Impossible time constraints are definitely evil, but I believe the article describes the situation when one can't ever learn, and continues to produce some crappy code, to his/her own frustration.

Of course, management should understand the need for onboarding, but developers also need time to reflect on what they do, why and how, and unless they are working 12 h a day, they can spend some time on their time to make their work efficient, and lessen frustration from failures. In my opinion, it always make sense to also learn somethign generic, foundational or even just very different, but interesting.

And if one can't learn in say a year or two, and keep ever improving, then maybe one has chosen the wrong profession?

As for meetings, yes, those can kill any productivity, but communication is also important. And the top boss can sometimes tell the answer to the greatest "Why?" people are working at the company.

For me software development is gatherwing knowledge. It's impossible without sources of knowledge. A developer, which has all the time in the world, locked in four walls will not produce anythign useful (unless s/he is working on some very abstract mathematical problem). Meetings with domain experts can help a lot.

As for tests, unless breaking some new ground (like setting up tests for some new framework), unit tests are usually piece of cake in a situations, where they are naturally applicable.