I strongly agree with the author about the importance of having a mentor/manager who is a great technical sounding board. I need the help understanding what the business direction is, or else I will spend my energy working on a problem that the business doesn’t care about. I want to know that if I figure out an improvement for area X that area X is important enough to merit work. And getting to the end of a project only to discover no one in the business cares about what I did is the most frustrating thing.