The best programmers I know

I wonder about this often: If you want to have impact/solve problems/make money, not just optimizing killing your JIRA tickets, should you invest a given hour into understanding the lowest code layer of framework X, or talk to people in the business domain? Read documentation or a book on accessibility in embedded systems? Pick up yet another tech stack or simply get faster at the one you have that is "good enough"?

Not easy to answer, but worth keeping in mind that there is more to programming than just programming.

This is manifest in management methodologies: developers are largely interchangeable cells in a spreadsheet. I'm not saying this is a good thing.

The reasons for this are complex, but generally, business people want us to solve the technical problems they can't handle themselves, they don't want us to "relieve" them of product management, customer relationships, and industry knowledge. Why would they? It would devalue them.