Then there's Joel Test meta-question #13: "Do you know your score?" Even more important than the absolute score, I think, is that a company is A) well-read eno

Then there's Joel Test meta-question #13: "Do you know your score?" Even more important than the absolute score, I think, is that a company is A) well-read enough to have heard of it, B) realized the value enough to run through the exercise already, and C) knows the items they need work on without having to look it up. In other words, it shows _velocity_, a culture of continuous improvement. I haven't been in the job market for awhile, but back when I was, the first words out of my mouth to the contact at the other company was "What's your Joel score?" It's amazing how effective a filter that question is, because the only responses you get are the right one (9<=x<=12) or "I don't know." Other than perhaps "Will you marry me", it's perhaps the highest shannon entropy of any four-word question.