoted into a role they're unsuitable for. All possibilities, all likely.