Awhile ago on here there was a post about a list of questions one should ask themselves to evaluate how good a software company is. One was making sure there was a dedicated test team because it's a waste of money to have developers test their own code. I have combed the internet forever trying to find this list but I'm turning up empty. If anybody could help a guy out I'd greatly appreciate it!
Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#2There is the Joel Test from way back in 2000: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...
Searching for newer versions of that may be useful.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#3A few random thoughts:
1. Check out their toilet if it's on-site.
2. How does the team do requirement analysis? Do they have a dedicated business analyst team or you guys have to do it, or no one is doing it and everyone is fighting for his own tickets?
3. Does the company HR/Admin send light-heart newsletters every once for a while?
4. How tight is discipline monitored?
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#4A few random thoughts: 1. Check out their toilet if it's on-site. 2. How does the team do requirement analysis? Do they have a dedicated business analyst team or you guys have to do it, or no one is doing it and everyone is fighting for his own tickets? 3. Does the company HR/Admin send light-heart newsletters every once for a while? 4. How tight is discipline monitored?
> 1. Check out their toilet if it's on-site.
This! It’s a distillation of the whole group you’re dealing with from top to bottom (pun intended.)
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#5A lot of companies have half-assed migrations from AWS to GCP to save money, so beware:
- all docs still refer to AWS, so worthless
- server logging disabled
- untrained admins
- few SSD options compared to AWS
- live migrations causing outages
- broken terraform scripts.
Give them a year to sort out their new cloud.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#6a waste of money to have devs test their own code?
interesting.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#7a waste of money to have devs test their own code? interesting.
I don’t know if you’ve worked with testers, but they think differently than devs. A good test org will also be slightly antagonistic to a dev team and that antagonism, plus a slight us vs them mentality can produce some amazing product results.
Testers also tend to be a little cheaper. To call it a waste might be a bit reductionist but it certainly hints at some organizational inefficiencies that may be recognizable once you reach a certain size.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#8Ask to see the supply closet. If they cheap out on the small things (pens, for example), they will definitely cheap out on the big ones.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#9a waste of money to have devs test their own code? interesting.
I think developers should test their own code. They should write unittests, they should have integration tests, and running these test suites should be automated.
If you are planning on keeping the code base around for a while and you are going to make changes to the codebase, then you are going to want this. Otherwise those expensive developers are going to take longer to implement the new features and they will introduce more defects into production.
Testers are nice to have, but your developers need to be doing this.
Re: Rules for job seekers to evaluate software companies?
#10a waste of money to have devs test their own code? interesting.
I don’t know if you’ve worked with testers, but they think differently than devs. A good test org will also be slightly antagonistic to a dev team and that antagonism, plus a slight us vs them mentality can produce some amazing product results. Testers also tend to be a little cheaper. To call it a waste might be a bit reductionist but it certainly hints at some organizational inefficiencies that may be recognizable…
There's a difference in mentality to say its cheaper or saying its better.