Joel Spolsky

Avram Joel Spolsky was in born 1965 and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico until 15. Afterwards, he and his family moved to Jerusalem, Israel where he completed his high school education and served in the Israeli Defense Force as a paratrooper.

He returned to the United States in 1987 for his college education, finally earning a Bachelor of Computer Science (summa cum laude) in 1991.

He worked for Microsoft the same year as a program manager on the Microsoft Excel team where he designed Excel Basic and drove Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications strategy.

He left Microsoft in 1995 and is no longer employed by Microsoft Corporation.