What's skills? Pumping out code ala startup? Sounds like a stable environment. Someone with a good eye will still be able to pick out flaws in the processes/architecture and learn a thing or two.
"The main concern is having replaceable talent to reliably do X" as in every other company?
I swear you guys make having a regular job sound like being under slavery. It's just a job. Some companies are boring, that's just part of the job, and being able to adapt to different environments is what makes a good sde imo.
Lots of places are not like this. I work at a large tech company, at its not like this at all.
My machine is not locked down. I can use vim or whatever ide/editor I want. We don't use scrum/safe, we're expected to contribute to the actual system design. etc If I have a choice, i'm not working at a place like that.
However if you work in dotnet at a traditional "enterprise", it is highly likely to be like this. I have a choice, so i'm not going to choose that.
Wanting replaceable talent drives the tech decisions to only use the "standard" microsoft stack. Other companies value picking the right tool, then teaching people. The best companies don't even care what language you use, and are happy to bring you up speed.
I've found a position that uses dotnet which does not have this culture which is good. But i can totally imagine not picking dotnet to avoid this culture.
"The main concern is having replaceable talent to reliably do X" as in every other company?
I swear you guys make having a regular job sound like being under slavery. It's just a job. Some companies are boring, that's just part of the job, and being able to adapt to different environments is what makes a good sde imo.