Throughout my career (a small number of jobs but a lot of different management regimes) I have also not met a high level manager who has heard of Brooks' Law or The Mythical Man-Month. Most of the grunts doing the work and most of their immediate supervisors understand it, but at a certain level I guess it's just not required reading.

So when we inevitably run into problems (pick any ten from the list above) and we're asked why we don't "just bring on some contractors", the favorite response is "Nine women can't make a baby in one month". It always gets laughs on the conference calls, then the next question is "but seriously, why don't you just bring in some contractors?"