Archive for November 2011
Joel Test Fail
If you’re involved in software then you may have heard of the Joel Test. It’s a quick, unscientific way to get a ballpark estimate of how dysfunctional a software development organization may be. A company with a low score needs help and before joining you should seriously consider if you are going to be the person to help them. A high score is an indication that the organization is well managed.
The thing about the Joel Test is that not all of the questions are equal in how well they represent the health of the organization or the quality of its management. Likewise, some things are much easier to fix than others. For instance, some people haven’t experienced the benefits of continuous integration and/or may not be aware of new tools that greatly simplify the creation of virtual integration environments. Even without CI, for instance, it may be a good place to work and it shouldn’t be difficult for a good developer with some leadership skills to introduce better development practices.
One of the questions on the Joel Test is “Do programmers have quiet working conditions?” The answer at virtually all software companies is NO. Famous exceptions are Apple, Microsoft, and Fog Creek, of course. Without quiet working conditions it is more difficult and expensive to implement all of the other things in the test or the product itself. It’s harder to get good people. The people you have aren’t working at their full potential or they are sacrificing their lives to work early/late in order to avoid the distractions of their offices, which leads to burnout and turnover. If you’re at a place without quiet working conditions then it is almost certain that there is nothing you can do to change it. Management didn’t see it as a problem in the first place and is unlikely be persuaded by any argument. That’s why this question is actually the most important question on the test.
I was just looking at some jobs on Stack Overflow and noticed that employers may answer the questions in the Test and have their “score” featured in search results. The first ad I looked at that responded to the Test had a score of 11/12. It’s a startup in San Francisco called Grockit. The only question in the Test that they responded negatively to was “Do you do hallway usability testing.” If a company answers affirmatively to all of the other questions then it is probably a good place, because nobody is going to stop you from asking the next person that comes down the hallway to test out a new feature.
So I go to Grockit’s web site and click the “Jobs” link and what do I see? You guessed it, a picture of all their developers jammed in a single room. I have no doubts that there is a kitchen and dining area just out of the frame.
Bing vs. Google: Maps
I punch “28th and Sanchez” into Google. Google recognizes this as a possible address, searches its database nearby to wherever it thinks I am located, and shows a small map at the top of the search results. If I click on the map or enter the same query directly into Google Maps then it will go directly to a map of the intersection it thinks I want. It was correct and my desire was satisfied simply and easily.
Try the same thing with Bing (I actually tried Bing first.) Bing doesn’t recognize that it is an intersection and displays no map in the search results. No problem, I’ll click the “Maps” link at the top. Bing Maps doesn’t know what I’m talking about. On the left you can see that there are two query fields labeled “Business name or category (optional)” and “Location:” Can you guess which one was prefilled with my query from the search engine? A minor irritation, I think, I’ll just cut/paste the intersection into the location field. Nope, Bing Maps still doesn’t have any idea what I’m looking for. Add “, San Francisco CA” and it finally shows me the map I want.
If you try to enter a street address without a city or state Bing appears to return the first result it finds. So entering some addresses nearby to me here in San Francisco yielded results in Lubbock TX and Germany. Seriously, when I entered the address of the building I’m sitting in, Bing did not find any exact matches and a map of the Eastern hemisphere was displayed with pin indicating the location of what it thought was the best match, some place in Germany with a name that isn’t even close to my query.
Did it never occur to the Bing team that people searching the map without specifying a city/state want the match closest to their location? That I might want to enter an intersection like I would a simple street address? Did the product manager never try entering an address or intersection without specifying the city or did they think those results were acceptable?
Hacking on Empty 