>I think the hesitation is that your skills might atrophy
Sounds like OP has more opportunity than the average person to keep skills up to date on company time.
Sounds like OP has more opportunity than the average person to keep skills up to date on company time.
Reading about Foobars at Scale isn't the same as working on them at Netflix or wherever. (Even if you try to put what you read into practice and it's somehow free/cheap to deploy at massive scale and load test it, it's still not the same.)
You’re right that conditions could be far better for skill improvement, though having paid free time is also a great environment (e.g. for potentially earning a graduate degree online from a reputable institution).