Sure, yes, I won't name names here but I've worked with some wonderful programmers who I learned a ton from, and who pretty much set my life direction. It occurs to me though, that those were in organizations with almost no management interference in the tech stuff. Maybe today's corporate environments can't stand that.

I think I understand some of the dysfunction, but not quite well enough to write it down. It's the same mentality that leads to putting programmers in noisy open-plan offices though.