Coding Horror: The Non-Programming Programmer – Unfortunately, I’ve worked with a programmer who truly could not program, and it wasn’t pleasant. He talked a decent game and was crunk about technology, but he couldn’t bang out solutions to problems, and we all paid for it. That said, I’m in the middle of Seth Godin’s “Linchpin”, and while if you’re looking for a programmer, you should screen for that, rapport and general intelligence are pretty damn important. Also: I really like Noahlz’s February 22, 2010 6:48 PM comment in that thread.
Nice process, but what about the engineering bits? – "The major issue is in focusing so much effort and time on project management with what amounts to willful ignorance of the technical and engineering practices will inevitably leads to disaster."