Joel on Management
Joel Spolksy, who runs Fog Creek Software, explains what technical people need to know to survive non-technical management. "You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too-- there's a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers." (block that metaphor!) "The secret," he explains, "is that people who aren't programmers do not understand this."