Joel Spolsky totally nails it this time with his article on the Developer Abstraction Layer. This is one of his better articles. It is a tad on the long side, but well worth the read. Try to get it in your manager’s hands.

With a software company, the first priority of management needs to be creating that abstraction for the programmers.

If a programmer somewhere is worrying about a broken chair, or waiting on hold with Dell to order a new computer, the abstraction has sprung a leak.

In summary, a development company is a lot more than the developers. In fact, it is a huge support organization designed to remove abstractions for the developers so they can let the magic happen. Beautiful.