I'm a software developer and tech-head by nature, having worked with a number of the UK's top tech companies including 
From my experience having programming standards and standard environments can be extremely beneficial to a development team. Not only can it improve the chances that you can find problems quickly but it also ensures problems are reproduceable. Having coding standards also means that code is easy to read and clean.
However, as is the same with anything, sometimes too many rules and too much bureaucracy can lead to a stifling of creativity. In chess for example, juniors are taught a number of rules so that they can safely navigate the first opening few moves, but if you play strictly according to those rules as a more advanced player against similarly more advanced players with no regard to the current situation then likely you’ll be crushed.
In the 1960s doctors were given the freedom to experiment with much less restraint than they do now. In order to study behaviour amongst primates the doctors would place some monkeys in a room with a a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling and a step ladder underneath. Naturally the monkeys would approach the stepladder in an attempt to eat the bananas however, whenever they got near the scientists would douse them in ice cold water – what do we get? Angry monkeys. Eventually none of the monkeys would go anywhere near the ladder.
They would then introduce a new monkey to the pack and he/she would then naturally try to climb the ladder but before reaching the ladder the monkey would be beaten by the others. Not knowing why they shouldn’t go near the ladder they would avoid it anyway for fear of being beaten. Eventually the scientists would replace the original group of monkeys with a completely new group. This group having never been doused with ice cold water, would still never go anywhere near the ladder.
The point of the story? Well, some developers often behave the same way. Never questioning why something is the way it is and why things are done in a particular way, they just do it.
Don’t be an angry monkey. Always question authority never believe what other people say until you’ve convinced yourself that there’s a good reason for it being that way.
This will make you a better developer… trust me.
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