A Summary of "Joel on Software"

A lot of people probably share the sentiment of Joel > Rework. I think that's because Joel reasons things out and his reasoning is nuanced, consistent, and intellectually honest. The 37s advice writing, more often than not, consists of generalization of simple concepts (that worked for 37s) without analysis of their caveats.

It depends on how badly you need it. This matters in both directions, but it is a lot more relevant when picking a good place to work: if you can't pay rent next month, you'll probably take a bad gig.

In the hiring direction, "how badly you need it?" is usually not as time-sensitive since adding people to a team effectively lowers productivity at first. However, if for some reason you are trying to grow a team by an order of magnitude, you "need it" pretty badly, so to speak.

1) They should act professional during the the interview. That means starting the interview on time, and being prepared, not just coming in, reading your resume while you wait, and asking whatever questions they can come up with on the fly. It doesn't mean dressing a certain way.

2) They should ask you difficult technical questions, because you want to know that the people you will be working with were smart enough to pass a tough interview.

3) They should welcome difficult questions from you. I'm not necessarily taking about technical questions about their product, but more the way they run their shop.

4) They should not act like they are in a hurry, even if they are.

5) Ideally, they don't have a lot of unplanned turnover.

Here's what Joel has to say about picking the right software company to work for:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

It's an old article that has generated a lot of discussions on the Web and is also known as "Joel's Test". Google for more info.