When Microsoft started growing seriously in the 1980s, everybody there had read The Mythical Man-Month , one of the classics of software management. The main point of that book was that when you add more programmers to a late project, it gets even later. So the programmers at Microsoft were worried about how to write bigger and bigger programs, when the prevailing wisdom of the day was that adding programmers just makes things worse. Instead of worrying about debugging every function, the master programmer would basically just prototype each function, creating the bare outline, and then throw it to one of the junior programmers to implement. Well, Simonyi may know Hungarian Notation , but he doesn't know Peopleware .
Nobody wants to be a code slave.
The system didn't work at all. Eventually, Microsoft discovered that despite the alleged Mythical Man Month, you can still add smart people to a team and get increased output, although at decreasing marginal values. A smart man named Jabe Blumenthal basically reinvented the position of program manager. Henceforth, the program manager would own the design and the spec for products. Since then, program managers at Microsoft gather requirements, figure out what the code is supposed to do, and write the specs .