Last week’s Joel On Software explains why the traditional top-down management model (make decisions, create work units, assign Coder #12 to complete work unit by Friday) breaks down when applied to software development. Joel Spolsky, founder of a wildly successful software startup, keeps a blog in which he shares insights he’s learned along the way. Joel On Software is just about the best recruiting tool a software company could have. Advice to startups: if you want to hire great developers or designers, start a blog and talk about how you’ll pamper them.

The post is long, but well worth reading for nuggets like this:

“Microsoft does such a good job [eliminating administrivia for developers] that Microsoft alumni have a notoriously hard time starting companies. They simply can’t believe how much went on below decks and they have no idea how to reproduce it.”

• The Development Abstraction Layer (Joel On Software)