Like others, I've been slogging through IT for the better part of 25 years (I guess that kind of makes me ancient in the eyes of the younger crowd). I've done both programming and operations, though I am in love with programming. I've seen the industry go through all sorts of changes. I remember, back in the 90's, when people who were extremely technically competent, but who were, let's just say, socially challenged, were considered prima donnas, and management was on the warpath because these people were disruptors of the team.

The team has become the mantra for everything in business. I don't say it's wrong, but as Phil said, we need to be able to integrate everyone. So many times I've seen team spirit trump excellence, because a manager is too lazy to do his/her job. And before anyone decides to flame me (see, told you I was older) for relaying such un-PC concepts, I have been witness to the general dumbing down of teams.

As far as Agile/SCRUM methodology is concerned, as a programmer I find it to be disruptive of my thought processes. Just as you get into the serious coding zone, someone just has to make a joke (loudly), a manager comes in to give you the hearty what ho, a SCRUM meeting/preparation/retrospective comes along, etc... If these methodologies were properly driven, these interruptions would be minimized.

I really believe all these magic bullets are just another way for management to feel good about itself, without having to actually spend any money (i.e. closed areas where a coder can just think without interruption). Someone earlier mentioned how he was told to just put on earphones to block out the noise. If that isn't management-speak for our company is too cheap, I don't know what is. Time for companies to really put their money where their mouth is when they talk about their employees being their greatest asset.