Tech, Design and Development

Nice read from Joel Spolsky if you are a Microsoft Enthusiast.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

In those days we used to have these things called BillG reviews. Basically every major important feature got reviewed by Bill Gates. I was told to send a copy of my spec to his office in preparation for the review. It was basically one ream of laser-printed paper.

He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.

I left the company in 1994, assuming Bill had completely forgotten me, until I noticed a short interview with Bill Gates in the Wall Street Journal, in which he mentioned, almost in passing, something along the lines of how hard it was to recruit, say, a good program manager for Excel. They don’t just grow on trees, or something.