I am one of those people. Used to be really technical but not so deep anymore.
“The people in charge of your software organization have to make a lot of decisions about software. Even if they’re not setting the overall strategy, they’re still probably deciding which kinds of users get which features, which updates are most important to roll out, whether projects should be delayed or rushed, and so on.
These people may have been technical once. They may even have fine technical minds now. But they’re still “non-technical” in the sense I mean, because they simply don’t have the time or the context to build an accurate mental model of the system. Instead, they rely on a vague mental model, supplemented by advice from engineers they trust.
To the extent that their vague mental model is accurate and the advice they get is good – in other words, to the extent that they have technical clarity – they’ll make sensible decisions. The stakes are therefore very high. Technical clarity in an organization can be the difference between a functional engineering group and a completely dysfunctional one.”