> How are people actually learning new stuff?
This doesn't work for all skills, unfortunately, and some people have jobs where they are project-managed to a degree that every minute needs to be accounted for. But mostly, there's some slack to pick up new skills.
Having been in such a job, I can say without reservation that the manager demanding such precise accounting has no idea what you do or how you do it, and is ultimately relying on you to be both honest and supernaturally accurate with respect to estimates.
What ends up happening is that you pad an hour of actual work out to a week, because you can justify any amount of delay by pointing at the spaghettified, debt-riddled code base, and start looking for a new job immediately. That boss will make a show of keeping an eye on you, but you quickly learn that they have no idea whether you are working or slacking just by looking at you, or looking over your shoulder at your screen. The incumbent lead developers have already developed a system for maintaining the status quo indefinitely. You can follow them down the primrose path, to the complete destruction of your professional ethics, or you can become the squeaky wheel that gets fired.
Even if you can't generate some slack yourself, you can certainly pick up new skills at your next job, which you should be seeking without further delay.
That's what I generally do and I recommend doing it to others. But there are limits to the size of things to learn that way.
And hope your boss is forgiving.
Suddenly people are picking projects and stacks based on personal aggrandizement rather than professionalism.
Maybe companies should start hiring a chief behavioral (economic?) officer to go with the chief culture officer.
Managers should encourage innovation but control it. I see so many projects where management rejects every kind of change without discussion. Either only losers will stay in that environment or you get this kind of underground projects. If management looked at something more than only deadlines and budgets the whole climate would improve.
But that's what people do when there's no "boss-sanctioned" way to up-skill and learn new things.
I think lots of smart folks get started by cargo-culting an oversized solution/platform onto their sad boring projects, then gradually step into bigger and better things at other employers.
The two-headed monstrosities are a necessary evil to get started for many people.