One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.
In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.
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One cannot venture far into the world of software engineering literature without hearing about The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. The book is consistently hailed as a classic.
It's a fairly outdated text, and many of the concepts introduced within it are now taken for granted as a baseline for common practice, but it makes a fairly good argument for proper product management and structured leadership. It won't make you a better programmer but it will show you how to think and what mental models are grounded in experience and science. It doesn't matter that it is outdated. Some lessons are as good now as they were in the 80s,
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