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posted by janrinok on Monday October 10 2016, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-only... dept.

There is an interview with Joel Spolsky on GeekWire which reports that companies should Just shut up and let your devs concentrate:

If you want to attract and keep developers, don't emphasize ping-pong tables, lounges, fire pits and chocolate fountains. Give them private offices or let them work from home, because uninterrupted time to concentrate is the most important and scarcest commodity.

That's the view of Joel Spolsky, CEO of Stack Overflow, a popular Q&A site for programmers, who spoke this morning at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle.

"Facebook's campus in Silicon Valley is an 8-acre open room, and Facebook was very pleased with itself for building what it thought was this amazing place for developers," Spolsky said in an interview with GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. "But developers don't want to overhear conversations. That's ideal for a trading floor, but developers need to concentrate, to go to a chatroom and ask questions and get the answers later. Facebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don't want to work there."

[Continues...]

Spolsky, who in 2011 created project-management software Trello, said the "Joel Test" that he created 16 years ago is still a valid way for developers to evaluate prospective employers. It's a list of 12 yes-no questions, with one point given for every "yes" answer:

  1. Do you use source control?
  2. Can you make a build in one step?
  3. Do you make daily builds?
  4. Do you have a bug database?
  5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
  6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
  7. Do you have a spec?
  8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
  9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
  10. Do you have testers?
  11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
  12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

"The truth is that most software organizations are running with a score of 2 or 3, and they need serious help, because companies like Microsoft run at 12 full-time," Spolsky said when he created the test. He said that remains true today.

How well does your organization support its developers? If new or better equipment would improve your productivity, is it made available to you? How is your work environment? How well does your organization score on the 12-point "Joel Test"? What is the biggest thing blocking your company from improving?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @06:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @06:14PM (#412556)

    Looking at your GitHub repo doesn't tell me enough about what it will be like to work with you. Writing a little code on the whiteboard, and having you review some code, will tell me a lot.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @07:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @07:20PM (#412587)

    Yes it's difficult to demonstrate your bootlicking and cocksucking skills in a GitHub repo. Soft skills like having a supple mouth are the skills that will get you the job.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @10:14PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday October 10 2016, @10:14PM (#412666) Homepage Journal

    Then make it useful code that's part of an active project. I don't do pointless schoolwork at my age.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:43PM (#412688)

      I don't do pointless schoolwork at my age.

      You're too old to be coder, old man. Have you tried dying, to make room for young people to change the world?

    • (Score: 2) by lgw on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:28AM

      by lgw (2836) on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:28AM (#412741)

      Every major software employer these days is primarily focused on coding (and design) in interviews (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, all the second tier size-wise as well). It's the only thing that means anything. Do you write maintainable, robust code with good variable names and so on in the stress and time crunch of an interview? Then you're likely to do so in the stress and time crunch of a project.

      Facebook goes a bit overboard here, their interviews look more like programming contests than anything to do with code quality, but as TFS points out, Facebook has other problems.

      Get over yourself.