Equally impressive was that Joel was hired as a product manager (I believe the official title was Program Manager, but writing product spec nowadays is done by eng or by product managers) fresh out of school, yet he was able to come up with detailed and highly technical product spec - a trait that many product managers do not have, especially in a big company.

It also shows the talent density of the young Microsoft, just like in the young Google, or the young Facebook.

Edit: s/Project Manager/Program Manager/