she later told me that I was anti-authoritarian and more likely to do what I thought was right rather than what I had been instructed to do. I am still baffled to this day about how that is an undesirable attribute

It isn’t unless you’re a corporation trying to keep employees down.

What is a new person supposed to do to learn then? I’ve been stuck trying to figure out what the 5-8 different services, frameworks, libraries, and IDEs all do and I feel very overwhelmed.