Technical debt can be disguised as high performance, which is the responsibility of the manager to root this out. This is where non-technical managers of technical teams fail, they don't have the skills to do it. An average employee won't be looking out for this, but a manager should be.

Most surprising is how infrequently people will even ask for things (a new PC, a raise). I suppose they feel like they will get in trouble for being needy. So totally agree don't make them ask for the little things that overall will make them happier and are of small cost to the company.

Absolute spot on! It must be the first time I hear from the software director this understanding of pseudo-high-performance developers. We had one on the team, at some point of his ascent to the summits of the glory, he even refused to fix the trunk he broke by his commit: it would be taking him too much of his precious time, and other's time was of course plenty and cheaper.

Though I would move 'absence of interrupts' and 'private spaces' higher up on the list. This is also something few software managers truly understand.

Peopleware