There was a day and age when that was largely the point of college–to teach you how to teach yourself. There was a difference in expectation from the high-school level, where following directions wasn’t enough. You had to be able to do things you couldn’t do in order to make it.

Not that it’s the fault of current students–education has simply experienced inflation and everyone is trying to keep up. But it stands that those teaching-yourself skills will set apart a good developer from an okay developer.

Others have mentioned that the expectations can become toxic, though, especially from the non-technical crowd, and I agree. It becomes more of a question of efficiency than possibility. That is, if you’ve spent your entire career working on web stacks, and someone makes you program a PLC, it’s gonna take a very long time for you to do it even satisfactorily.

There’s definitely value to being able to self-teach and figure things out, but it needs to be paired with other soft skills, like “speaking manager” and setting appropriate boundaries.