[shoo]

A couple of things spring to mind:

Naur's "programming as theory building" essay [1]. E.g.

  > programming properly should be regarded as an activity by
  > which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of
  > insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This
  > suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more
  > common notion, that programming should be regarded as a
  > production of a program and certain other texts

This suggests that it might not be a great idea to outsource understanding. The entire essay is worth a read.

Yosefk also gave a fairly amusing characterisation of what it is to work for a software company [2]:

  > Basically the "knowledge worker's" contract is
  > something like this:
  > 
  >   > We'll give you a precisely defined salary
  >   > and a benefits package. In return, we
  >   > request that you handle some problems that
  >   > we're told we're having. We hope that you'll
  >   > solve them well enough to prevent us from
  >   > having to know what they were in the first
  >   > place. Please help us maintain the feeling
  >   > that we own an asset similar to land or gold
  >   > or something. Please keep the realization
  >   > that we're more like the operator of a
  >   > flying circus than a landowner from
  >   > disturbing us. And certainly, never, ever
  >   > ask us what to do with any of the moving
  >   > pieces of this flying circus, because we
  >   > seriously have no idea.

[1] there's a copy here http://alistair.cockburn.us/ASD+book+extract%3A+%22Naur,+Ehn...

[2] http://yosefk.com/blog/information-asymmetry-cuts-both-ways....

[mooreds]

Wow, those are fantastic excerpts.

Thanks for sharing.