I've been in the situation where a manager in a crunch period really slowed the whole thing down because they were demanding explanations of every check-in. I've also had the experience of having a technical manager save the team no end of hassle by running interference and buffering us from the political realities even higher up the chain in crunch periods; in those cases the manager was technical enough to just let us get on with it.
It sucks when people spread FUD, doesn't it?
Say, how many times have you seen Gladiator?
Gerald Sussman and Harold Abelson's MIT course "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" is the best beginner's course I've ever seen anywhere. It starts at the beginning and ends up with advanced subjects like closures, and functional composition, building every concept in small pieces with clear examples. Plus the material is freely available, and there's video of Sussman giving the course to a bunch of hilariously dressed HP engineers in the eighties some time.
Yes, it's obnoxious and offensive and worth pointing out that at the bottom of their 'helpful' page is a link marked LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PAGE which gives the following explanation:
These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you encounter as you surf.
No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.
Click here if you would no longer like to receive the Rogers Supported Search Results service.
Now for the best part. All that links does is display this custom error page (with the help of a delightful cookie, no less). Rogers has dug out a crawl space under their all time low. What a bunch of idiots.
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. -- Henry David Thoreau