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One of the strengths of the Joel test is that it is very objective. There is no wiggle room on "Do you use source control?" or "Do you have a bug database?". M

One of the strengths of the Joel test is that it is very objective. There is no wiggle room on "Do you use source control?" or "Do you have a bug database?". Many of these are completely subjective. Do you have "Healthy oncall" and "Technical managers who build trust"? Most companies you could argue either way.

mgkimsal 6y ago
Agreed. I'm not sure I see any clearly definable measures here. > Celebrating people taking initiatives. Are people taking initiatives to make things better celebrated or rewarded over this seen as unnecessary distractions? What does 'celebrate' mean? Yay... colleague introduced a new initiative for doing XYZ, but it violates the current standards and now requires upgrades of other legacy stuff. It's not providing any measurable or substantive benefit, but... if I don't "celebrate" it, am I part of a 'destructive' culture?
- wtfno009887466 6y ago
  It's the difference between catching the initiative early enough so that it doesn't cause a cascade of problems, while being nice about it... And saying, you idiot, you did something you thought was good and now I'm angry because I have more work... And what you did wasn't even good. The question is a bad management detector.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
netfl0 6y ago
Came here to say this. I was sorta shocked at the hubris in the title, then I read the article and was disappointed by the rife subjectivity. The Joel test is not “feels outdated” and there was no evidence presented to support the claim.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  I agree with the points re: subjectivity, but I do feel the Joel test is somewhat outdated, if only because everything on there has become table stakes rather than genuine differentiators. A 12/12 on the Joel test doesn't mean you're a great company, it means you're not a total garbage fire. I'm not going to presume I can come up with a whole new test on the spot, but I'd expect a "modern" Joel test to have questions like: - Do you use CI? - Do you deploy changes individually? - Is your code coverage > (some amount)
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    >I agree with the points re: subjectivity, but I do feel the Joel test is somewhat outdated, if only because everything on there has become table stakes rather than genuine differentiators. This might be, but there are a whole lot of companies in the world that can't even make table stakes.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Some questions from the Joel test do sound a bit dated - understandably, it's a 20-year-old post at this point. For example, if you were writing the list today "do you make daily builds" would probably have updated to "do you build and test every merge into master"
sanderjd 6y ago
The subjective part of the Joel test is the choice of those particular objective measures.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
A quick skim and I agree. However...! Them things that are most valuable are often[0] least quantifiable. Sure "Technical managers who build trust" is probably completely unquantifiable but if you work for people who are willing to mess up your work, it's very bad indeed. I worked at a place that used source control (we all do now) but oh hell, the boss could not help pissing about weekly with the project's aims, growing it every time, no clear direction, etc. It's a bit like code comments then, the value of which can be indisputable. Perhaps require 33% of your code to have comments? Seems like a metric! Now how valuable is that when enforced? Some programmers will do little more than paste code lipsum. We want quality comments - and now we're back to subjective. The best stuff is. [0] That needs some thinking about which I haven't done.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Subjective things are indeed important! But if you're in a job interview, and you ask your interviewer whether their technical managers think trust is important, even the most toxic employer would agree it is. The same way a prospective employee, when asked "what's your greatest weakness", wouldn't admit to any truly great flaws.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Well I'm looking at it in the sense of a platonic ideal whereas you are being realistic. Reality wins, as always.

mgkimsal 6y ago

Agreed. I'm not sure I see any clearly definable measures here. > Celebrating people taking initiatives. Are people taking initiatives to make things better celebrated or rewarded over this seen as unnecessary distractions? What does 'celebrate' mean? Yay... colleague introduced a new initiative for doing XYZ, but it violates the current standards and now requires upgrades of other legacy stuff. It's not providing any measurable or substantive benefit, but... if I don't "celebrate" it, am I part of a 'destructive' culture?

wtfno009887466 6y ago
It's the difference between catching the initiative early enough so that it doesn't cause a cascade of problems, while being nice about it... And saying, you idiot, you did something you thought was good and now I'm angry because I have more work... And what you did wasn't even good. The question is a bad management detector.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

netfl0 6y ago

Came here to say this. I was sorta shocked at the hubris in the title, then I read the article and was disappointed by the rife subjectivity. The Joel test is not “feels outdated” and there was no evidence presented to support the claim.

ryanbrunner 6y ago
I agree with the points re: subjectivity, but I do feel the Joel test is somewhat outdated, if only because everything on there has become table stakes rather than genuine differentiators. A 12/12 on the Joel test doesn't mean you're a great company, it means you're not a total garbage fire. I'm not going to presume I can come up with a whole new test on the spot, but I'd expect a "modern" Joel test to have questions like: - Do you use CI? - Do you deploy changes individually? - Is your code coverage > (some amount)
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  >I agree with the points re: subjectivity, but I do feel the Joel test is somewhat outdated, if only because everything on there has become table stakes rather than genuine differentiators. This might be, but there are a whole lot of companies in the world that can't even make table stakes.
michaelt 6y ago
Some questions from the Joel test do sound a bit dated - understandably, it's a 20-year-old post at this point. For example, if you were writing the list today "do you make daily builds" would probably have updated to "do you build and test every merge into master"

sanderjd 6y ago

The subjective part of the Joel test is the choice of those particular objective measures.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

A quick skim and I agree. However...! Them things that are most valuable are often[0] least quantifiable. Sure "Technical managers who build trust" is probably completely unquantifiable but if you work for people who are willing to mess up your work, it's very bad indeed. I worked at a place that used source control (we all do now) but oh hell, the boss could not help pissing about weekly with the project's aims, growing it every time, no clear direction, etc. It's a bit like code comments then, the value of which can be indisputable. Perhaps require 33% of your code to have comments? Seems like a metric! Now how valuable is that when enforced? Some programmers will do little more than paste code lipsum. We want quality comments - and now we're back to subjective. The best stuff is. [0] That needs some thinking about which I haven't done.

michaelt 6y ago
Subjective things are indeed important! But if you're in a job interview, and you ask your interviewer whether their technical managers think trust is important, even the most toxic employer would agree it is. The same way a prospective employee, when asked "what's your greatest weakness", wouldn't admit to any truly great flaws.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Well I'm looking at it in the sense of a platonic ideal whereas you are being realistic. Reality wins, as always.