"I assume this problem doesn't only apply to people in a big corporation but even more so for people in a startup, where time is scarce and execution is king."<p>I found that I stopped learning things when I started working for someone else.  Then when I started working on my startup, I started learning things again.<p>In a startup, getting stuff done is the most important thing.  There's no one else to get stuff done, so if you need something and you don't know how to do it, you have to learn how.  And unless you're an amazing programmer, it's usually predictably awful.