Peopleware

Covering all aspects of managing teams of programmers, Peopleware is required reading for managers at most good software companies.

Peopleware teaches how managers can help their programmers be happier and far, far more productive. It covers common problems with development environments such as noisiness, crowding and interruption all of which decrease the ability of the programmer to get into the state of flow. That mental state where you look up and realize you’ve been coding for 3 hours and it feels like 5 minutes.

It teaches how to build teams that gel and are more productive as a whole than their members are individually. As well as how to layout offices so that team members have interaction they need without the interruptions that so hamper their work.

All of the assertions made by the authors are backed up with factual data garnered from the many software olympics they've administered.